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[                    ]
[20210206_IRD001_0]

Don't stand so close to me
Even before covid-19, nightclubs were struggling

The pandemic has left them fighting for their survival

InternationalFeb 6th 2021 edition
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Feb 6th 2021

BERLIN

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IN NORMAL TIMES it is notoriously difficult to get past the bouncers
at Berghain, a techno nightclub in eastern Berlin. But in September
the establishment flung its doors wide: anyone could come in, not to
dance, but to inspect work by 115 Berlin artists. The organisers
tried hard to recreate the club's forbidding atmosphere. Stickers
were placed over visitors' phone-cameras. Security officials,
released from furlough, exhibited an authentic grumpiness. Visitors
were denied anything as useful as signs telling them about the art.

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The venue's motive was simple. As a nightclub, it had had to close as
part of measures intended to limit the spread of covid-19. But as a
gallery, it could reopen (though it had to close again in November).
It is not the only club to have found an innovative way to make ends
meet during the pandemic. KitKatClub, one of the city's fetish
joints, is renting its outdoor space to a firm offering covid-19
tests.

Like restaurants, cinemas and hotels, nightclubs are bound to suffer
in a pandemic. Indeed, SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes covid-19,
thrives in poorly ventilated spaces and spreads more easily at close
quarters and when people are breathing heavily--as they tend to on
dance floors.

Saturday night fever

Even before governments had started to shut down the hospitality
industry, nightclubs were recognised as an unusually serious vector
of infection. In May South Korea's government advised them to close
for a month after tracing a number of cases back to gay clubs in
Seoul. Where clubs were allowed to open, they tried to make it work.
But whereas al fresco dining, or cinemas and theatres with half the
seats out of action, may still appeal, socially distanced clubbing
misses the point.

The questions posed by covid-19 for all hospitality and social
industries are: first, whether you can hang on long enough for the
world to return to something like normal; and second, whether that
normality will include you. For restaurants that can switch to home
delivery, survival until revival seems possible. Cinemas were
thriving when the pandemic struck; they can hope for the vigour to
return afterwards. For clubs, the trends diverge. In rich countries
the pandemic may be over soon--but populations were already ageing and
clubs ailing. In poor ones they entered the pandemic in better
health. But a return to normality could take much longer: Africa may
not reach herd immunity until 2024. If dance floors are to host a
repeat of the Roaring Twenties, clubs everywhere will have to
innovate.

In rich countries fewer people are going clubbing because of greater
competition, online-dating sites, growing abstemiousness--and, above
all, ageing. In the decade before the pandemic, the number of
nightclubs shrank by 21% in Britain, and by 10% in both America and
Germany, according to IBISWorld, a market-research firm. In big
cities the decline has been particularly sharp. London has lost
around half of its clubs in the past decade. New ones have opened but
not in sufficient numbers to offset the fall. Rents have risen and
visitor numbers have declined. In Britain licensing changes
introduced in 2005 have allowed pubs and bars to stay open later,
vying with clubs for late-night custom. Since 2006 most German states
have also extended their opening hours. Meanwhile, in rich countries
young people are drinking less. They are more likely to meet their
partners on apps than leaning against a bar. In Britain 5% of
20-somethings say they met their beau at a bar; among over-50s the
figure is 20%. And as social media put people in constant contact
with their friends, the appeal of a Friday-night blowout has dimmed.

Some of the ways clubs have responded have made things worse. In an
effort to offset the impact of falling attendance, many increased
prices of tickets and drinks, which has made them even less popular.
And when it comes to music, they are struggling to stay on trend. As
people increasingly stream personalised playlists, compiling a set of
killer tunes for hundreds on the dance floor has become harder.

Clubs will not be able to operate normally until most people are
vaccinated. Those that focus on niche but enthusiastic audiences, and
which draw international stars, will thrive as long-cooped-up
revellers pour out onto the streets. But for the average city
nightclub, with its tired set lists and high drink prices, a return
to the status quo ante will not be enough.

And the beat moves on

As the rich world has aged, the pulse of the nightclub industry has
shifted to big cities in the developing world, where people are
younger, the share of the population with some disposable income was
rising until the pandemic, and licensing laws are less strict--or at
least less strictly enforced. Cities such as Nairobi are now on the
beaten track for big DJs. Just as party animals might have gone to
Berlin in the 1990s, they now go to Sao Paulo and Marrakech.

Nights with famous DJs have drawn revellers from across Brazil and
beyond to Campinas, the third-largest city in Sao Paulo state. The 
LGBT night at Caos, a club in an old warehouse in one of the city's
industrial estates, is one of the biggest in a largely conservative
region. In Nairobi new clubs have emerged as the number of young
people with a bit of spare cash has risen. Around most corners sits a
new apartment or office block and for each one there is a nightclub,
says Jeannette Musembi of Bars Kenya, an industry group.

Unlike their counterparts in the rich world, clubs in developing
countries have not, by and large, been forced by governments to
close--though they may have to add measures such as social distancing
and temperature checks. Caos is operating at 20% capacity, with
groups of six seated around tables wearing masks. It was making a
healthy profit before covid-19 struck, though it opened only three or
four times a month. It now opens five days a week in an effort to
stay afloat.

A curfew in Kenya has forced clubs to close by 10pm. To stay in
business many have started opening during the day: though the
atmosphere is flat and dance floors are largely empty, this at least
keeps some money coming in. But they are hardly dancing to the bank.
The lack of any government support means they have also had to lay
off staff. "Now there is little to no budget for entertainment, and
most revellers prefer to drink at home and avoid the police," says Ms
Musembi.

A continuing source of revenue is useful during an economic crisis.
But it is linked to a big reason why the pandemic will last longer in
the developing world: governments are less willing and able to act.
In Brazil, for example, even as a contagious new variant seems to be
spreading from Manaus in the northern Amazonian region, Jair
Bolsonaro, the populist president, has resisted lockdowns and joked
that covid-19 vaccines might turn people into crocodiles or bearded
ladies.

If nightclubs in developing countries make it through their long
covid, they will face some of the same pressures that currently bear
down on their counterparts in rich countries. To survive, they will
have to make the same sorts of accommodations: finding new, more
formal venues; building better relations with local residents, often
by making less noise; and persuading authorities that they are both a
useful source of jobs and a way to keep cities centres safer at
night.

The clubbing scene in Sao Paulo and similar cities is big but
informal, like Berlin's during its heyday in the 1990s. Club space
was easy to come by in the German capital after the fall of the wall,
when a third of buildings in the east of the city were empty.
Abandoned warehouses and banks quickly became home to club nights and
raves. But as prosperity increased, such venues became scarcer. One
of Sao Paulo's most popular, Fabriketa, is a huge disused textile
factory in the gritty downtown area. At Nos Trilhos, a largely
outdoor venue that was once the city's train graveyard, DJs set up
their sound systems in rusting locomotive carriages while clubbers
gyrate around the railway tracks.

[20210206_I]

Landlords are keen to rent such spaces to club-owners; it is an
easier way of making money than developing them. But they are also
quick to boot their tenants out at the first sign of trouble. As more
of Sao Paulo becomes residential, clubs find themselves rubbing up
against new neighbours. "The city is growing so fast that venues are
becoming a problem," says Guga Trevisani, a music producer and agent
based in the city. Complaints, police raids and closures follow. And
rents increase. The monthly rate at a venue in Sao Paulo shot up from
5,000 reais ($950) in 2015 to 30,000 reais ($5,600) at the start of
2020. This makes clubs' futures precarious.

NIMBYism is a problem for a sector that comes alive when sober
citizens want to sleep, and which is linked to all sorts of
shenanigans. (Even in Ibiza, Europe's clubbing capital since the
1980s, three-quarters of islanders still say they oppose nightlife
tourism.) In November 2019 four of Nairobi's biggest clubs were
ordered to close by the local government after lobbying against them
by a residents' group. One, the Space Lounge, posted a sign: "Sorry,
we're closed (but still open-minded)".

In Europe nightlife lobby groups have managed to persuade governments
that clubbing is good for cities, rather than a nuisance. Relations
with officialdom have greatly improved in Berlin over the past two
decades. Police raids, which blighted the city's club scene in the
1990s, are rare. Noise complaints are often part of the bitterest
disputes. The city's government started a EUR1m ($1.2m)
noise-insulation fund in 2018, but clubs generally now simply pay for
expensive soundproofing.

Their counterparts in developing countries still face scepticism--or
perhaps indifference. A pre-pandemic campaign to have Nairobi
nightlife added to Kenya's tourism literature came to nothing. One
line of argument is that they can keep a city centre alive outside
business hours. "Empty cities are not very comfortable to live in,"
points out Lutz Leichsenring of the Berlin Club Commission, a lobby
group. "If, at night, you're standing at an empty bus stop, you don't
feel very safe."

Emphasising their economic contribution will probably be more useful.
As countries emerge from the pandemic, their governments will be
desperate for growth from any source. And as Mirik Milan, founder of
the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan, an industry group trying to come
up with ideas for reopening, points out: "When a lot of people are
dancing, there are a lot of people working, too." #

Dig deeper

All our stories relating to the pandemic and the vaccines can be
found on our coronavirus hub. You will also find trackers showing the
global roll-out of vaccines, excess deaths by country and the virus's
spread across Europe and America.

This article appeared in the International section of the print
edition under the headline "Don't stand so close to me"

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