Search Engine - Why didn’t Chris and Dan get into Berghain? (Part 1)

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Two Americans embark on a quest: fly across an ocean to try to get into the most exclusive nightclub in the world – Berghain. A German techno palace where the line outside can last 8 hours, and the bouncers are merciless in their judgments. The club does not explain how it makes its decisions about who can enter, but one foolish podcaster will try to explain anyway.  Support the show: search engine.show To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's PJ. Before you begin this week, so we have a bunch of new listeners who are checking out the show for the first time. We are also at the end of our season. So in case you're new, I wanted to point you towards

some of our favorite episodes from this year so you could work backwards. You might start with our first episode, which is called, wait, should I not be drinking airplane coffee? It's a good one. Or some other listener favorites. Why are drug dealers

putting fentanyl and everything? Should this creepy search engine exist? and who's behind these scammy text messages we've all been getting. Okay, this week's show, after some ads. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Square. Square, the easy way for business owners to take payments, book appointments, manage staff, and keep everything running in one place. Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, detailing cars,

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With Square, you get all the tools to run your business with none of the contracts or complexity. And why wait? Right now, you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com slash go slash engine. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E.com slash G-O-S-E-E-O-S-E-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-K-E-U-R-R-E-R-E-K-E-U-ROW. So we asked the two of them to come to the studio. Um, okay, okay. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves? I'm Chris. I'm Dan.

I guess I'm also a birthday. Chris and Dan, two very successful, stylish young professionals. They had an annual tradition going back years. These two friends would vacation together. Sometimes too exciting nightlife destinations like Berlin, the city they'd just returned from. And what's like the nature of these vacations? Like what is your form of relaxing?

I would say our form of relaxing is generally not relaxing. It's like partying. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, respectful, health. wholesome partying. Yes. Okay. And so this was your second trip to Berlin to do respectful, of whom I'm not sure. Wholesome, what was the last thing, healthy?

Respectful, wholesome, and healthy partying. Okay. So 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 show 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 I was actually surprised 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 were you going for? I think it was like 72 hours in Berlin. Yeah, it was a really short trip. And what was the itinerary? There was 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's supposed to be. And that was. Birkheim. And why Bergheim? 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 have ever been inside. Bergheim. At the time of our conversation, rumors about Bergheim had certainly reached me, 4,000 miles away in Brooklyn. 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, grimy heaven was also supposedly very hard to get into. It operated according to its own particular value system. Bergheim 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. 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, you know, 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 Bergheim. 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 Bergheim, waited in the 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 Berghein-Durgein-Wern. policy reconnaissance. There are Reddit forms, subreddit's completely dedicated to this. There are TikToks dedicated to this. In English? Yeah.

In every language. We were kind of looking back on the last time that we went, and we're like, what did we do wrong? And I think the last time we went, we were so ignorant to any of these rules, we showed up in black American apparel t-shirts and thought that would be adequate for the dress code. Yeah, yeah, okay, but 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 Kreuzberg, 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. Harnaces. Yeah, 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 tuxedo vest, with their outfits ready and mindset prepared, they head to the Bergheim line 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 base. 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.

Yes. Just statistically, we're probably in luck. Way, way, way up ahead. At the front of the line, stood the bouncers. A few of these bouncers specially 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. 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 strolling the line.

Uh-huh. And then you see them again at the door. That happened at least once. Oh, so Santa Claus is watching you. Yeah. But for the, I mean, I assumed or I felt like, For the most part, you weren't really scrutinized until you were within like 20 to 30 people of the door. Okay.

And then they're on a pedestal. They're on a literal 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 stone-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. Yeah. They seemed 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. Oh, 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 with inside of the bouncers.

That's when like you could hear a pin drop. Everyone's just completely quiet. Everyone's totally quiet. That's so funny. And what happens when you walk up? How do you, do you like straighten 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? 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, too, I was friendly. I think I asked him how his night was going. Did he 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 works. It didn't. 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 line 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 knight? He says nothing. Is he just looking at you? Is it he a he?

It's a he. There's Sven, the main bouncer. If Bergheim 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 does he look like? A large man with a large number of tattoos and people. 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 one used to be like,

welcome to my home, but it's welcome to not my home. Like, it's the arm goes out, 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 to the next day, Sunday, they tried again. They had a new plan. To go during the day.

And separately. During the day and separately. Okay. And the idea being during the day less competition, separately the bouncer might respect you more. Or is it two chances? The line was just as long, I would say, if not longer, actually, during the day. 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 stood 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 bouncers like, how many? And they say one, and then he just stares at me. And stairs. And I actually thought this was the time I was getting in. 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 bouncers from the night before? Yes.

It actually was. Actually, as we're saying this, I'm like, we're idiots. 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 did. I can't believe we had to go on a podcast to like... Yeah. You're like, I think he sounded in my soul. Yeah. Yeah, I think we've figured out the answer.

Yeah. Why we didn't get in, we were just dumb. If it seems silly to you that two adult men spent so much time and energy trying to get into a night 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 wholly, 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 shrouded 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 can 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 light, is that the room should be sweaty and packed,

and this render should be to music. Bergheim. 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 plight of two Americans who had failed to pass its door, it was probably going to be made. 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, I don't mean this in like the Supreme Court says the word,

but like to just be discriminated against? Yes. I don't think we think we were discriminated against. 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, of itself. Right. It's like you're participating in the thrill.

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? You get it over with. I wish I had gotten in. But yeah. And then when Chris was rejected too, I felt really good about myself. Would have been devastating. So what is like the thing you're trying to figure out about Burkhan? 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... Cusby, like, on the cusp of a decision. On the cusp of a 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 going to, 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 drawer? 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 a fence, crawling under a bush, like, I'm like, is there, away. And would you do it if there were? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. What is the bouncer at Berghine scanning you for if you're on the cusp? And is there some other, perhaps secret way to sneak into Birkine? After the break, our investigation begins. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part

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was a Berlin Techno Club, and that it was very hard to get into. But I started researching. The club itself maintains a very minimal footprint online. 200,000 people follow Bergheim'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.

Bergheim, like Vegas, claims that what happens there stays there, except in Bergheim, that seems to actually be true. Some information about the club nevertheless has circulated. The story of Bergheim, as I now understand it, begins 30 years ago. In the early 1990s, two Germans, Norbert Thorman and Michael Toifala, 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 an abandoned railroad depot. At the Railroad Depot, they started a club called Ostkut. Ostgut was legendary, open to people of all genders and sexualities, but still a space run by and largely four gay men. A den of hedonism where consenting adults supposedly engaged in all sorts of unusual behavior. Online, at least one video surrised from inside the club. But the video is pretty tame. It's from July 2000. Looks like camcorder footage.

A grainily shot DJ hovers over a console. twiddling knobs, while nearby a crowd of German shadows writhes under a strobe light. Ostgut may have lived forever, except the city wanted to build a big arena. So the railroad depot was knocked down in 2003. Berghein was its reincarnation, the palace that replaced Ostkut. 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 commentariat. Burkane 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 fuck out. There'd be a window where you could buy ice cream and you could order something. movies. It's open from Friday until Monday, and most people stay there for 12 hours, 24 hours, or more.

Right now, it's 9 a.m. Bergheim is best known for one weekly party, Klubnacht, 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 found Tobias Rapp's 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 legend kept growing. Eventually, it grew large enough to draw Chris and Dan, two of the many Americans who made the pilgrimage to Technomecca. 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 Klubnacht 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 Markhart. Sven Markhart is a tall, imposing man in his early 60s, with giant lip-rings that look like silver fangs. His hair is slicked back in 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 Birkheim since the club first opened 20 years ago. Sven's backstory, he 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. We 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 Oskut, 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 has, 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 Berghein 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 rain. 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 too loud in the queue, and under no circumstances, engage in laughter. Literally, just basically be as casual, I'm blended 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 Birkheim, 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 a guy. 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 rap. When I went back, I was wearing... The advice offered by these supposed guru, frankly, does not feel all that usable. Try to get in, or maybe don't. Wear black, but you don't have to. The other thing is, like, look sharp, but also, like, you don't care that much.

My favorite artifact of all the online Bergheim speculation is this website called bergheintrainer.com that will actually drop you into a surprisingly high-res simulation of the Bergheim line? The site takes control of your webcam and then scans your face, analyzing your emotions through your expressions. how angry, sad, euphoric your face is,

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 Bergheim. 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. He asked, do you know who's DJing tonight? I said yes. Have you what you asked, whether I'd taken drugs. I said nine. After a moment of scanning,

the virtual bouncer told 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 bouncer

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 often 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 sleuthing

and documentary watching, we would continue digging for the better part of a year. We'd talk to lots of people. We'd read too many books devoted to the Talmudic study of German techno, its origins and subgenres. And in the end, we'd emerge with an answer. What was Bergheim scanning for? And why?

How would a place like this come to be? All that after the break. Hey, business owners. The NFL season is a big revenue driver. Now there's a smarter way to get ready. Everpass is the only authorized commercial platform for NFL Sunday ticket, delivering every live out-of-market regular season Sunday afternoon game. Locking the best offer now with up to 40% off saving up to $2,500.

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Terms and conditions apply. 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 bring out 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 tourism dollars a year, but they're strange dollars. The Crown Jewel, Bergheim, operates by turning away thousands of paying customers. And despite demand, it keeps its ticket prices pretty low, all while 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. Bergheim is on its 20th. And people attribute a lot of that success to Bergheim'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 Bergheim 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. a story that begins in 1949. Hi, can you hear me? Hey. Hey, I hear you well.

How's it going over there? Well, well, well. Lutz lights and ring. I'd first heard about him from one of my best friends, Kay Burke, a nightclub founder herself. People in Berlin called Lutz 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 sometime ago. so maybe you can film in again.

Yeah, so I have this podcast called Search Engine 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. And what level are we here in this conversation? We're closer to silly, I think. So we have these friends I want to tell you about who just like didn't get a different. to Bergheim and are confused about it, but it's sort of an excuse to tell the larger story about nightlife.

Like, I think for people in the United States, it's a place you go and you spend $500 on champagne. And like, you know what I mean? It's like... Or $10 on a can of beer. Yes. Without a glass. Exactly.

Germans like Lutz 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 buy 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 Lutz's 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 Lutz to tell me how Berlin's unusual nightlife scene had come to be. And that story is the 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. Bars and clubs stay open as long as they want. And can you tell me the story of how Berlin came to be a city with no curfew? Like, what is the origin story of that decision? Decision is like almost 80 years old, and it happened right after World War II. So, in the

In 1949, you 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, the French and the Americans. And in the eastern part, there was a curfew at 10 p.m. So all the restaurants, bars, hotel bars, cabaret bars, which are they 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,

a spokesperson of the hotels and restaurants of Berlin. His name was Heinz Salemeyer. Heinz Zelmerer. 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 Americans' West Berlin Commandant. 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 are 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 a 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'd 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. Eliminating curfew would solve the security issue and win the night war. Howley was sold. He said, okay, 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 was something people did in insane asylums. 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, Heck no, 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, can find permanent homes and clubs. General Halley's 1949 agreement is the first precondition for Klubnacht at Bergheim. It sets the stage for a party that 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 two is about taxes. In the early 2000s, Bergheim was a rising young club alongside already established spots like Trissor and the Kit Kat Club. And Berlin's tax authority started to take a closer look at these places. How much money were they bringing in?

Shouldn't the city be getting a bigger cut? government tax agents walk into Bergheim, 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 taxmen, 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 a DJ really a musician? Was a techno show really like a concert? The perception that people in government had says a 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. Stuff like that. Yeah. To kind of prove the point that is not a concert. Wow. I've Even in concerts where people were not facing the artist 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.

Bergheim was the club that actually took this case all the way to the high courts. Bergheim won. The Bergheim 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. Bergheim's victory in court meant that any German nightclub that could prove it was meeting Bergheim's cultural standards could be taxed like Bergheim. 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. Lutz told 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 city. and leisure venue in a residential area. Right. The problem with this categorization is that you're only fully legal in the very center of the city, where also the prices are very high.

So if you want to do it properly, you have to be very commercial to survive. Oh. And now that we are more flexible in what areas of the cities we can establish music venues, we can also maybe turn a former 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, you get the government to classify clubs differently. That changes, like, where clubs can appropriately be in the city.

Then if the clubs can be in places where they otherwise wouldn't have been allowed, they can have, like, a different profit incentive. Like, they don't have to just, like, 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 Lutz, I wanted to ask him specifically about Chris and Dan. What was it about them, the way they looked, the way they dressed, that had signaled they didn't belong at Berghine. Lutz does not represent Berghine, but as spokesperson for the club commission and as a Bergenre regular, I thought he might be able to help. Can I shoot 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. Yeah. Is it okay to ask you your opinion on it?

Yeah, sure, 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, so this is the person he went with. Yeah. I would probably send him to Schwartz. What's Schwartz? It's our oldest best-known gay club. And that's the perfect vibe 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 hard, you know, like standing in the middle of a sweaty club and going for hours and enjoying this. And, you know, they're standing more 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, Lutz, from a photo,

could tell that Chris and Dan were after respectful, healthy, wholesome partying, not the sort of darkness that occurs in Bergheim'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 Bergheim. 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 one of my favorite people to spend time with. If I were having a party, what was really important,

that someone danced in the middle of a dance one for eight hours, he would perhaps not make the cut for that party. That's really in. 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 whatever 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 Bergheim that is not going through the bouncer? Lutz 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 yet they're playing. So go there. And you get in very easy because venues that are 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. Yeah. And the next time you're coming, you're going to reach out to them. And because they like you or they connected to you, they will ask you to start in their home with dinner. Maybe you go to a bar, you make no friends. And even maybe they make sure that you get in on a.

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 Klubnacht. Make yourself a part of the scene. That line outside Bergheim, 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, 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 you these questions. Thank you for doing this. You're welcome. We hung up and then, not long after, this spell of Lutz's 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. Did that sound 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 Bergheim, like Excalibur's 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. Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by me, PJ Vogue. and Shruthy Pinnam and Ani, and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Backchecking this week by Claire Hyman. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bizarrian. Armin also created the techno remix of our theme. Armand Bizarrian, just an extremely talented man.

If you have a moment and would like to support our show, please consider becoming a paid subscriber at search engine. com. Show. You get all sorts of rewards, including bonus episodes. Or you just recommend the show to a friend. either would be a huge help. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman and Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Perelo, and John Schmidt,

and to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchison, Matt Casey, Mora Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hillary Schaff. Our agent is Orrin Rosenbaum at UTA. Follow and listen to Search Engine for free, on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.

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