Frankly ... Berlin  Berlin Clubs: On/Off

Before Covid-19 hit, Berlin clubs were turning over all told about €1.5 billion a year. One-fourth of the city’s tourists came to experience Berlin’s famed long nights of wild, diverse and debauched excess. The policymakers aren’t the only ones to blame for closing down the clubs.

 

November 2021, a Tuesday afternoon – A young man on the U1, the underground line for the party crowd that runs through Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. His phone rings and hollers for everyone in the carriage to hear: “T’s up, dude? Where were you at Saturday? We crashed the P. party! Jumped the wall! It was sooo cool, I danced for eighteen hours straight!” Then he recites the list of all the drugs he took during those eighteen hours. People in the waggon laugh with delight, almost smugly. He gets off at Kottbusser Tor. Pure Berlin folklore, I think to myself. What rude health! Well, waste your youth if you like, but don’t endanger others.
Berlin’s nightlife has always been world-famous. After the fall of the Wall, the club scene exploded. Berlin was cheap and attracted crazy artists, creatives and plenty of others who’d opted for an alternative, self-determined lifestyle. Then came the EasyJet set. People wanted techno, sweat and more.

The party’s over and so is the “fear of missing out” – isn’t it?

But the first wave of Covid-19 put an end to the Berlin party in March 2020. The clubs were the first to close – many of them for good – bringing one of the biggest economic engines in the city-state to a standstill. The face of Berlin changed: the party tourists vanished, the underground trains were deserted at night.
And yet, despite the pandemic, some people never stopped partying. Many a flash party popped up in the city’s parks. DJs would put on music and Bluetooth the sound to portable speakers brought by some of the revellers themselves. I always wondered: Are these parties some kind of youth revolt? They seemed like an inconsistent reaction to the fact that teens and children have been the most disadvantaged demographic during the pandemic.
On the other hand, some of my friends were almost relieved at the club closures because the party pressure was off: no need to go out and make the scene anymore. We no longer had the feeling we were always missing out on something because there was nothing to miss out on anymore.

Brief reopening

The clubs were finally allowed to reopen in September 2021, the last to get back to the “new normal”. LCavaliero, a DJ and artistic director of SchwuZ, Berlin’s biggest LGBTIQA* club, told me how exuberant people were about the reopening: “It was a physical experience. People went crazy, singing along at the top of their voices. It was magical!”
I myself went to exactly two parties during this period – and on the same evening. The first was at the aforementioned SchwuZ, where I didn’t feel unsafe at all. Still, it was unfamiliar, without face masks – similar to that feeling we get watching pre-pandemic films in which no one is wearing a mask, as if it were the most natural thing in the world – which it actually is or use to be.
Event organiser Lilo Ungerat SO36, the Kreuzberg institution par excellence, observed that there was less hugging and kissing at first. But the clubgoers positively radiated gratitude at finally being allowed to revel again.
I was grateful too. My second party was held in a small but renowned techno club, which charged a lot more than usual for admission, as much as pre-pandemic Berghain. But out of solidarity I hadn’t asked to be put on the guest list – this was my way of supporting the club.
People were whooping it up like there was no tomorrow – just as in the old days. The dance floor was packed and the air accordingly stuffy. I didn’t last more than forty minutes there. My Covid alert app turned red that night.
G., resident DJ and co-organiser of our ¡MASH-UP! party, tried several times to persuade me to organise events again, especially seeing as there was funding to be had from the Berlin Senate. But I thought it is better to wait and see, play it safe: after all, there were big requirements and we were a small outfit. We haven’t put on any parties for two years now.

Déjà vu

But the number of infections shot up as the winter cold set in and selfish unvaccinated adults continued to hold out. “Dancing festivities” were banned again. “It was a déjà vu,” as Lilo put it to me.
They were right to close the clubs, says LCavaliero: “It’s not OK for people to end up in intensive care while others are blithely dancing away.” “Last summer,” agrees Lilo, “the powers that be shouldn’t have said everything was fine just because case numbers were down. They should have vaccinated more people and improved working conditions and pay for hospital nursing staff instead.” I agree too.
Which brings me back to the guy in the U-Bahn who’d jumped the wall to get into the club – without paying admission or showing his COVID Pass, thereby demeaning the club culture he finds “soooo cool”. This kind of attitude is another reason why the clubs had to close again.
 

February 2022