https://www.npr.org/2023/11/03/1209865472/berlin-clubs-tourism-nightlife-germany-economy

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Berlin clubs are losing customers and seeking protection Inflation, a
weak economy and declining numbers of club-goers all challenge the
clubs' viability. Club owners are seeking protected status, similar
to what Berlin's opera companies enjoy.

Europe

Berlin's famed nightclubs, losing customers, face an uncertain future

November 3, 20234:38 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Rob Schmitz 2016 square

Rob Schmitz

Berlin's famed nightclubs, losing customers, face an uncertain future

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[gettyimage]
Enlarge this image

People dancing on the dance floor at Club Re:mise in Berlin on Oct.
7, 2023. Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images

People dancing on the dance floor at Club Re:mise in Berlin on Oct.
7, 2023.

Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images

BERLIN -- For those who haven't experienced it, a night at a club in
Berlin can be reduced to a math equation whose first variable is the
best club you've been to.

"Berlin nightlife is, let's say, what you've experienced, multiply
that by 10," says Zak Khutoretsky, otherwise known by his DJ
pseudonym, DVS1.

"Berlin nightlife is very free," he says. "It's trying to push
artistic boundaries. It's trying to push personal boundaries. It's
trying to let people experience music, art and culture with some
rules. But those rules are created to have no rules."

Khutoretsky, who holds a residency at the Berlin club Berghain, says
he's heard complaints lately from club owners and promoters in Berlin
about declining numbers of club-goers. Even Berghain, typically an
anomaly because it draws crowds from around the world, has raised its
cover charge to deal with rising costs. He thinks fewer Europeans are
making quick clubbing trips to the city due to the financial hit of
the pandemic.

"So where a casual weekend to Berlin before the pandemic was a simple
decision and paying the cover and eating food and taking taxis and
then getting home before you have to go to work on Monday was a
really easy thing to do within Europe," reasons Khutoretsky, "I think
it became harder after the pandemic."

Berlin Clubcommission chair Lutz Leichsenring says before the
pandemic, a third of tourists came for the city's nightclubs, and
they typically spent $1.6 billion per year while they were here.

[2_slide-a4]
Enlarge this image

Lutz Leichsenring, chair of the Berlin Clubcommission, says Berlin
clubs are losing revenue due to inflation, minimum wage increases and
the cost of energy. He's in talks with the city of Berlin to seek
help. Rob Schmitz/ NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Rob Schmitz/ NPR

Lutz Leichsenring, chair of the Berlin Clubcommission, says Berlin
clubs are losing revenue due to inflation, minimum wage increases and
the cost of energy. He's in talks with the city of Berlin to seek
help.

Rob Schmitz/ NPR

In 2021-2022, 5.5 million tourists came to Berlin, 30% fewer than
pre-pandemic numbers.

But declining tourism isn't the only problem.

"You have inflation, you have an energy crisis and you have also the
rise of the minimum wage," says Leichsenring, whose group represents
Berlin's clubs, is funded by them and acts as a lobbying body for
them in front of the city and federal government. "There's also less
demand because fewer people are in the city. People don't spend so
much money because of the inflation. It's a very critical time."

A critical time, too, because of how Berlin is developing as a
European metropolis.

"I think that in Berlin, much more than in other big cities, there's
a deep connection between the nightlife and urban development," says
Tobias Rapp, a culture writer for Der Spiegel and author of the book,
Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno and the Easyjet Set.

Rapp says Berlin's club scene is an outgrowth of how the city
developed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany's
reunification more than three decades ago.

"In the years after reunification, one-third of East Berlin was
empty," recalls Rapp. "There was nobody living there. It was a ghost
town. So young people like me and others, we took spaces. You have an
empty warehouse or an old factory that is empty, and you go in and
you squatted, and you say, 'This is ours.' And you have this huge
space and you say, 'What can I do with this?' You make a party."

Berlin's clubs evolved from life on the margins to trendsetting
culture destinations

In the early 1990s in East Berlin, nightclubs popped up in abandoned
breweries, power stations and bomb shelters. None of this was safe,
and Rapp considers it a minor miracle there wasn't a horrible fire or
other accident inside one of these makeshift clubs.

Eventually, investors and the city began to take note -- they worked
together to build legal, licensed clubs and other businesses began to
arrive, too.

"The side effect was it was good for the value of the properties,"
says Rapp, "because in lots of areas that were rundown, that were
empty, that were not nice, that didn't have a good reputation, you
suddenly had galleries, bars, nightclubs that gave these areas
certain value."

And with that came young renters who turned into middle-aged
homeowners with children. And as housing prices have risen, Berlin's
transformed, gentrified neighborhoods have become less comfortable
with the city's clubs and their subculture.

Just down the block from Berlin's infamous fetish and sex club, the
KitKatClub, Undine, a resident who's critical of the club and would
only give her first name for fear of retribution from club-goers and
the club owner, points out the detritus of the previous evening.

"You should take a photo of all this trash the clubbers have left
behind," she says with a sour face. "Nobody picks it up. Nobody
cares. I've complained several times to the police about the noise
and rowdiness in the early hours of the morning from this club."

Complaints like this are on the rise in Berlin as the city's housing
prices go up and urban spaces become tighter. But for Zak
Khutoretsky, the DJ, it's clear who should get a free pass.

"Who was there first?" he asks. "If the club was there first, why
can't the club be protected in the same way that if an apartment
building was there first and a club moved in? Well, in this case, the
clubs were there first. The culture was there first. And I think it's
important to protect those things."

The Berlin Clubcommission is, in fact, seeking the type of protection
that the city offers its museums, opera houses and other cultural
institutions, so that it can survive its current and any future
downturns. Such protection includes city subsidies and tax breaks.

Near midnight on a Thursday at Berlin's Berghain club, there is no
line. Maybe it's too early; maybe times are tough. Despite this, when
Andrea Sibaja and her friends approach the bouncer, he shakes his
head, directing them to the way out.

[1_slide-7d]
Enlarge this image

Andrea Sibaja, Jordan Inijuez and Darian Chacon, friends from Costa
Rica, outside Berghain, Berlin's most famous club. Sibaja and
Inijuez, visiting from Boston, had always wanted to experience
Berghain, but on this day, bouncers at the door rejected them,
sending them on their way. Rob Schmitz/NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Rob Schmitz/NPR

Andrea Sibaja, Jordan Inijuez and Darian Chacon, friends from Costa
Rica, outside Berghain, Berlin's most famous club. Sibaja and
Inijuez, visiting from Boston, had always wanted to experience
Berghain, but on this day, bouncers at the door rejected them,
sending them on their way.

Rob Schmitz/NPR

They're Costa Ricans who live in Boston, and they flew to Berlin
because Berghain was on their bucket list.

"I'm one of those people that usually wears black and I feel like,
oh, maybe I'm part of that. I want to hang out with people that have
the same vibe as me and.... Rejected!" Sibaja says, shaking her head.

Sibaja is still in a state of shock and lingers outside in the cold,
watching others casually walk inside, past the bouncers who just
turned her and her friends away. When she hears that Berlin clubs are
complaining about fewer club-goers, she drops her jaw.

"But at the same time, they reject you," she says. "So you're like,
well, what's the point? I'm coming all the way here for this, and
then they're turning their back on you. I'm just going to spend my
money somewhere else now."

Esme Nicholson contributed to this report from Berlin.

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