A bar gig on a hot August evening may not draw a crowd, but a visit to Bremen’s oldest punk bar shows why the scene comes together and celebrates here, sometimes until dawn.
The Steintor Schänke, in Bremen’s “Viertel” district, looks rather unassuming at first glance. Between apartment buildings, an organic bakery and small art galleries, it is easy to miss unless you’re a regular: Bremen’s most iconic punk bar is tucked into a doorway at Vor dem Steintor 52.And there are plenty of regulars. For more than four decades, the Steintor Schänke has been a fixture of Bremen’s bar scene. It is one of only two bars in the area with a 24-hour license, which attracts night owls and often keeps owners Eliza and Ingo serving drinks until 6 a.m. Their specialty is “Kettenfett” (chain grease), a drink made of licorice candies dissolved in vodka.
The two live for the bar. They reside right above it and are part of a lively, friendly and creative community. The first drinks delivery arrives around midday, and anyone already sitting at the bar for a chat will happily lend a hand.
The Schänke isn’t just a punk bar with live shows by big and small names on the punk scene. It’s a meeting place for neighbors, kindred spirits and the city’s punks. “The younger punks do their own thing, so the scene is fairly split along generational lines. The young ones don’t live on the streets anymore like they did back in the ’80s. And the older ones come to us, but we often have a very mixed crowd too,” Eliza says of her experience with Bremen’s punks.
Since Eliza started an Instagram account for the Schänke, they have been getting lots of booking requests from bands. All gigs are free. Sometimes, like today, her friend Charlie sets up a buffet. He used to handle tour catering for big bands like Coldplay. “It was always the unknown bands who made the most special requests,” he says as he puts a tray of spring rolls on the bar. Today’s acts, TV Moms from New York and Riot Spears from Berlin, are simply grateful for a meal when they finally roll in, hours late. It won’t be loud tonight: both bands have sent only their lead singers to play an acoustic set. With temperatures inside the Schänke reaching 97°F, many in the audience are standing outside to catch a light breeze on the summer evening.
Lotte is the first person to join the crowd who really looks like a punk, and with his blue-dyed mohawk he stands out. When I ask him what punk means to him, he says: “Punk is doing what you want, not giving a damn what other people think, just living your life without listening to anyone else.” He punctuates his answer with a big swig of beer straight from the bottle.
Outside, it’s getting busier and louder, and Eliza and Ingo have their hands full. At the entrance I bump into a colleague, Sotiris, the social media manager of the Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki, who is also a regular whenever he visits his girlfriend in Bremen. He and his girlfriend stand in the colorful, cheerful crowd, which has two main things in common: an unconventional lifestyle and the same politics (guests have plastered anti-Nazi stickers on every wall of the Schänke and even on the toilet lid). Around 10:30 p.m., the bands pack up. Because of noise complaints from neighbors, no concerts are allowed after 11 p.m.
The next morning, Eliza writes to tell me it was another long night. Around 1 a.m., she says, the place filled up again when the Toten Hosen concert at the nearby Bürgerweide ended and fans weren’t ready to go home yet. For them, punk means little sleep, but also the rewarding feeling of being at the heart of a vibrant community.
In a video interview with GEGENÜBER, the two talk about what punk means to them and what their daily lives look like.