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In 2017, producer and assistant director William Paul Clark, who had worked with the “Pulp Fiction” director for decades, said that on Tarantino sets there’s a “checkpoint Charlie” where one crew member collects phones.

I am not making a prediction that we will someday have a literal “Checkpoint Charlie” on the Idaho-Washington border.

“I don’t know if you guys will remember this, but when I would take you to San Diego, I would always worry with Checkpoint Charlie.”

Then I passed uber-commercial Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie with its East German kitsch and the gleaming Axel Springer headquarters, which once loomed over the wall and now holds fast to the transatlantic relationship that saved West Berlin but seems to be receding into history.

The courthouse looks more like Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie than a public building.