Yea, 3 hour lines, and then they obnoxiously don’t let you in anyway, for no obvious reason. Not shedding any tears here.
In fact, when I got in one club a very cute german girl tried to talk to me on the dancefloor. But I didn't speak any German and she got angry, shouting "aaauuggh!! tourists!!!"
Also, for the clubs that forbid alcohol (hard drugs only!), they will refuse you if you are caught drinking in line or are visibly drunk.
Also, I was told to keep my mouth shut as they will sometimes refuse you if you speak English
At least this is how it was about 13 years ago. My friend was a self-described and un-ironic "hipster", who kept his finger on the pulse of the local underground, and of course he lived in Kreuzberg
I think speaking English in itself was never a problem to get in. But of course the tourist vibes get stronger if the person doesn't know the "definition of cool" that is expected and appreciated in that particular club.
Take this example [1] of a tourist they probably let in by accident and regretted it. :)
Some of them are open for example only between 2am and 8am with a nice variety of other drugs available.
The thing about Berlin clubs is they care very strongly about the vibe and being cool, and/or protecting those deep in psychedlics or other stuff. Aggressive, drunk assholes ruin that so they are verboten in some spots. The bars are all happily stocked with non-alcoholic selections. It's not America where you need to make money at all costs fuck the consequences.
Note that these are the same places that will reputedly dump you out the back door if you overdo it or OD, take from that what you will.
Also, I think you underestimate just how much the party scene loves Club Mate over there. That is what we drank instead. It pairs really nicely with molly!
I moved to Berlin to escape the political headaches in Poland while still being close to my family and friends, with no specific goal of partying here, as I've never liked clubs and dancing in general. But from hanging out with expats and sometimes joining them to themed parties in clubs, my takeout is that you have to spend a lot of money on clothing and appearance to show the bouncers that you really belong. Of course places like Berghain are completely random in that matter and the way you dress doesn't change anything (unless you really look like a tourist, I guess), but for most part it's a rich kids club.
Perhaps, but it seems that those "selective" clubs have given a bad reputation to all clubs.
What kind of prep is required to go out to drink and fund someone else's business?
I will never be going as I am too old and too busy for the "scene" so please explain it to me in laymen terminology.
Why not? I was at a heavy metal concert in Shibuya last May, and the place was full of 50-something guys in full office suits. It was a Monday, so I guess they just finished work and went directly to the concert. It was quite amusing to be honest...
It's unfortunate that the rock and metal crowd is mostly middle-aged people these days; the young people seem to be listening to rather bland pop music, idol music, etc.
Being exclusive is really against the ethos of techno in Berlin. The "exclusivity" at the door is usually about achieving a fun mix of people and keeping out the ones who cannot behave.
As an occasional clubber in Berlin, these "best" things are ridiculous. The "best" kebab place with the long queue is nothing special at all, and Berghain is, apart from the building and the (mostly gay) sex stuff (which don't do much for me) a club like many others. It's never been my favorite - the vibe can be surprisingly aggressive and the music is often not that good for my taste. I used to go there for specific acts or along with friends only. Haven't bothered for years now. Nowadays it's also become expensive, cashing in on its dubious status.
There is a thing that the "best" kebab place and the "best" club have in common: kebab places and clubs are both very good in Berlin, so if you go to the one that the tourist guide / TikTok recommended, you're probably going to have a good time - but maybe you don't know that there are many other just as good or better places.
As for how restaurants compare to making food at home, I don't think almost any restaurant can do better than a good chef at home. Someone at home can concentrate on making a top-quality meal for one or two people (maybe a couple more at the most), and doesn't have any real time pressures, or needing to share kitchen resources with meals made for dozens of other customers. It's pretty much the ideal environment for cooking, assuming 1) the equipment available is good and 2) the chef is skilled enough. Of course, #2 is a big one, so while some people who are confident in their cooking skills can claim "I can cook better meals than most Michelin-starred restaurants!", lots of other people can't cook meals that require more skill than "put in microwave for 4 minutes" so most restaurants can easily beat that.
I was rejected at Kater Blau once though, for who knows what reason. It's the way it works, if you get bumped you can get angry at the system or just forget your ego and go elsewhere and enjoy the night.
My experience of KitKat is that unwanted attention of any kind (which depending on the night might not be super rare) is quickly shut down by the people in the immediate area before the staff even get close, and then the staff respond very quickly to it, especially if someone who is a regular calls attention.
The scene is prone to issues and what we do in my town is not allowing new people unless they have a fet account and/or accompanied by a regular. There's also a blacklist of known offenders. Not sure if that's the case over there.
I really hope I can visit it one day but I'm really afraid of travelling all the way there and being refused..
Ps regarding Lindemann I'm not a big fan of cancelling people before the facts come out. I absolutely abhor abuse but I'm also very much in favour of innocent until proven guilty.
It wouldn't really be a risk of him misbehaving because there's so many eyes on him. But I know it's a tough line to draw. Glad I'm not a club manager.
Traveling to Asia, South America and Europe to meet with electronic artists I've never had any interest in attempting to go to the segregated clubs of Berlin. I find it offensive.
There's plenty of ones that don't discriminate.
Your other options are (a) let anyone in and you get a**** and total dilution of cultural values (quick death of the institution) or (b) it's a private party and you're not invited.
For accessible and good, you can stay on your toes and find new, smaller clubs and scenes that haven't had time to die yet, but that's its own exclusiveness: if you don't know, you don't know.
I'd argue the majority of cliques and scenes are extremely accepting and people self filter. Having a discriminating door guy is just being an asshole.
But this approach just wouldn't benefit some popular dance clubs. Without a solid door policy clubs would be stuffed with people who come there for wrong reasons. To pick up girls, to get drunk, to visit an attraction for the sake of a visit (not because they enjoy techno music), to get into a fight, etc etc. Have you ever been to a poorly managed club? They don't have a community, don't focus on a holistic clubbing experience, have many people with really bad vibes. Would you want to stay there for a night and the next day (night time + day time raves)?
> underground cliques
Let's be honest, techno is not underground in Berlin, these clubs are a massive tourist attraction. Berghain is not a 50 person dive bar in SOMA.
In Germany. Let me guess, they look at your ID to check your name and nationality first. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I bet I'm not.
Btw, KitKatClub doesn't do that and they're equally famous.
Door policy is discrimination only in the sense that the very few people at the door have to make a swift judgment on whether your group will fit in. Can this be upsetting? Sure!
> In Germany. Let me guess, they look at your ID to check your name and nationality first.
By this logic liquor stores in the US also discriminate based on person's nationality since they check the ID.
KitKatClub has a strict dress code policy for their sex-oriented events.
As to the other point, you can separate the process to avoid the kind of blanket discrimination I think we can all agree is unethical. I bet they don't make the slightest effort. It's probably one guy that checks your ID and says yes/no and one guy that takes money. It could be 3 instead of 2 to avoid, just to be crazy, saying no to all the Jewish names, but it's not.
Next time I'm in Berlin, I'll try to remember to take a clicker with me and stand outside the place. I bet you'll start to notice a few interesting patterns that America has quite a few laws against. I've only heard them to be extremely proud of their bias so I'd be surprised if you didn't start seeing just classic discrimination because that's what humans appear to naturally do unless they work really really hard at it or have some structures to prevent it.
Community and scale do not mix. If the founders truly cared about community they would have wound the place up in about 2010 and done something new.
But once people experience a bit of success greed inevitably takes over…
Why is this so hard to understand?
However, all of them are fairly self-selecting in different ways that I think are difficult or impossible to achieve in a long-running, ostensibly "for everyone" institution like a techno club.
You can be exclusive for exclusive-sake and you'll attract the dolce & gabana crowd and maybe that's what they want - people who will spend $500 on alcohol.
But as far as techno I've met all the Belleville 3, two of them twice and each time it's been at tiny spots with like $0-$5 cover.
I've even been to warehouse parties with producers big enough to have Wikipedia pages that are just honor systems where you promise to venmo the promoter and there is no door guy. Highschool kids could just walk in doing hard drugs and to be honest they probably did.
But then again, there's certainly pop techno and non-pop techno. Tiestos YouTube has like 3.7 billion views. That's a different problem than say Legowelt with 200k.
Pay attention to the downvotes, and browse HN with "showdead" turned on, and you'll see that HN stays the way it is in large part due to aggressive exclusion of those who can't stick to society norms up to an including the metaphorical "door guy" (bans).
Self-filtering is a start. But pretty much all cliques and scenes also have lines you will get ostracised if you go past. The extent of their reaction if you will vary, and sure, there's a difference between proactively judging you based on appearance and retroactively judging you by actions, but in some scenes your appearance is part of the game. That sucks if you don't fit in, but it also sucks for those who want something specific if you're that one person who can't self filter and insist on ruing the experience for everyone else.
It's a very important difference.
If I, just some random dude, submitted a correct mathematical paper solving a millennium or Hilbert puzzle to a prestigious journal, for instance, they would publish it regardless of the fact that I'm not so and so from Princeton. They wouldn't exclude my valued contribution.
Discrimination would be me submitting the correct solution but first having to find and tack on so and so from Princeton as the author in order to even get considered.
Now I'd probably have to wrangle them a bit to convince them, but that's just credulity, not discrimination.
That's quite different than say Hattie McDaniel, a black actress, being excluded from the premiere of her movie, Gone with the Wind and unable to accept her Oscar on stage because of discrimination.
Discrimination exists regardless of contribution for reasons ultimately unrelated to the nature of the contribution
The specific comment you replied to that I replied to did not argue for the kind of discrimination you're talking about here either.
I'm absolutely sure that the kind of discrimination you're talking about is also an issue with quite a few clubs, but they are two very different issues.
You can tell me it's some vibe check but it's structurally set up to discriminate based on classic markers and there's been intentionally zero remediations to avoid it.
In fact, many reports of xenophobia, antisemitism and racism persist, just Google it, it's everywhere.
That's why we had to fundamentally re-form our institutions in the US in the name of inclusion and not just have better intentions.
Berghain and Tresor can to whatever the fuck they want, I don't care. But let's call a spade a spade and not pretend it magically turns to something else based on wishes and dreams.
> That's why we had to fundamentally re-form our institutions in the US in the name of inclusion and not just have better intentions.
Are you suggesting that worked?
> But let's call a spade a spade and not pretend it magically turns to something else based on wishes and dreams.
The problem is that you appear to call a spade something else entirely, and attack a position nobody has taken. I note that you have expanded on specific issues and pointed out another club that has specific policies that can be easily conformed to elsewhere, and that was a much more productive line of argument to take.
Yes and it is a pretty good description of most Berliners. As a capital, that has mainly lived the last 30 years by sucking tremendous money out of the other federal states, as a city that has little industry and businesses left, as a place which administration has become dysfunctional, it gives the stupid arrogant little Berliner a feeling or superiority if he gets into a club but others must stay outside.
And before you donwvote me, for many years I loved this city. I caught a last glimpse of the post reunification Berlin, when basically all the good clubs had no license or whatever. Bars and clubs at the craziest places. Took the police years to close this down. And today, if you walk through Prenzlauer Berg or Oranienburger str. OMG.
The counterargument to your point is somewhat self-evident: all the great nightclubs in Berlin that have way more relaxed entrances than Berghain that aren't filled with assholes and aren't completely diluted of cultural values.
Often times it's the exclusivity that attracts the assholes who normally don't listen to that kind of music anyway.
I've got no interest in discriminating against the discriminators
don't be drunk or on the way to getting drunk.
#1 pay attention. be there & listen.
#2 don't be too cool for this. in that moment, he's head of security and you might be a reason to call the police or someone who'll cost the crowd too much attention for no return.
that's it.