The Gossip is

My new dorm roommate told these guys, actors posing with tourist at a rebuilt Checkpoint Charlie, are strippers, according to a walking tour she went on.
The film I saw at the Berlin Wall Memorial says that the real CC is in a museum.
It's definitely a circus in this part of Berlin. You can buy fake Soviet General hats, fake Soviet fur hats, fake military medals and fake gas masks from the street vendors.