Hello, it is July at Search Engine, which means our team is out of the office. People are hanging out with their families, their loved ones, going on long walks, training dogs. We're behaving like Europeans, hallelujah. We do it every year, and the same thing happens every year to me anyway, which is that I spend 11 months feverishly anticipating this break, and then after five days I have 100 ideas for Search Engine episodes I want to make, and I start itching to get back to work. But anyway, let's talk about you. In our month away, we have some treats for you. We're going to re-air one of our favorite stories when we've never reared before, and we're going to share some episodes you have probably never heard from our locked vault, our premium feed in Kainido mode. So stick around for that this month, and we'll be back with brand new episodes for you in August. The particular episode that we were sharing this week is one of my very favorite stories. It's the first of a two-part story we reported about a very exclusive techno nightclub in Berlin. The story has actually been optioned for a film by Boen Yang and Matt Rogers who are both very funny comedians and also podcasters themselves. They host the beloved show Los Culturistas. Boen and Matt are writing a movie based on the story you're about to hear. So enjoy. I hope at least some of you are listening with Sandy Headphones somewhere. I'm not supposed to pick favorite questions. I claim to love all questions equally, but about a year ago, I got a question from two friends of mine. This question caused a rare amount of delight over its search engine HQ. So we asked the two of them to come to the studio. Okay. Okay. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves? I'm Chris. I'm Dan. I guess I'm also a burger. Chris and Dan, two very successful stylish young professionals, they had an annual tradition going back years. These two friends would vacation together. Those two exciting nightlife destinations like Berlin, the city they just returned from. And what was the nature of these vacations? What is your form of relaxing? I would say our form of relaxing is generally not relaxing. It's like partying. Yeah. But respectful, healthy, wholesome partying. And so this was your second trip to Berlin to do respectful of who I'm not sure. What was the last thing healthy? People wholesome and healthy partying. You guys, these are a lot of like daybreaker parties where you drink water and like do yoga afterwards or whatever. Yeah. A lot of green tea. Exactly. That's the vibe. Chris and Dan, I should tell you, more conscientious and buttoned up than most people I know. Chris, who I've known much longer, he's the kind of person where when I invite him to a party, I can set my watch to what happens. He and his boyfriend shut up exactly on time, bearing a thoughtful gift. And then Chris sneaks out the front door two hours later or half an hour before midnight, whichever comes first, not a person given to unplanned improvised fun. So it's actually a surprise to learn he'd been drawn to Berlin, a city that tends to attract my more late night degenerate friends. So you're going to Berlin and like how many days are you going for? I think it was like 72 hours in Berlin. Yeah. It was a really short trip. Yeah. Yeah. There is a very unstructured itinerary, which consisted of absolutely nothing. But we knew what the crown jewel of the trip was supposed to be. Yes. Keyword supposed to be. And that was. Burkheim. And why Burkheim? I guess it has this mythical status attached to it, which is no one can get in or very few people can get in. But once you're in, it's like this mystical palace of fun and amazing music and God knows what else. Because neither of us had ever been inside. Burkheim. At the time of our conversation, rumors about Burkheim had certainly reached me 4,000 miles away in Burkheim. I'd heard the basics. A decommissioned power plant turned into a multi-story nightclub. People talked about this place as a kind of grimy heaven and like traditional heaven. Burkheim was also supposedly very hard to get into. It operated according to its own particular value system. Burkheim selectively welcomed freaks, rejects, the different. This was the place where my friends had wanted to go. And I think part of the whole allure of the venue is because they reject so many people. Yeah. They have rejected so many famous people from actors and celebrities to the Elon Musk's of the world. And so it would be one thing if we're not a list celebrities, so of course we're not getting into this club. But even the top of the top of society, the top of the business world, even they are not getting into this club. Yeah. It's savage. I should say, according to Elon Musk, Elon Musk was not rejected from Burkheim. In 2022, amidst a bunch of internet chatter about how he'd not gotten in, he posted on Twitter that it was he who'd rejected the club. He said he'd refused to enter. Okay. Chris and Dan. Their recent attempt was not their first try. They'd also gone in 2017. Back then, they'd done the same thing. Gone to Berlin, headed to Burkheim, waited in line, and ultimately, been told. Nine. This time around, they were older, they were wiser, and they had at least one new advantage. This thriving corner of the internet devoted to Burkheim door policy reconnaissance. There are Reddit forums, subreddits completely dedicated to this, there are TikToks dedicated to this. In English? Yeah. Every language. We were kind of looking back on the last time that we went, and we were like, what did we do wrong? And I think the last time we went, and we were so ignorant to any of these rules, we showed up in like black American apparel t-shirts and thought that would be adequate for the dress code. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's not adequate. Yeah. No, totally, woefully inadequate. So now, five years later, when Chris and Dan arrived once again in Berlin, they knew they would have to take things more seriously. We had a shopping module one day where we went to Kreitsburg, which is like, they're sort of like, funky neighborhood with all their vintage stores, and we were like, we are going to dress like freaks. Athletic shorts, tank tops, harnesses, it's definitely a look. The outfits they decide on, for Dan, a black tank top and short shorts, length, somewhere between 80s, camp counselor, and 90s basketball player, black shoes, and tube socks. For Chris, black skinny jeans, no shirt, and this black vest that kind of looked like a texito vest, with their outfits ready and mindset prepared, they head to the burger online for their Saturday attempt. There's this air through the day of like, we're going to cinch this, like it felt that way to me. If it was going to be any moment, it was going to be that day. Got it. Okay, so tell me about the line. So it's always a fixture, like you show up, it's very, very long, three to four hours. Are you talking a little bit? From the back of the line, they could see the club, the former power plant, looming over the horizon. It was dark, except for flashes of light and silhouettes through the top windows. Very faintly, it emitted the throb of bass. As they stood there, waiting, people would walk past them. People who'd already been rejected, glumly leaving. Chris said the sight of these people would actually inspire hope in him. When a bunch of people in front of you get rejected, you feel kind of optimistic because you're like, well, they're not going to reject everyone, you know. Just statistically, we're probably in luck. Way, way, way up ahead at the front of the line, to the bouncers. A few of these bouncers, especially deputized to decide who got into the club. Those are called selectors. Those were the people sending rejects back out into the night. So how soon can they see you? You know, that's up for debate. Oh, really? Some people might say they're kind of watching you the entire time. There's, this is Santa Claus logic. There's no way they're watching you the entire time. No, but people do come back, you see people that are like kind of like strolling the line. And then you see them again at the door. That happened at least once. Oh, so the Santa Claus is watching you. But for the, I mean, I assumed or I felt like for the most part, you weren't really scrutinized until you were with him like 20 to 30 people of the door. Okay. And then they're on a pedestal. They're on a literal pedestal. And they're looking out and you could feel their eyes on you. Okay. And so how, what was your strategy for how to behave in the line? The conventional wisdom is to be just shown faced. Now we tried that. We also tried the approach of being like, let's just be normal. Now another thing that's interesting is I think that they could tell to the point of like scanning you for authenticity, like we actually are gay, which works in our favor. Because it retains its roots as a gay club and they're gay at the door. Oh, the bouncers are all gay. The bouncers are gay. We think. What, yeah. They seem to be. They seem to be. After a couple hours of anxious waiting, Chris and Dan found themselves close to the mouth of Bergheim.
There's actually like a physical demarcation so like you get to a certain point where like the line actually has a railing around it Okay, so once you reach that point, you're like whoa, this is game time Like then you're within like 20 people of the door You know that you're within sight of the bouncers. That's when like you could hear a pin drop Everyone's totally quiet. That's so funny. And what happens when you walk up? How do you like straight in your posture? Absolutely. Yeah, okay. And so you get up and then there's a number of calculations that are going on in your mind Do you look at the bouncer in the eye? Do you look kind of at the ground? Do you smile? Do you keep a straight face? Do you say anything? Yeah, and I think on this try this was like our authentic friendly selves attempt and so you know I smiled at the guy he asked how many people were I said to I was friendly I think I asked him how his night was going to the answer. No, of course not one of my calculations was whether or not to Look like I was having fun and into the music. So I kind of like was dancing a little bit, but you know very like minor movements And I don't think that strategy work It's hard because you're like, how do I not look desperate after waiting in line for several hours to get into the most exclusive nightclub in the world. It's like a witch hunt where every person in mind is a witch Yeah, and you're constantly making adjustments on how to not appear to be a witch. Yeah. Yeah, so you walk up You say like how's your night? He says nothing is he just looking at you? Is it he a he a it's a he there's spend the the main down sir If Burghain itself is the epitome of what you would think of East German old techno nightclub Then Sven is the epitome of what you would think of as the bouncer the lead bouncer for that venue What is it like a large man with a large number of tattoos and piercings on his face that man is He's a unique individual. Is he intimidating? He's extremely intimidating and there's two others Apparently there's some sort of communication between the two of them some sort of silent communication But it's not legible. There's only one amount of legible communication and that's the decision and how do they communicate it to you? It's always one person they pull up at a time or a small group and Sometimes they're immediately rejected like they don't even get to say a word the bouncer just puts his hand out and they just keep walking Very subtle. Yeah, and they just point towards the street It's not so much a point as an open palm out the direction that you should be going So the gesture you're doing is actually the gesture you one used to be like welcome to my home But it's welcome to not my home like it's it's the the arm goes out the the palms outstretched Like look at this. You're not going to a nightclub. Yeah, it's like you're welcome to go anywhere else in Berlin Chris and Dan did not get the gentle wave inviting them anywhere else in Berlin Instead they got a verbal rejection the bouncer told them not tonight And so the next day Sunday they tried again. They had a new plan to go during the day back and separately during the day and separately okay And the idea of being during the day less competition separately the bouncer might respect you more so or is it two chances the line was just as long I would say if not longer actually during the day yeah and Yeah, our thinking was perhaps we would attain that additional level of respect if we pretended as if we were going separately on this attempt Chris and Dan sit in line next to each other for hours and did not talk We acted like we didn't know each other and I was ahead of Chris and I get up and One of the bouncer's like how many and I say one and they just stares at me Stairs and I actually thought this was the time I was getting and I was pretty confident because it was like a solid 20 seconds. I would say before I was rejected But as soon as they rejected me they looked at Chris and immediately rejected him. Oh my god So we're pretty sure they caught us in the lie. Yeah It was insane. It felt like an x-ray But is it the same bouncer from the day before? Yes, it actually was actually as we're saying this I'm like we're in yes Obviously, they knew that we were together Well, that would assume they remembered us out of the thousands of people who are probably trying to get in there But of course they don't I can't believe we had to go on a podcast to like I think you saw it in my soul. Yeah Yeah, I think we've figured out the answer why we didn't get in we're just dumb If it seems silly to you that two adult men spent so much time and energy trying to get into a nightclub If it seems Sillier that this reporter would then spend a year of his life thinking about this place that those men never got to see the inside of I should tell you how I feel about nightlife, which is maybe not what you would expect I find nightclubs to be deeply meaningful places borderline holy I Know that sounds a little weird, but in New York where I live There's a handful of these quasi underground little dance spots smoke machine try to dance floors usually free to get in Where you can just lose yourself for hours dancing in a throng of strangers It's all very corny to talk about especially on a podcast But as a person who feels like a full-time resident of my own mind These are the only places where I escape that where even sober I just feel like a body not a brain or not a body just a part of a mass of them I suspect there might be a human need to gather in a room and surrender to something and for me What I discovered pretty late in life is that the room should be sweaty and packed and this render should be to music Burgheim Whatever the hype the promise was that it was the best of these rooms built by humans An actual wonder of the world not some relic If somebody was going to sympathize with the plate of two Americans who had failed to pass its door It was probably gonna be me At the same time I like them also found this whole situation deeply funny Isn't it weird that you guys went to all this trouble to be like and I don't mean this in like The supreme court is the word but like to just be discriminated against Hey, yes I don't think We'd think we were discriminated against I I don't want to be here and say oh because we're two Americans We absolutely do what we're getting into and it was almost going there and getting rejected was like in fun activity in and of itself Right, it's like you're participating in the thrill. Let me let me put it this way I've gone skydiving before and the level of anxiety I had Just as I was stepping up to be judged was the same level of anxiety I had just as I was about to jump out of the plane Really yeah, and then what did it feel like to be rejected almost a relief really I think you get it over with I wish I had gotten in but yeah And then when Chris was ejected too, I felt really good about myself Would have been devastating. So what it what is like the thing you're trying to figure out about burger Like what is the question that I can answer? So there's a few things I want to know One thing is say there are some cases where it's cuspi and they're like we want You like on the cusp of it's on on the cusp of decision where they're like they can't decide when you're 20 people away Whether you're a yes or a no yeah, and they want to get a closer look. What are they scanning you for? Right, what are the cues that are gonna, you know, nudge you towards getting in versus Kick you to the curb got it the other question that I have every time we would leave we would walk around the whole club I wonder if there's a way to sneak in Like is there just like a fire exit? Yeah, like is it permeable From any other orifice than this door. I mean, I expect it to be hard to be clear I don't think that there's some easy. Oh, just go in the back door I'm just like if you jump offense crawling under a bush shit like I'm like is there a way and would you do it if there were? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah Okay, what is the bouncer at Burkhain scanning you for if you're on the cusp and Is there some other perhaps secret way to sneak into Burkhain After the break our investigation begins You What the heck is going on with all these promotional popcorn buckets the giant shorts that all of Gen Z is wearing now and whatever the hack high rocks is I'm comedian and certified hater Matt Bellissai and these are the types of questions I'm demanding answers to on my podcast what the heck with Matt Bellissai Listen or watch every Thursday as I rant about all the internet trends pop culture stories and personal mayhem that makes me so
screen what the heck? Follow what the heck with Matt Bellasai wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the show, Unsoons. When we started all this last July, all I really knew about Berghine was that it was a Berlin Techno Club and that was very hard to get into. But I started researching. The club itself maintains a very minimal foot print online. 200,000 people follow Berghine's Instagram account, but the club has only ever posted one photo in 2015. A picture of a sign that says, "In all caps, taking photos is not allowed." The sign, presumably, from inside the club itself. Berghine, like Vegas, claims that what happens there stays there, except in Berghine, that seems to actually be true. Some information about the club, nevertheless, has circulated. The story of Berghine, as I now understand it, begins 30 years ago. In the early 1990s, two Germans, Norbert, Thormann, and Michael Toyfala, had begun hosting a men's only gay fetish party, sometimes at an abandoned air raid shelter. After a few years, the party outgrew that bunker. The pair took over and abandoned Railroad Depot. At the Railroad Depot, they started a club called Ostgood. Ostgood was legendary. Opened to people of all genders and sexualities, but still, a space run by and largely for gay men. A den of hedonism where consenting adults supposedly engaged in all sorts of unusual behavior. Online, at least one video survived from inside the club. But the video is pretty tame. It's from July 2000, looks like camcorder footage. A greenly-shot DJ hovers over a console, twiddling knobs, while nearby, a crowd of German shadows rides under a strobe light. Ostgood may have lived forever, except the city wanted to build a big arena, so the Railroad Depot was knocked down in 2003. Bergheim was its reincarnation. The palace that replaced Ostgood. This time, too big to knock down. A thermal power plant originally built during the Soviet era. Four floors. On the very bottom floor, a dedicated basement gay club, for men only. At the very top, a bar with big windows opening onto a panoramic view of the city. On the levels in between where the power turbines once sat, an enormous dark cavern, the main dance area. The entire space governed by its own particular rules. Rules that are repeated breathlessly by the internet commentary. Bergheim is not a standard posh club with bottle service. They make you put a sticker over your phone. No pictures. They'll throw you the f*** out. There'd be a window where you can buy ice cream and you can order smoothies. It's open from Friday until Monday. Most people stay there for 12 hours, 24 hours, or more. Bergheim is best known for one weekly party. Club night. Club night is a misnomer because while the party starts Saturday evening, it continues all the way until Monday morning without interruption. A few books document the history of the scene that birthed this party. I've found Tobias Raps lost and sound to be particularly helpful. He writes about how when Bergheim opened in 2004, the party was by and for Berliners, but word soon spread internationally. A European budget airline called EasyJet had just opened a new hub in Berlin, and other Europeans started taking EasyJet flights to the city to come party. The legends kept growing. Eventually it grew large enough to draw Chris and Dan, two of the many Americans who made the pilgrimage to Techno Mecca. It was a marvel. A three-day party, good enough to draw thousands of people every weekend, people who would fly to Germany without even a promise they would gain admittance. That was Club night at Bergheim. Most of what people discuss online is not any of this. Instead, they talk about Sven, the intimidating bouncer who Chris and Dan encountered and then cowered in front of. Sven Marcart. Sven Marcart is a tall, imposing man in his early 60s with giant lip rings that look like silver fangs. His hair is slicked back and silver, tattoos of thorns cover much of his face. He looks like a bad guy in a John Wick movie, and he has played a bad guy in a John Wick movie. That was just a cameo one time though. Sven has run security at Bergheim since the club first opened 20 years ago. Sven's backstory grew up in East Berlin, the communist side of the wall, before it fell. There's this one documentary, Berlin Bouncer, that profiles Sven. In one scene, he gives a talk in front of a crowd. He's wearing all black, tinted glasses. Sven discusses the early chapters of his life. How his teenage years were defined by the feeling of being stuck outside a much more significant kind of door. Sven saying, we just wanted to see the other side of the wall. We didn't really want to leave home. We just wanted to find out. What were we being deprived of? What weren't we allowed to see? Sven has said that as a young gay punk rocker, living in East Berlin was risky. He was frequently picked up by the secret police. He was devoted to his photography career, but after the wall fell, he chose to stay on the East Berlin side, and his art career stalled there. Sven's brother was a DJ and a club organizer, and Sven started working the door at his parties. It turned out Sven's eye for people worked not just in photography, but also here. He had a talent for deciding who should be let in. He developed a reputation. That's why they chose him for Oscar and later for Bergheim. The fact that this much of Sven's biography exists in public, of course, goes entirely against Bergheim's secretive ethos. But Sven has continued to pursue his photography career, and so every few years when he has a new exhibition or a photo book, he talks to journalists. Questions about his photography, which he wants to discuss, and questions about how to get into Bergheim, which he has to tolerate. Those are the terms under which the gatekeepers at places like the New York Times or GQ will allow Sven entry, and understanding the way of these things he obliges. Sven, the man with the answer to our question. What was the bouncer at Bergheim scanning you for? I should say, I emailed Sven and requested an interview. I've never been less surprised to be ignored. But in the documentary, there's this prickly moment where the interviewer seems to have directly asked Sven the rules of the door. Sven responds, not with helpful tips about what shade of black to wear. Instead, he says sternly, we don't need to question the rules that are in place. He does allow that, as a selector, his responsibility is to only let people in who, once they join the party, won't impede the freedom and self-expression of the people who are already inside. It makes sense, but it does not provide clues. And in any situation in which official sources remain this tight-lipped, of course, speculation will reign. And it does, online, as Chris and Dan had seen, mainly on TikTok. They're a cottage industry of people who claim to have gotten through the door, now style themselves as helpful experts, explaining what exactly they believe Sven is scanning for when he looks at people like Chris and Dan, trying to get inside the mind of a 62-year-old gay German ex-punk. Be really casual, don't be flamboyant, don't speak too much. Don't talk to loud in the queue, and under no circumstances engage in louder. Literally, just basically be as casual and blend in as possible in order to get in. It's impossible to know if any of these people are actually telling the truth. Again, you can't record inside a Bernheim, which means you just have to take the word for it. I promise. People say that you need to wear black to get in, but that's not true. It helps, but it's not a must. I know, guys. Just be yourself, and if you get in, you get in, and if you don't, try again some other time or call it a wrap. When I went back, I was wearing- The advice offered by these supposed gurus, frankly, does not feel all that usable? Try to get in, or maybe don't. We're black, but you don't have to. My favorite artifact of all the online Berghine speculation is this website called BerghineTrainer.com that will actually drop you into a surprisingly high-rise simulation of the Berghine line. The site takes control of your webcam and then scans your face, analyzing your emotions through your expressions. How angry, sad, euphoric your faces, giving a virtual simulation of Sven's gaze. And then the first person video virtually walks you, step by step, up to the doors of Berghine. The music gets louder as you get closer. The website warns you that Sven will ask you three questions. So I did it. When I arrived at the virtual door, a German man, presumably an actor playing Sven asked, "Is this your first time here?" I said yes.
asked, "Do you know who's DJing tonight?" I said, "Yes." "What's going on?" He asked, "Whether I'd take in drugs?" I said, "Nine." After a moment of scanning, the virtual balancer told me, "Password me." Not good today. And then made the hand gesture toward the street. The same hand gesture Chris and Dan had gotten. To be honest with you, this rejection by a fake balancer, it hurt my real feelings. I'll tell you something about myself that won't surprise you. I've never been considered cool. I know cool people. I'm not against coolness. I just don't possess it. I'm uncool enough that I have to ask the cool people I know to explain to me why certain things are cool right now. How did we decide big pants are back in style? If you have to ask, you're not cool. And I do have to ask, both professionally and just because of my personality. So I'm not cool and I'm old enough to be okay with that. But this was a little different. At Berghine, where Sven ruled, it seemed to me that the source of his power lay partly in his refusal to explain himself. My job as a journalist was the opposite, to understand and explain. And I just couldn't resist the challenge of trying to understand something that was designed to obscure itself. That was why even after all this internet-sluthing and documentary watching, we would continue digging for the better part of the year. We would talk to lots of people. We'd read too many books devoted to the telemedic study of German techno, its origins and subgenres. And in the end, we'd emerge with an answer, what was Berghine scanning for and why? How would a place like this come to be? All that after the break. [Music] Welcome back to the show. In America, in the circles I run in, people complain a lot about capitalism. I don't think they're bothered by the exchange of goods and services. I think it's their shorthand way of saying, "Everything here is just too driven by profit. Even things that start out good can be squeezed to death by our ceaseless desire to rent every possible dollar." In Berlin, a place where, until recently, capitalism and socialism both operated, in Berlin, it feels like something else is going on. The nightlife industry there brings in one and a half billion dollars a year, but they're strange dollars. The Crown Jewel, Berghine, operates by turning away thousands of paying customers. And despite demand, it keeps its ticket prices pretty low, all well existing in a building that is 37,600 square feet in a very hip neighborhood. And not only does this all seem to work, it's worked for a long time, that doesn't happen in nightlife. Clubs don't stick around. Studio 54 was open for less than three years. Berghine is on its 20th. And people attribute a lot of that success to Berghine's strict and strange door policy. You can tell the story of that door as a story about culture, about cool, but cool we know never explains itself. So let's get inside Berghine from a different direction. I'm going to tell you the story, not about DJs and bouncers, but about lawyers and lobbyists, about the municipal regulation and policy that allows this club to exist the way it does. The story begins in 1949. Let's lighten ring. I'd first heard about him from one of my best friends, Kay Burke, a nightclub founder herself. People in Berlin called let's the mayor of the city's nightlife. So did Kay explain who I am and what we're up to over here? I think she might, but it was also quite sometimes a goal, so maybe you can fill me in again. Yeah, so I have this podcast called "Sturgeon" where we just try to answer people's questions, no matter how simple or complicated. And we do sort of like all manner of stuff. We do like really serious stuff like we just did something about fentanyl and the drug supply in America, but we also do really silly stuff and kind of like everything in between. What level are we here in this conversation? We have these friends I want to tell you about who just like didn't get into burger and are confused about it, but it's sort of an excuse to tell the larger story about nightlife. I think for people in the United States, it's a place you go and you spend $500 on champagne. You know what I mean? It's like $10 on a can of beer. Yes. Without a glass. Exactly. Germans like loads call this style of nightclub bottles and models, shorthand for the economic model that drives them. Clubs like these are what most Americans think of when you say nightclub. Spots that tend to make their money by enticing rich people to pay for tables and by bottles of champagne so that they can feel important. The clubs are like little status factories. In Berlin though, that same word nightclub describes an entirely different operation fueled by a different economic model. And let's his job is to protect that status quo. He's nightlife's advocate in the offices of city bureaucrats. The spokesperson for Berlin's club commission. I wanted to let's to tell me how Berlin's unusual nightlife scene had come to be. And that story is a story of two arguments. The first argument takes place in the late 1940s. Argument one is about a very specific rule, curfew. In Berlin today, there is no curfew. Cars and clubs stay open as long as they want. And can you tell me a story of how Berlin came to be a city with no curfew? What is the origin story of that decision? The decision is almost 80 years old and it happened right after World War Two. So 1949, we had already a divided city between the eastern sector and the western sector. The eastern sector controlled by the Russians and the western sector controlled by the British to French and the Americans. And in the eastern part, there was a curfew at 10 p.m. So all the restaurants, bars, hotel bars, copyright bars, it really had to close at 10 p.m. in the eastern part. In the western part, it was 9 p.m. So an hour earlier. And there was this, let's say representative spokesperson of the hotels and restaurants of Berlin. His name was Heinz Salamayah. Heinz Salamayah. There was no club commission back then. Heinz was instead the deputy director of the Guild of Berlin Hoteliers. In photos, Heinz has an enormous smile and combed back hair. He looks like someone who held forth at a restaurant or two. Heinz did not like the curfew. He particularly did not like that his side of the city had an earlier curfew. The person to complain to was General Howley of the U.S. Army, the American's West Berlin common-dont. A meeting was set and Heinz supposedly came prepared. The story is that he brought a bottle of whiskey to that meeting. So they met and they were talking about it. And General Howley said, yeah, the British and the French, they're not really supporting any idea of losing this curfew. They say it's a security issue. So you have to give me an argument that I can give to French and the British. And the problem was that at that moment in the western part, people had to go out of the bar and then they went to the eastern sector for another hour, which was also not really liked by the Americans. So he said, if you kick Germans who are partying at the certain hour, you kick them out of the street, you're going to have a security issue. So you have to better find a solution for it. It was a well-reasoned argument. The Allies did not want drunk westerners crossing east in search of a later last call. And worse, there had been an emerging cold war of curfews. With each side, the east and the west repeatedly extending an hour past each other to try to capture all the income from drunk Berliners. Russian curfew would solve the security issue and win the night war. Howly was sold. He said, OK, let's try this out for two weeks. And since then, 1949, we have no curfew. Berlin, one of the rare cities that has no curfew at all. In 1949, when the city permanently deleted its curfew, obviously techno music did not exist, raving with something people did in insane assilums. If anyone was listening to music in a club late at night, it was probably jazz. But this decision set Berlin on a path. Nightlife is funded more than anything else via the sale of alcohol. A city without a curfew can have a legal party that runs through the night, even that runs multiple nights. Half a century-ish later, techno will hit Berlin. People will begin to throw raves in illegal spots without permits. This will happen in a lot of cities at the same time, Detroit, New York, London. But what makes Berlin different from those places is that here, many of those raves can actually become legitimate businesses, confined to permanent homes and clubs. General Howley's 1949 agreement is the first precondition for Clube Knocked at Bergheim. sets the stage for part 2.
they can last for three days, but years later, as the scene starts to mature, a second argument takes place. An argument which almost kills these nightclubs. Argument 2 is about taxes. In the early 2000s, Burgheim was a rising young club alongside already established spots like Trishor and the KitKat Club. And Berlin's tax authority started to take a closer look at these places. How much money are they bringing in? Shouldn't the city be getting a bigger cut? Government tax agents walk into Burgheim, presumably without needing permission from Sven. They're there documenting everything they see, asking a question. From a tax perspective, what is happening in these rooms? In Germany, if you pay money for a ticket and enter a venue where music is played, according to the tax men, you may be having one of three different experiences. You might be experiencing high culture, like opera, in which case the city will barely tax the ticket. You might be at a concert like the Rolling Stones, in which case the city will moderately tax the ticket. Or you might be experiencing entertainment. This happens in casinos, in porn theaters. In that case, the city will take a big tax bite, almost 20%. Before the tax officials began to take a closer look at the club scene, these venues had been mostly taxed as concert venues. But now, in 2008, the city started to ask pointed questions. Was it DJ really a musician? Was it techno show really like a concert? The perception that people in government had said at DJ is not a concert. People are going there to have sex or to drink or to whatever, but not because of the DJ. They even sent people to clubs and documented that people were not facing the artists. They were talking to each other. Oh my god! Like that. To kind of prove the point that this is not a concert. Wow. I've been in casinos for people who were not facing the artists and talking to each other. Exactly. But they said, clubs is different. People go there to meet people, not because of the artists. They don't even know who's playing these kind of argumentations. Berghine was the club that actually took this case all the way to the high courts. Berghine won. The Berghine in the government's books was cemented as a concert venue. A place where people went because they loved techno music. Weirdly, this is one part of the answer to Chris and Dan's questions. What was the bouncer Sven scanning for at the door? He needed to ensure they were true techno heads, not people there simply for entertainment. That consideration, a funny side effect of the argument the club had had to make in court years ago. It may have been part of what filtered them out. Chris and Dan, not true techno heads. Berghine's victory in court meant that any German nightclub that could prove it was meeting Berghine's cultural standards could be taxed like Berghine. Lower taxes meant they could keep their overhead low. The lower the overhead, the less pressure to make money. The less pressure to make money, the more they could continue to keep their nightclubs dedicated to preserving Berlin's strange counterculture. Let's tell me about another one of these battles. I don't know if you're aware of zoning, what that means in cities. So there are different zoning laws which says in certain zones of the city, there are certain allowances. So for instance, you cannot build an amusement venue like a leisure venue in a residential area. The problem with this categorization is that you're only fully legal in the very center of the city, where also the prizes are very high. So if you want to do it properly, you have to be very commercial to survive. And now that we are more flexible in what areas of the cities we can establish music venues, we can also maybe turn in a form of a restaurant or bar into a club possibly, which we could not before because it wasn't a wrong zone. It's so interesting though, it's like you get the government to classify clubs differently. That changes where clubs can properly be in the city. Then if the clubs can be in places where they otherwise wouldn't have been allowed, they can have a different profit incentive. They don't have to just make as much money as possible. And you end up with a different culture because of just a change to how the government classified something. That's really interesting. Exactly. We're going to come back to this strange court case and its consequences in the second part of this story. But before I left Loots, I wanted to ask them specifically about Chris and Dan. What was it about them? The way they looked, the way they dressed, that it signaled they didn't belong at Berkheim. Loots does not represent Berkheim. But as spokesperson for the club commission and as a Berkheim regular, I thought he might be able to help. Can I show you a couple of photographs and you tell me if the person seems like I'm not a selector. So I can only give you my personal opinion. Is it okay to ask you your opinion on it? Yeah, of course. Okay, this is one person. Well, very friendly, maybe queer person, very soft, happy, he's wearing some kind of top that doesn't really say anything. It's too generic of a top, the vest. I think it looks authentic to him, but this person looked very innocent. Yeah. And you also want to save some people for, you know, to getting into something that they maybe don't expect. Okay, okay. So this is the person he went with. Yeah. I would probably send them to Schwutz. What's Schwutz? It's all this best known gay club, and that's the perfect life for those two guys. Because they don't seem like techno guys to you, they seem like gay guys who are going out clubbing. They don't look like heart, you know, like standing in the middle of a sweaty club and going for hours and enjoying this and, you know, they're standing with like having a chat, you know, like, and that's okay to have some of those folks in the venue, but it's really about getting out of your inner self and showing your animalistic side of yourself. For very good reason, we do not celebrate the idea that you should judge people based on how they look on the outside. Those judgments often lead us astray. And yet, let's, from a photo, could tell that Chris and Dan were after respectful, healthy, wholesome partying. Not the sort of darkness that occurs in Berghine's techno dungeons. They didn't belong there. They belonged, he suspected, at another place called Schwarz. I wondered what Chris and Dan would make of that judgment. So later I asked, Chris told me Schwarz. They loved Schwarz. It was the club they'd ended up at after being rejected from Berghine. Berlin, this magical city, had somehow sent them to the place where they actually belonged. Lutz was not a selector, but he did seem to have a selector's eye. Your read is so good. Chris, who I know better, he's a lovely, he's on my favorite people to spend time with. If I were having a party where it was really important that someone dance in the middle of dance one for eight hours, he would perhaps not make the cut for that party. That's really. I think the first question you have to ask yourself, are you a participant or are you a visitor? And it shouldn't sound sophisticated or arrogant. It's just like a club. The definition of club is being part of a club. If you're not part of the club, why should you being able to enter? I think the idea of just buying myself in is the opposite of a club, what it should actually be. A club should bring people together who have similar interests, similar preferences. A club should bring together people of similar interests. Absolutely. But what if you're someone who doesn't belong but still wants to just go check it out? Is there a way to sneak in? Is there some other way into Berkheim that is not going through the bouncer? Let's did have advice about this. My tip that I usually give is make a plan of exploring Berlin, maybe from the outskirts. Go to venues that are not very known. Go to places that are somehow interesting for you because you did your research and you saw some artists that you want to see and you're there playing. So go there and you get in very easy because when you said I'm not very known, don't have this kind of level of selection. Usually there's not even the queue. And then you get friends with the bartenders. You make friends with the DJs there and you have an amazing time in an unknown venue with unknown artists basically. And the next time you're coming, you're going to reach out to them and because they like you or they they connect it to you, they will ask you to start in their home with dinner. Maybe you go to a bar, you make a girlfriend and even maybe they make sure that you get on a guest list of some venue that they're going at that night. But I think it's part of that journey that you also have to make to be part of the scene. Lutz said the process he's describing. This is the real way into Clubnacht. Make yourself a part of the scene. That line outside Berkheim, he said, that's for people who haven't been able to or who haven't known to try. While Lutz was saying this to me, I was nodding yes furiously, my noggin, like a broken bobblehead. Of course it all made sense. And as a person obsessed with belonging and exclusion, I was lapping it all up. We finished our conversation. It's really it's a pleasure to just get to ask these questions. Thank you for doing us you're welcome we hung up
And then, not long after, this spell of "Let's This Idea" dissipated. What were we talking about? If you wanted to visit the most exclusive nightclub in the world, go to Germany and start methodically befriending Germans in the city's electronic music scene? Okay. Normally, that would have been the end of things. And perhaps it should have been the end of things? But, not long after this, a friend of mine, an American, asked me a question. They were celebrating a big milestone in their life. And they wanted to do it in Germany. In Berlin, actually. They wanted to spend some time there, perhaps even try to see some of the city's famous nightlife. That sounded like fun. Could I make some time away from work? Yes, it did. No, I couldn't. I bought myself a plane ticket. The myth, hard as it was to believe, was that the door to Burgheim, like Excalibur Sword, would be offered only to someone who truly understood techno culture, who understood what the place meant. Could something like that really be true? Next week, on Search Engine, the last episode of our season, techno. (upbeat music) Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ vote, and truthy, opinionating. GearGram is our senior producer, Emily Maltaire is our associate producer. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bizarin, he also created the techno remix of our theme, Armin Bizarin, just a very talented man. That checking the episode by Claire Hyman. Additional production on this episode by Noah John. Our executive producer is Leah Restennis, thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Mora Curran, Josephine Francis, Kirk Courtney, Vanessa Tinkatti, and Hillary Shaft. If you have a business and would like to advertise on Search Engine, please email us
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