[HN Gopher] Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cul...
___________________________________________________________________
Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage
list
Author : kasperni
Score : 345 points
Date : 2024-03-15 08:29 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| world2vec wrote:
| Going on a cultural trip to Berlin this next May, with some of my
| best friends.
|
| What are your most favourite underrated techno clubs in Berlin?
| I've been to the big ones already, keen to explore the fringe
| places.
| input_sh wrote:
| Sisiphos (temporarily closed right now I believe, not sure if
| that'll be the case by May), Renate, Birgit, Ritter Butzke.
| piva00 wrote:
| Those are not really underrated or underground these days
| though, they are some of the mainstays of clubs in Berlin.
|
| I don't think even Golden Gate nor ://about:blank would be
| considered truly "underground" anymore. As usual with the
| underground stuff you need to dig deeper to find them, as I
| don't live in Berlin I need to rely on my local friends to
| take me to these places as they are inserted within the
| underground culture.
| ciex wrote:
| Yes, please dont post about any unpromoted venues on hacker
| news!
| wheels wrote:
| Those are probably all listed in Lonely Planet at this point.
| Renate and Butkze had stints as scene clubs, but that was
| like 15 years ago when they were illegal. Sisphyos still has
| some scene-y-ness, but is a mix of tourists and locals. It
| only managed to stay off the radar for a couple years when it
| was only an outdoor location. But it's so big that it can
| absorb the crowds better. Birgit, on the other hand, was
| purpose-built for tourists. I actually like going to the
| biergarten there since it's right around the corner from
| where I live, and have played there a couple times, but it's
| unabashadly a club built to look like Berlin clubs except be
| more accessible for tourists. There was never a point that it
| was a scene spot.
| huseyinkeles wrote:
| I enjoyed Zur Klappe when I visited Berlin pre-pandemic times.
| It's literally underground and used to be a public toilet.
|
| And it's very close to the famous Mustafa's Gemuse Kebab, so
| you can try that afterwards.
| dewey wrote:
| > And it's very close to the famous Mustafa's Gemuse Kebab,
| so you can try that afterwards.
|
| I'd skip the tourist queue and go to any other random places
| you find on the way instead.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Just don't queue an hour at Mustafa's - it's good Kebap, but
| it's not _that_ extraordinary. Ruya(m), Superhahn or Servet
| 's make the same style of Gemusekebap and are just as good.
| treprinum wrote:
| Why go to Germany to get a Turkish meal? Any kebab in
| Istanbul is going to be better than whatever is available
| in Berlin. Better get some Schweinshaxe mit Sauerkraut...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Okay I am German and I can tell you I don't know anyone
| who prefers Schweinshaxe to a good doner kebab. Which by
| the way, funnily enough, was invented _in Germany_ by
| Kadir Nurman, a Berliner!
|
| It's basically our national dish at this point and we're
| arguably better off for it. Our more traditional cuisine
| is... not so great.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| IIRC Doner Kebab Was invented in Berlin...
|
| > The modern sandwich variant of doner kebab originated
| and was popularized in 1970s West Berlin by Turkish
| immigrants.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab
| profstasiak wrote:
| Hey, my friend moved to Berlin 2 years ago and he takes
| everyone to Mustafa - is this a tourist attraction /
| internet one? I don't know why he does this, the kebap is
| original but nothing special tastewise.
| te_chris wrote:
| Check RA for lineups and go based on that.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| It's not everyone's cup of tea but Kit Kat is an experience you
| won't find in many other places.
| larodi wrote:
| According to many people, including record shop owners I've
| talked to, Berlin's scene is actually not so underground and not
| so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. Rich
| people nowadays buy property in Potsdam, and the scene is moving
| towards Leipzig.
|
| In a more general sense the old rave cities are making way, and
| have been making way, to other cities. A movement spanning more
| than 20 years now, thanks to very active promoter teams, leads to
| Lyon, Prague, Zagreb, Thessaloniki and even Sofia.
| carlmr wrote:
| >Berlin's scene is actually not so underground and not so cool
| anymore as a result of tourism and immigration.
|
| It's funny how the (somewhat leftist) techno scene hates on
| foreigners destroying their tradition. Berlin and Bavaria
| aren't so far apart after all.
| cookiemonsieur wrote:
| Which is immensely ironic considering that modern house and
| techno is an invention of African Americans in Chicago. We've
| truly come full circle.
|
| The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| This is a different branch of music that doesn't have much
| in common with Chicago style house/techno. It's similar so
| people lump it together, but it evolved separately from
| synthpop, eurodance and electronic music that Kraftwerk did
| in 70s. The modern commercial EDM/techno is pretty
| different from what you're going to hear at a Berlin/Prague
| underground techno club, and has almost nothing in common
| with freetekno as heard in the forests.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| Haven't you heard about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Studio_for_Electronic_Music_(W..., America's finest
| place of avantgardist music and sound experimentation?
| (/s)
| helboi4 wrote:
| I beg to differ. Plenty of Berlin techno is a descendant
| of Detroit techno. The fact that you only mentioned
| Chicago already shows a lack of understanding. Kraftwerk
| and the others you mentioned influenced Detroit techno
| pioneers, Detroit techno pioneers influenced Berlin
| techno pioneers. It's a transatlantic sound.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| I mentioned Chicago because the parent did.
|
| But I agree that there's a lot of cross influence.
| piva00 wrote:
| Just to be a bit pedantic: techno didn't come from Chicago
| but from Detroit :)
| cookiemonsieur wrote:
| My bad. But the point stands. Complaining about a
| cultural movement that they have almost entirely
| gentrified is massively ironic.
| Mashimo wrote:
| I think the scene is complaining about tourists and
| "foreigners" was a bad choice of word in this thread.
| People are flocking to big names and entry prices are as
| high as they have ever been. It's less about the actual
| music.
|
| And in that complaint I don't see any irony.
| have_faith wrote:
| Do you have a lot of knowledge about how the techno scene
| in Berlin evolved and came to be?
| piva00 wrote:
| I wouldn't say "gentrified", techno just evolved from the
| Detroit roots, first in the UK and then continental
| Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, etc.).
|
| Techno came from an already gentrified African-American
| community in Detroit, the Belleville Three [0] were from
| a more affluent part of Detroit at the time, inspired by
| the 70s/80s German and Japanese electronic music scene,
| it was never like the roots of hip-hop...
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belleville_Three
| Detroiterr wrote:
| > the Belleville Three [0] were from a more affluent part
| of Detroit at the time
|
| Nobody in Detroit has ever called Belleville affluent (or
| 'more affluent' or whatever), and I go back to those
| days. I will politely omit the lol because you
| (obviously) aren't from around here.
|
| Techno was indeed the music from middle-class African-
| Americans. It's too bad the world demanded that young
| Black male artists must act like the white world expected
| - like gangsters - to sell hip-hop records.
| samatman wrote:
| Belleville? Affluent??
|
| Lol. Lmao. Belleville is Juggalo country, cuz.
| Ypsituckians working in auto parts factories.
| luma wrote:
| Seems like UNESCO forgot about us in Detroit. Not to
| worry, we're used to it, and we'll party all the same.
| larodi wrote:
| Detroit deserves much more in its failed financial state
| to be made heritage of like anything... Urban heritage
| man, re u joking. Sadly no bright future for Detroit for
| the time being...
| throwaway2562 wrote:
| Nonsense. Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can
| hear it. All the Belleville Three were heavily influenced
| by Kraftwerk and euro-electro, and you can hear that too.
| All of them namecheck a much richer and diverse set of
| influences than Chicago house, itself a refinement of
| disco, a far from strictly racially-defined movement. The
| UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long before the
| US did, if you actually know/ lived through the history.
| Then of course you have Plus 8, Tresor, Basic Channel and
| so on. You can try for an Afro-American imperial case, but
| it's going to get factually unstuck fast.
|
| The whole damn point was people dancing in a room together,
| not whatever authenticity tests you have in mind.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Yep, exactly. It was German etc sounds being appreciated
| by African Americans in Detroit, being mixed with their
| influences in Chicago, and then travelling back across
| the Atlantic. Its a transatlantic international group
| effort and to deny either side of it misses the whole
| point.
| randomopining wrote:
| You both explained it very succinctly. I don't get why
| people have to grasp at depictions of history that simply
| aren't true. They want to believe that Jeff Mills and
| Belleville 3 somehow created this new music from nothing
| and inspired the entire world.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| _> Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can hear it
| _
|
| Totally. I have somewhere in my pile of neglected vinyl
| one of the "Final Cut" releases, which was a straight-up
| wax-trax style EBM/industrial thing which Jeff Mills was
| involved in. Late 80s/early-90s.
|
| _> The UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long
| before the US did_
|
| Arguably, the US never really did. Most people here in
| North America remain clueless to what techno is and can't
| distinguish from EDM or other dance music forms. In
| Detroit itself, there was obviously an active scene, but
| much smaller than anything you'd find in most European
| cities (Detroit itself is a fairly small city, population
| wise), and much smaller than its own hip-hop scene. Back
| in the 90s when I was much more into this scene, it was
| very much a niche underground thing. _Active_ scene
| participants here in southern Ontario /Toronto (3rd/4th
| largest city in North America) were a few hundred people
| at most and we pretty much all knew each other. Detroit
| techno producers and DJs spent most of their time touring
| in Europe (where they could get _paid_ ), not here in
| North America.
|
| The Detroit Electronic Music Festival events were kind of
| a rare acknowledgement by a larger audience (I went to
| the first two only, though).
|
| All said though, the "Detroit" "authenticity" pole in
| techno served as a counteracting force against the
| unbearable soul-less, drug-rush-focused, "whiteness" of
| trance, progressive house, etc.
| Detroiterr wrote:
| > Detroit itself is a fairly small city, population wise
|
| Detroit's population has decreased. It was the 5th or 6th
| largest city in the US around 1980, iirc.
|
| > Detroit techno producers and DJs spent most of their
| time touring in Europe (where they could get paid), not
| here in North America.
|
| > The Detroit Electronic Music Festival events were kind
| of a rare acknowledgement by a larger audience (I went to
| the first two only, though).
|
| Yes, they were virtually unknown in Detroit. I also
| remember the first DEMF. Detroiters had no idea what was
| going on - what was this music? Why were people coming
| here from all over the world? One of my favorite memories
| was Derrick May finally taking the stage as the
| headliner:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4xqV9_7rf0
| randomopining wrote:
| That last part - was trance/prog house always like that?
| Or did it start more underground and organic in 1989
| onward until the mid-90s where it became very commercial
| and then went to the next level with someone like Tiesto?
| rvense wrote:
| If you are suggesting that "modern house and techno"
| emerged fully formed from black kids in Chicago and that
| Berlin techno is just imitation, I do wonder why you're
| even bothering to take time out to comment - this isn't
| really a position that could be seriously held by someone
| who's ever actually listened to the music.
| boppo1 wrote:
| >African Americans in Chicago
|
| That's funny, Detroit lays claim to the same thing.
| briankelly wrote:
| Chicago claims house. Detroit claims techno. They aren't
| exactly the same.
| yorwba wrote:
| Foreigners and tourists are different groups, albeit with
| significant overlap. The techno scene has a problem with
| tourists in particular, whether foreign or not. A Bavarian
| tourist booking an all-inclusive guided tour to pose on
| social media is going to stick out all the same. Meanwhile an
| Algerian on a student visa who spends more time partying than
| studying will fit right in.
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Dunno. Sven & friends at Berghain never looked particularly
| lefty. Tbh They always gave me a a strong...erhh... "Aryan"
| vibe if you know what I mean.
| Tenoke wrote:
| They aren't super 'lefty' but "Aryan" is completely unfair.
| Berghain cares a lot about diversity, and non-straight and
| non-white people have a sligtly higher chance of getting in
| (never any guarantees for non-regulars of course), which is
| the opposite of what a nazi place would promote.
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Non-white and non-straight as long as they looked like
| they were coming right from a balenciaga catwalk. And
| they weren't shy in the past of hosting notoriously hard-
| right aligned djs and artists.
|
| Berghain antics aside, the point I was trying to make
| it's that Berlin club scene isn't exactly as "welcoming"
| of outsiders as a whole as the OP was suggesting.
| scns wrote:
| > And they weren't shy in the past of hosting notoriously
| hard-right aligned djs and artists.
|
| Whom?
| scns wrote:
| Sven is gay.
| filoleg wrote:
| This has nothing to do with foreigners and everything to do
| with outsiders/passerbys/tourists.
|
| It is basically the techno scene version of gentrification
| (not talking about the impact or harm or whatever else being
| comparable between the two, just the mechanics of it), except
| it is happening with the techno scene instead of housing.
|
| This is not incongruent with your observation about "somewhat
| leftist" techno scene people hating on outsiders destroying
| their tradition. It is very similar to the analogous
| complaints those "somewhat leftist" people would make about
| gentrification.
|
| A very comparable similar example: Burning Man. Look at how
| it changed and what people who have been attending it since
| forever ago are saying. Very similar things, and it obviously
| has nothing to do with actual foreigners. It has everything
| to do with "gentrifying" the event, and it just slowly
| turning into a trust fund glamping larp.
| junon wrote:
| I'm a foreigner, nobody cares about that. People coming in
| and recording their adventures, sitting in the corner
| texting, wearing fur boots or eye paint, etc are the ones
| that aren't so much appreciated. Nobody's ever had a problem
| with my shitty German as long as I've been partaking in the
| atmosphere as intended.
| sabellito wrote:
| Heard exactly that, including the Leipzig part, every year for
| the 5 years I lived there 10 years ago.
|
| Berlin is the biggest city in continental Europe, there's a lot
| of everything and there'll always be hidden little nooks.
| L_226 wrote:
| Bigger than Paris? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urba
| n_areas_in_the_Eur...
| toyg wrote:
| Maybe they meant big as in "big in Japan", if you know what
| I mean :D the techno scene in Paris, although undoubtedly
| vibrant, is definitely less renowned than Berlin's.
| thiago_fm wrote:
| It is bigger than Paris if you don't count the surrounding
| area around Paris, which isn't Paris. This article isn't
| correct as it is taking into account the surrounding area.
| vidarh wrote:
| Those are urban areas. If you instead count by city limits,
| Berlin is bigger by a large margin [1]. This is the
| perpetual problem with defining "biggest" - to some the
| urban area of Paris might still be "Paris" but the vast
| majority of it is outside the city limits.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_Eur
| opean...
| earthnail wrote:
| But Berlin stops entirely at its city limits. There is
| almost nothing beyond it. That's just a consequence of
| its history with the east/west divide.
|
| More people live in Munich's metropolitan area (i.e.
| where underground and overground take you) than Berlin.
| Still, Berlin feels like a proper city and Munich like a
| large village.
|
| Berlin vs Munich is where your metric (people who live
| inside city boundaries) works to describe the
| metropolitan effect.
|
| Paris, on the other hand, is on another level entirely.
| When you travel from Paris to Berlin, Berlin feels like a
| small town. And here, the metric of people who live
| inside city boundaries just doesn't describe the feeling
| of the cities at all.
| vidarh wrote:
| Sure, but the point is you will get different results
| depending on which metric you pick. It's not that one is
| inherently more correct than the other.
|
| Often there are cultural aspects at play too. I live in
| London. I also live in Croydon - it'd be one of the
| largest cities in the UK in its own right if it was
| separate to London (and on more than one occasion the
| council has tried to make that happen). Most of the
| borough is part of the same urban area, but some are
| fairly well separated. Several parts of the borough are
| really separate towns, separated not just from London but
| from Croydon by "relatively rural" land (by our
| standards), with their own town centers, train stations,
| and culturally distinct.
|
| All of this is within the administrative city limits of
| Greater London ("London" doesn't really exist as an
| entity of its own - and before anyone else says City of
| London, that's one tiny constituent part of Greater
| London - nobody means City when they say London)
|
| So when you say Berlin, everything might be within city
| limits, when you say London, odds are you wouldn't think
| of every part within the actual city limits as part of
| it, nor even a city, but the Greater London _urban area_
| includes tendrils extending beyond Greater London too
| that nobody other than perhaps extra audacious real
| estate agents would call London. When you say Paris, odds
| are you might include some parts beyond the formal city
| limits but very unlikely the entire urban area.
|
| Even then, you won't even get people living each place to
| agree where the line goes.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| This insistence on these officialities is frustrating,
| because the city limits are pretty arbitrary and have no
| bearing on the discussion at hand. Did you know that
| London (City of London) has less than 10 000 inhabitants?
| Apart from being a legal and historical peculiarity, it's
| largely irrelevant in most discussions.
|
| For this discussion (cultural centers of Europe), Greater
| Paris, Greater London and Berlin (they have roughly
| similar areas) are what you want to compare, and Berlin
| is clearly the smallest one population-wise out of these
| three (and it's not even close).
| vidarh wrote:
| London and City of London are two different entities
| entirely so that comparison does not work. London at its
| largest refers to the 32 boroughs and City of London that
| makes up Greater London, not the City, to those of us who
| live here. At it's smallest, it still refers to most of
| that, not just City.
|
| If we want to shorten the name of City of London, the
| short form is the City, not London. The only people who
| ever calls City by the name of London is people who have
| just learnt of the oddity.
|
| Greater London makes up the formal boundaries of London.
| It's the legal and administrative boundary, and the city
| limits of London. Unusually, unlike the city limits of
| many other cities, you'll find plenty of people including
| people who live here who not quite consider the outer
| parts to be part of London. People where I live sometimes
| still consider it part of Surrey even though it's been
| part of London since 1965.
|
| There are forests and agricultural areas almost entirely
| separating parts of the borough I live in from the rest
| of London.
|
| Yet in other areas, the Greater London _urban area_
| expands well past what anyone would call London,
| including e.g. entirely separate towns in other counties,
| like Watford in Hertfordshire, Gravesend in Kent, Epsom
| and Guildford in Surrey.
|
| So yes, these comparisons are tricky but that is the
| point.
|
| E.g culturally, London is likely reasonably described as
| smaller than it's city limits, while indeed some other
| cities are often larger than them, but rarely as large as
| the urban area they are within. It's extremely common for
| towns on the outskirts of large cities to have their own
| separate identities and not be considered part of the
| adjoining city, but still form part of the same urban
| area.
|
| Depending on what you want to compare and which cities
| you are comparing, different measures will be more or
| less appropriate, and may require different
| considerations.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _If we want to shorten the name of City of London, the
| short form is the City, not London_
|
| This seems almost obnoxiously confusing when talking
| online to people from all over the world.
| vidarh wrote:
| Unfortunately, nobody took into account the difficulty of
| talking about this to people online when the County of
| London was created (totally _excluding_ the City of
| London) in 1889, nor when the City of London and the
| London County Council boroughs were finally merged into
| Greater London 1965 (only to be separated again in 1986
| when the Greater London Council was abolished, before
| being merged again in 2000 when the current Greater
| London Authority was created).
|
| [And, yes, this means there was a 14 year period when the
| UK had a capital without a government, nor indeed any
| administrative unit - effectively "(Greater) London" as a
| political and administrative entity _didn 't exist_
| during that period -, largely for political reasons -
| Thatchers government was strongly at odds with the then
| particularly left wing Greater London Council]
|
| But really, the reason for contracting City of London to
| "City" rather than London is to minimise confusion,
| because it means London fairly unambiguously, though not
| entirely, refers to Greater London.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| City limits are important because each city in a metro
| area could have different zoning and noise ordinance
| laws. Or even just law enforcement that's more or less
| strict in one city than another. This can help to shape
| the culture in each city in a metropolitan area.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| > City limits are important because each city in a metro
| area could have different zoning and noise ordinance
| laws.
|
| You can have these differences within one city as well,
| on the district level or even individual streets.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Yes, absolutely
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The urban area is what matters. Paris is larger than
| Berlin and the largest in the EU.
|
| Paris has the specificity of having small limits for the
| city proper but it does not make sense to use that metric
| for comparison because nowadays the city only stops at
| the administrative limits for adminsitrative purposes and
| nothing else. You won't even notice you've crossed the
| limit if not for the ring road.
|
| In fact, Moscow is also larger than Berlin however you
| look at it we we're talking about "continental Europe"
| (which I take as a way to exclude London, which is also
| larger than Berlin...).
| vidarh wrote:
| The urban area of Paris ("aire d'attraction de Paris")
| extends well past the areas where people would consider
| that they are "in Paris".
|
| It might well still be the biggest in the EU if you drew
| limits based on what people _considered_ part of the city
| - I don 't know - but it certainly would not be as big as
| its urban area.
|
| In fact, I'd argue you're unlikely to find _any_ major
| city anywhere in the world where most people would agree
| that every part of the outer boundaries of the urban area
| are part of "the city" (or even "a city"; parts of urban
| areas will still often be considered fairly rural by
| those who live there or in the nearby city) even in a
| loose colloquial or cultural sense. Even coming close
| would be exceedingly rare. This because the ways urban
| areas are designated by design tends to include commuter
| regions far outside, with their own identities, and often
| very separated from the biggest city in the urban area.
|
| So while going by city limits will be misleading, so will
| going by urban area. Unfortunately, no single metric will
| be accurate for these things.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Just to point that "aire d'attraction" is not the same as
| the urban area. It is the area of influence and extends
| much further than the urban area.
|
| I live outside of London, howver you define 'London', but
| still in London's area of influence considering how many
| people commute into London from here every day.
| vidarh wrote:
| It's a tricky one, because by some definitions it fits
| what is often called a metropolitan area, but there's no
| formal, objective definition of either urban or
| metropolitan area that is universally accepted. You're
| right it's probably wider than most uses of urban areas
| in English.
|
| At the same time it's specifically meant to be aligned to
| OECD and Eurostats definition of a Functional Urban Area,
| which is a definition meant to ensure comparable
| statistics across countries, which neither the "old
| style" urban nor metropolitan area terms provide...
|
| Which really just goes back to the main point that you
| can get pretty much whichever result you want here unless
| you narrow it down to the specific criteria that actually
| matter to you...
| tpm wrote:
| At least Paris, Moscow, Sankt Petersburg and Istanbul are
| significantly bigger; some other cities are bigger too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_.
| ..
| thiago_fm wrote:
| A metropolitan area isn't a city. She/he said city. Why are
| people in HN so pedantic and typically wrong about things?
| vidarh wrote:
| At least Moscow is bigger in terms of within it's city
| limits too, though, but then unless we want to be
| pedantic we get into what the person meant by
| "continental Europe". To what extent people colloquially
| refer to any part of Russia when talking about Europe
| varies greatly.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| any school boy knows west of the urals = europe
| vidarh wrote:
| Most of us are no longer in school, and lots of people
| forget that as soon as they learn it, but it's also
| entirely irrelevant to the question of how the term _was
| used_. "Europe" is very commonly used as a synonym for
| the EEA or even just EU many places today, no matter how
| incorrect that is.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _and lots of people forget that as soon as they learn it_
|
| Great, then we don't need to hear from these people. They
| don't need opinions or view points about things they were
| never intersted in, never learned about, and couldn't be
| bothered to remember.
|
| _" Europe" is very commonly used as a synonym for the
| EEA or even just EU many places today, no matter how
| incorrect that is._
|
| The term was very specifically "Continental Europe".
| tpm wrote:
| The original poster is obviously wrong.
|
| Also comparing city populations within city limits is
| exactly being too pedantic, because Paris is one example
| where the administrative city is much smaller than the
| real city.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's definitely not as big as those in terms of surface
| area. But it's quite spread out and what counts as the
| "center" is a very loosely defined notion that is actually
| quite large compared to all those cities.
|
| There's a ring of sbahn commuter rail around the center.
| From east to west that's about 16km and from north to south
| about 10km. Anything inside that could definitely be
| considered as the center. Walking east to west would take
| about three hours or so. You'll pass through a lot of
| interesting neighborhoods, each with their own little
| centers. You'll pass lots of landmarks. The former east and
| west berlin "centers" are about 9 km apart. A lot of the
| traditional landmarks and hotspots are spread out
| throughout that zone. And then you have a lot of gentrified
| spots that are becoming hotspots in their own right.
|
| I use the word center loosely of course because there
| really is no such thing in Berlin. It's all spread out over
| a huge area. There are probably about well over a dozen
| areas that can lay claim to being a center of something.
| And frankly, most of the interesting bits are outside of
| what the tourists flock to these days.
|
| Outside the ring, the city continues in pretty much all
| directions for quite some distance. And some of those areas
| are quite nice as well. But most would not consider that
| the center. I've lived here for about fifteen years and
| there are huge parts of the city that I've simply never
| even been to because it would take like an hour plus to get
| there and there isn't much in terms of landmarks, etc. to
| draw me there.
|
| Technically Berlin is actually a city state (within the
| federation of Germany) that includes the capital and a few
| suburbs. Total population is still smaller than it was
| before WW II (3.5M people vs 4M people then). So there's a
| lot of open space, huge parks, two decommissioned airports
| (Tempelhof, Tegel), etc. all within the city limits.
| Tempelhof is huge. About 2km by 2km of open space in the
| middle of a big city with two decomissioned runways. It was
| the site of the cold war air bridge. You have Kreuzberg to
| the north, Neukoln to the east and Alt Tempelhof just
| outside the ring on the south west side. And that's just
| one corner of the city. All in former west Berlin.
|
| The population is growing for the last decades at a pretty
| decent rate (about 50K new people per year or so). But it
| will take some time to catch up to pre WW II era levels.
| mat0 wrote:
| Well I can tell you in my totally anecdotal view that the
| underground scene here is alive and well, you just need to look
| a bit harder for it ;) It's true that mainstream media like
| Instagram and TikTok are bringing the worst of the scene and
| it's true that there are now a lot of kids that think that the
| techno scene is to dress in fetish clothes and film yourself
| dancing waiting for "the drop". But this is just capitalism and
| globalization doing its thing. Trends come and go. You can
| still go to awesome parties here in Berlin that won't be filmed
| and uploaded to Facebook, and it's also true that people
| complain a lot about the scene going mainstream but in reality
| if you want money from it, there's so many mouths that the
| underground scene can feed. I think a bigger problem for the
| club culture is the festival scene, but that's a whole
| different discussion. There are cool initiatives coming from
| this such as ASlice so I don't think it's as bad as some old
| schoolers are claiming
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I feel like the growing festival scene is a direct result of
| properties getting scarce in the city.
|
| Or maybe that people got too busy that they can only afford
| to party when it's a proper vacation.
| diggan wrote:
| > I feel like the growing festival scene is a direct result
| of properties getting scarce in the city.
|
| On the hand, Barcelona is as cramped as ever (with rents
| showing it too) but there is plenty of festivals in the
| city, especially around Port Forum (a marina) which have
| huge open spaces and is right before the city limits.
| piva00 wrote:
| Leipzig seems to be the new underground place in Germany from
| what I've heard and experienced.
|
| I believe this is the usual cycle of cities going through: arts
| scene existing because it's a cheap place to live, artists
| congregate in places they can afford, create a cool scene, the
| cool scene brings some bars/cafes and slowly it erodes to
| gentrification since these places are cool and attract other
| crowds into it (higher income, and/or tourists), eventually it
| makes the place expensive and artists have to find a new place
| where it's cheaper to live, and create their spaces.
|
| Very similar to the geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths essay on
| subcultures. [0]
|
| [0] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
| earthnail wrote:
| But Leipzig doesn't have the same growth opportunity as
| Berlin. Leipzig is 1/8th the size of Berlin and as such its
| upper bound on how large a scene can become is massively
| capped.
|
| Add to that that Berlin has been a place for internationals
| for generations, whereas Leipzig is entirely German.
|
| For the record, I love Leipzig, I think it's gorgeous.
| immibis wrote:
| The usual cycle of _capitalism_ going through cities. This
| thing where vultures move in and monetize things that other
| people created for free is a peculiarity of the way our
| economy works, not a universal truth (although it 's a
| universal truth that it happens _wherever it 's allowed to_,
| it's not universally allowed to happen).
| Tenoke wrote:
| >towards Leipzig.
|
| This has been a meme forever, and while Leipzig has its own
| decent scene for its size, it is not remotely close to rivaling
| Berlin. Pick a decent sample of either established or up and
| coming DJs and compare how often they play in Berlin vs there
| to disuade yourself of that notion.
|
| >and even Sofia.
|
| Yeah, no. Just because a city has some parties here and there,
| it doesn't mean it should even be in the conversation in this
| context.
| throwaway55671 wrote:
| > established or up and coming DJs
|
| Well there's the problem. What you should compare is how many
| unknown new guys just making good music for fun in small
| unknown clubs visited by locals are there.
|
| In my city I can go to a random non-descript bar with zero
| marketing or entrance fee, sit down peacefully with a drink,
| and hear world class techno together with few dozen
| strangers. Every evening. Doesn't feel that way in Berlin
| anymore, even if I pay it's all that global commercial style
| that the established DJs with promoter/management teams seem
| to fall into and the places are totally overcrowded.
| projectazorian wrote:
| What city?
| throwaway55671 wrote:
| Prague
| omnimus wrote:
| Nothing even compares to Berlin. Prague has basically 2 clubs
| and they are working partly because it's cheap and only 4hour
| train from Berlin so it's fun destination for both Berliners
| and Berlin DJS. Athens is where lots of the techno scene (djs,
| producers) has been moving to but that's because property is
| cheap so they can run away from Berlin winter. It also has like
| 2 clubs. In Berlin there are so many venues it's hard to
| remember them.
| ehnto wrote:
| Is this specifically techno/underground clubs you mean? My
| pokey city in Aus has like a dozen "EDM" clubs that spin a
| decent breadth of techno to house to dnb etc. Perhaps I
| should count myself lucky?
| earthnail wrote:
| EDM isn't Techno. It's a bit like saying that hard rock is
| like metal (somewhat bad analogy, but I hope you get the
| point). I know you listed a range of genres but it's
| important to note that the Berlin techno scene would never
| consider itself part of EDM.
|
| In Europe, most EDM is happening in Amsterdam.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Can you distinguish these two? In my head EDM & techno
| occupy the same space.
| jahnu wrote:
| The exact meaning of EDM has shifted over the years but I
| would say that currently it means stuff like Skrillex and
| Hardwell whereas techno is more like Carl Craig or Inigo
| Kennedy or Charlotte de Witte
| HKH2 wrote:
| One clear difference is that EDM tends to have a lot of
| lyrics, whereas Techno tends not to.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Depends on the subgenre of Techno. A lot of hardcore and
| Tekno features a lot of movie samples.
| HKH2 wrote:
| I meant words that are sung not spoken.
| input_sh wrote:
| > In my head EDM & techno occupy the same space.
|
| That's the case for a lot of "normies", but it really
| feels insulting to the electronic music fans in general.
| Unlike say rock nobody's gonna ask you to know every band
| in existence and every album they put out decades ago,
| but you should be able to distinguish between major
| electronic music genres like house, techno, drum and
| bass, trance, hardstyle and what not. Sometimes the line
| gets _really_ blurry, sure, but 90% of the time it 's
| pretty easy to know what you're listening to.
|
| The vibe is different, the tempo is different, the people
| that go to those places are different, pretty much
| everyone develops some sort of a very specific
| preference, and European countries kinda "specialize"
| based off of that. If you want techno, you go to Berlin.
| If you want grime, you go to London. If you're into
| house, you go to a beach in Croatia. I'd say the
| Netherlands are a bit all over the place, but what really
| sets them apart is hardstyle, which is pretty much not a
| thing anywhere else. And so on, and so on.
|
| That's not to say you can't find other things in those
| places, but they're always gonna be a bit more niche and
| you kinda have to know what you're looking for to find
| them.
| randomopining wrote:
| Netherlands is top in Europe overall. Most Berlin people
| are migrating to Amsterdam.
| eythian wrote:
| They must really love the music then, they sure as hell
| aren't moving for the better housing prices.
|
| I'm not at all in the Amsterdam EDM or hardstyle scene
| (just not my music), but I had indirectly got the feeling
| that it was slowly declining (ADE excepted), I could be
| quite wrong though, maybe they're just all in NDSM or
| something.
| randomopining wrote:
| ADE is wild. I don't think anything else compares.
| omnimus wrote:
| Hardly. Amsterdam is comparatively small city = much
| smaller audience. You can se the stability of the scene
| in how often clubs close down. Just recently De School
| closed (now it should be reopen again under different
| management/name). Some of the Berlin clubs have been open
| and solid for 20 years.
| randomopining wrote:
| Did De School close because lack of interest? From what
| I've experienced (during ADE) and also heard, Amsterdam
| is very popular for all the techno sub-genres.
| bnralt wrote:
| > That's the case for a lot of "normies", but it really
| feels insulting to the electronic music fans in general.
| Unlike say rock nobody's gonna ask you to know every band
| in existence and every album they put out decades ago,
| but you should be able to distinguish between major
| electronic music genres like house, techno, drum and
| bass, trance, hardstyle and what not.
|
| Plenty of people are able to enjoy music without getting
| caught up in nomenclature. The idea that those people
| aren't real fans always feels very snobbish.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Pretty much everyone is a fan of _music in general_ or
| some kind of music in particular. But I would counter
| that being able to name and differentiate a genre is a
| valid minimum standard to be a "real" fan _of that
| genre_.
|
| I also reckon that being a fan connotes something
| different from merely enjoying the sound when you happen
| to come across it. But I guess there's room for
| disagreement there.
| bnralt wrote:
| I highly disagree. I'm not going to say someone isn't a a
| true fan of Bach and Vivaldi because they refer to the
| music as "Classical" instead of "Baroque." Saying they
| "merely enjoying the sound when [they] happen to come
| across it" because they aren't interested in how other
| people have decided to name these things seems incredibly
| dismissive. Enjoying music is entirely unrelated to being
| interested in where other people have decided to
| artificially create divisions and the names they give to
| those divisions.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| ok.
| sseagull wrote:
| I find the nomenclature discussion very interesting. I
| wonder why "modern" music has so many genres?
|
| I listen to a lot of "classical". People will generally
| dump centuries of music into that label, or into the
| slightly better "baroque/classical/romantic/etc" bins.
|
| But composers often have phases where their music can
| change considerably. Even with in a work (say, Dvorak's
| 9th symphony) individual movements can be very different.
| Yet I don't see classical music enthusiasts trying to
| place every single work into tiny bins (or maybe they
| do?). They just enjoy them.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I actually find that aspect of classical music really
| frustrating, subgenres are _really_ useful to identify
| the particular elements of music that you enjoy.
|
| I've come across plenty of classical music that I enjoy
| but I don't know where to begin to find more of it.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > Plenty of people are able to enjoy music without
| getting caught up in nomenclature. The idea that those
| people aren't real fans always feels very snobbish.
|
| If you can't differentiate between neurofunk and liquid,
| you're probably not a big dnb fan.
|
| That doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, but enjoying
| something and being a _fan_ of something can be quite
| distinct things.
| bnralt wrote:
| > If you can't differentiate between neurofunk and
| liquid, you're probably not a big dnb fan.
|
| I'll be honest with you, I thought this was satire before
| I read the next line.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| That's fine, maybe you don't care about being able to
| differentiate between the stuff you listen to, a lot of
| us do.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| The word "fan" has become really watered down over time.
| Didn't it used to be short for "fanatic"? If someone
| isn't deeply familiar with the landscape of a genre, then
| it seems logical to say they aren't a fanatic.
|
| It may just come down to whether one uses the watered
| down meaning of "fan" or the original.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| You can find good techno in almost any large city because
| those DJs tour a lot. I don't think you're going to find
| something like Berghain in any other city, but if your
| city has any kind of underground scene at all, there's
| going to be good techno nights. Like I could go out
| tonight and see Loco Dice and Marco Carola in my city in
| the US.
|
| And don't assume that people in other cities don't get
| it. There's lots of underground clubs where people that
| go out are 100% into it for the music and "get it" and
| aren't just going for bottle service and VIP or whatever.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Compare:
|
| * Plastikman: Spastik:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TYsOMYaz6E (minimal
| techno)
|
| * Fred Again: Pull Me Out:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl6Rz1Uvi2M (house /
| "EDM")
|
| (EDM is more a US term than a European one, IME.)
|
| I think the differences in style are quite obvious.
| jahnu wrote:
| Ahhh Ritchie Hawtin. Legend!
|
| A friend was playing this in a bar last night and it took
| me back.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yWOtCXu6dCE&pp=ygUTc3lzdGVt
| IDc...
| scns wrote:
| Killer Acid tune.
| scns wrote:
| Fred Again is pretty unique, would not classify him as
| EDM.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0-hvjV2A5Y
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| There's two definitions of EDM, the first is it's
| original intended definition, which was as a blanket
| classification for all electronic dance music -- techno,
| jungle, house, dubstep, whatever. Instead of calling it
| techno or electronica, or whatever, EDM was meant to
| encompass all of it.
|
| Almost immediately after the term started being used,
| though, it became strongly associated with a particular
| type of dance music -- namely the mainstream house music
| that got played at big "EDM" festivals -- think David
| Guetta and Afrojack and Avicii and Tiesto... They used a
| blanket term when putting the festival together because
| the festival booked all kinds of dance music, but the
| main stages were dominated by a particular kind of dance
| music, so for most people that went to those festivals,
| that was the kind of music they associated with EDM.
|
| "Techno" went through a similar evolution. It was
| originally a term for a particular subgenre of disco and
| kraftwerk influenced dance music coming out of detroit in
| the 1980s, around the same time that house music was
| starting up in Chicago and garage music started up in New
| York. It pushed further into pure electronic sounds than
| house and garage did (at first) and early techno
| compilations solidified in people's minds that electronic
| music was "techno", especially in america, so "techno"
| for a while became a catch-all term for all kinds of
| electronic music. That faded away when "electronica" and
| then "edm" sort of took on that role, and techno
| continued as a subgenre of music by itself.
|
| So, I think, properly, techno is a _sub genre_ of
| "electronic dance music" in the general sense, but is a
| different genre than what a lot of people think of as EDM
| (the kind of house music played at large festivals).
| ricksunny wrote:
| Thanks, that helps. I would love to see a classifier try
| to cluster tracks across the different types of "not-
| necessarily-festival-EDM', and compare to see if it
| clusters as many fans also would.
| NamTaf wrote:
| It's not anything to do with AI, but you might like this:
| https://music.ishkur.com/
|
| Crazy to think it's been a thing since the 90s when it
| was built in Flash!
| dleeftink wrote:
| How did Amsterdam become the EDM capital?
| _kb wrote:
| Or perhaps more appropriately for this context: "hey, you
| work with computers. Can you fix my printer?"
| omnimus wrote:
| I mean the kind of places the article is talking about
| ("the cultural heritage" lol). I would say it's opposite of
| "EDM". Places where they only play ambient or techno (or
| disco lol) and music is loud to your core but not
| deafening. Where people get Club-Mate instead of Red bull,
| Skinny bitch instead of Cuba Libre, ketamine... Places
| where it's really hard to see because it's pitch dark but
| everybody is trying their best to look really hot when they
| go there.
| _kb wrote:
| I'm unsure which "pokey city in Aus" you're referring to as
| that arguably covers all of our capitals. You really can't
| compare any Australian club to Berlin's institutions, and
| that a good thing!
|
| Music, events, and culture in general should be diverse. It
| would be a fucking bleak future if the world converges on
| the single right way to party, detach, relax, or feel.
| throwaway55671 wrote:
| Total nonsense about Prague. There are 2 great techno
| clubs/bars on each Zizkov, Vrsovice or Holesovice street,
| lol. It's mostly locals and expats listening to guys doing it
| for fun with no managers or marketing (or entrance fees), so
| yeah it makes sense you have no idea if you don't live there,
| but just walk around the city and listen.
|
| Let me get you a list for your next Prague trip: Fuchs 2,
| Bike Jesus, Altenburg, Bukanyr, Ankali, Roxy, Onyx, Jilska
| 22, Swim, Centrala, Cross, Storm, Chapeau Rouge, Planeta Za,
| Wildt, Mecca, Studio ... That's just the very well known
| ones, then you have hundreds of random small unknown places
| with great unknown DJs all around the city, and many great
| rave events in places like nuclear bunkers, castles,
| churches, forests.
|
| The mainstream event halls normally used for big artist
| concerts are now hosting raves too.
| padjo wrote:
| At the point where UNESCO are recognizing it it's probably fair
| to say it's not underground at all anymore
| diggan wrote:
| It doesn't seem like "Berlin underground techno" is being
| recognized by Unesco, but rather just "Berlin Techno". So
| while the underground movement might be the grassroot for the
| mainstream, it would seem like they're recognizing techno in
| Berlin overall, not just the underground part.
| larodi wrote:
| Precisely. Why did I need to tell this all BS at all, you
| nailed it soo good. It is heritage, history, not the wave
| itself.
| junon wrote:
| I live in Berlin. This isn't true at all. Berlin's underground
| scene is still quite strong, perhaps just not as strong as it
| used to be. There's more "in the open" stuff due to the
| popularity, yes, but there's still plenty of (sometimes
| literal) underground raves happening.
|
| I'd also argue that the most recent accelerator for the shift
| in culture in Berlin isn't so much the tourism, but the
| pandemic. People haven't really been the same since.
| wheels wrote:
| Tourism definitely wasn't a major drag on the techno scene.
| There's always been the tourist clubs and the clubs that were
| more underground. Berliners usually don't go to Berlin's best
| known clubs. (Who the hell goes to Watergate or Tresor? Old
| joke was that Tresor was the biggest club in Dresden.)
|
| I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got
| to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat
| for EUR100. That same room now would be EUR500. Same for
| music spaces: it was easy to rent unused warehouse space in
| the inner city 20 year ago. There are a lot of interesting
| things that happen to a city when rent is ridiculously low as
| it was in Berlin for a long time (there were more apartments
| than people).
|
| There's still a lot going on in Berlin, but the character has
| very much changed. 20 years ago it was rare for clubs to be
| _legal_. Most of Berlin 's well known clubs now started off
| as illegal clubs back then. But there were _hundreds_ of
| other spaces that didn 't survive and transition to being
| legal spaces. There's still some of that, but much, much
| less. Also back then just randomly setting up a sound system
| in a park in the summer was much more tolerated. "Open Airs"
| in Berlin were just kind of what you did in the summer.
|
| Honestly, while I generally did not partake in such, the
| pandemic was the first time that I realized that came _back_
| some. Partying was illegal and the parties were moderately
| guarded secrets. I hadn 't seen that much buzz around illegal
| parties in more than a decade.
|
| Addendum: As a weird note, I don't even get the grandparent's
| comment about Potsdam? For the non-Berlin folks, it's a city
| just outside of Berlin's borders, but an hour away on the
| train from the more alternative bits of the city. It's
| neither known for its music scene, nor honestly as a place
| that rich people want to move. I know a couple of people that
| have moved there because of usual suburb reasons: they wanted
| a bigger place, and it's cheaper there. The other cities
| listed there are also weird. I've been out in all of them but
| Lyon and, yeah, there's some stuff, but to say the "scene" is
| moving there is really off. Three of the cities listed there
| are in the Balkans, but the best city for techno in the
| Balkans is undoubtedly Belgrade.
| lippihom wrote:
| A room in a flat now for EUR500? Maybe way outside the
| ringbahn...
| wheels wrote:
| I was trying to make a comparison to the EUR100 rooms
| from 20 years ago. That would be a single room in a 4-6
| person shared flat. Those are still EUR500-ish. (In
| places just outside the ring like Treptow, Britz,
| Wedding, Lichtenberg.) In my shared two person flat back
| then I paid EUR300 (bills included). That room now would
| be way over EUR500.
| okr wrote:
| The hipsters all wanted to have proper cappuccino. And
| its delicious. Hahaha.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Minimum wage also went up to be fair
| wheels wrote:
| There wasn't actually a minimum wage back then. That was
| introduced in 2015 in Germany.
| codethief wrote:
| I think your comment depicts the current & past situation
| in Berlin quite well. Overall, rents & overall cost of
| living in Berlin have increased tremendously, and available
| resources (unused warehouses, apartments, ...) have gone
| down. It just can't be as underground and "poor but sexy"
| anymore if your DJs and ravers, during the day, all need to
| work high-paying 9-to-5 job to make ends meet.
|
| Sooner or later, the Berlin scene will just feel like the
| one in Brooklyn. Everything will be properly gentrified.
| elevaet wrote:
| I think this same kind of dynamic happened with London as
| well.
| luzojeda wrote:
| Genuine Q. Do berliner straight dislike any tourist no
| matter how they behave? I tend to go out in Buenos Aires
| where I live to more underground clubs and don't mind that
| there are a few tourists here and there. Im travelling to
| Berlin and was recommended Tresor, is it just a place for
| tourists?
| wheels wrote:
| Hate's not the right word. A lot of clubs have a
| community around them -- they have their regulars; people
| go there to see their friends. If there are too many
| tourists, there's less space for regulars. There are
| always some tourists, and that's fine, but a lot of those
| communities that I mentioned a second ago have been
| choked out by a club eventually being so popular with
| tourists that the regulars don't bother going anymore.
| The lines are too long, it's full too early, prices go
| up, etc. A lot of the well known clubs started off as
| underground spots that eventually were overrun. God, the
| last time I went to Renate, it was credit card only,
| didn't know a single person there who wasn't working
| there, even though we had guest list there was a 30
| minute line at the coat check. That's what we don't like.
| ;-)
|
| Also, often tourists aren't accustomed to Berlin's
| marathon club opening times (some clubs don't close on
| weekends) and end up too trashed and are annoying. So,
| yeah, tourists have a harder time at the doors.
|
| Honestly, I've only been to Tresor once. It's kind of a
| misnomer since it's named after a very famous, very
| important long-closed club in a different part of Berlin
| with a totally different vibe. The current incarnation
| ... it's probably fine. Like, there are a handful of
| clubs in Berlin that actually feel a lot like the clubs
| Berliners do go to, but are mostly there for tourists.
| You can spot them because ... you can spot them. ;-)
| (Good rule of thumb in Berlin: if you can easily find the
| entrance, it's for tourists. Most of the more scene-y
| clubs don't have a sign.)
| pdntspa wrote:
| Dang... a Berlin native friend of mine took me to Renate
| around 2011-2012 ish. Great vibe but I got yelled at for
| being a tourist :(
|
| I get it though, where I live we have desert undergrounds
| and parties up in the mountains with a vibe that is
| threatening to be overrun by tourists. To say nothing of
| all the plug-in camps popping up at Burning Man...
| luzojeda wrote:
| It's a fine line between having some foreigners/tourists
| which can be really interesting fellows with realities
| completely different from you aaaaand being overrun by
| people that behave like locusts and just care about
| consuming as cheaply and quickly as possible no matter
| what (what happened to us in Buenos Aires). I don't think
| most people mind some foreigners in the places they
| frequent, the problem is the excess.
| luzojeda wrote:
| Many thanks for the info. When you say some clubs that
| now the lines are too long, etc. Berghain would be an
| example? Or is has kept its "undeground" scene?
|
| I'm travelling there for the first time, as a woman alone
| I wouldn't like to have nasty looks tbh (or even be
| yelled at as other user suggested), not want to bother,
| know to behave and just want to get to know the city
| along with other places in Europe.
| Applejinx wrote:
| My understanding is that Tresor was destroyed and any
| current one with the same name isn't 'the' Tresor club.
| Berghain seems like it's the real successor there, and
| Berghain is not tourist accessible, it's about as easy to
| get in as Studio 54 in its heyday.
|
| It's not about just line length, you would have to fit in
| and seem non-tourist to get into Berghain, and then you'd
| need to actually enjoy a dark, brutal, kink and techno
| club full of intentional degeneracy. I would absolutely
| go, for the music, but wouldn't be as much into the kink
| side, which I think is escalated somewhat from what
| Tresor was?
|
| There's a good documentary on the history of Tresor: "Sub
| Berlin - The Story Of Tresor" which appears to even have
| a re-cut version on youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiuJhq-z2LE
| wheels wrote:
| Berghain has quite a few regulars. I don't know so much
| what the mix there inside is anymore. I went a handful of
| times in its earlier years, and never really loved the
| place, but haven't been back since the last 2-3 times I
| waited in the line I didn't get in (which never happened
| before). There's kind of two poles in Berlin techno style
| and aesthetics kind of represented by Berghain and Kater
| / Bar 25, and I was always more in the Bar 25 camp.
| Berghain is very dark and industrial; Kater is more
| playful with lots of bright colors and odd objects. The
| music coming out of their labels is different in the same
| way.
|
| I think the yelling at tourists is mainly going to be if
| you're doing something stupid (though some of those are
| non-obvious: e.g. taking pictures in clubs is mostly a
| no-no). I probably wouldn't mess with trying to get in to
| Berghain. Other places you'll have a decent shot. If you
| want to go like a pro, show up from 4-6 a.m. instead of
| midnight with the tourists. The pros come out late, and
| the lines are shorter and the dancefloors are less packed
| -- if you actually like to dance, later is better. I'll
| sometimes even go out on Sunday afternoon.
| junon wrote:
| This. Also, if you _do_ find the entrance, be prepared to
| explain what 's happening there in some cases, especially
| if it's a themed night.
|
| Also be prepared to be denied entry. It's allowed and not
| uncommon, especially for some specific clubs.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Depends on the tourists - there's a lot of tourists that
| fit in the scene very easily, there's some that don't.
| It's not a requirement but if you already listen to the
| artists that are going to be playing you are in the first
| group. Tresor has pretty decent lineups while still being
| a bit more touristey but it's not a tourist trap or an
| ibiza-style club or anything like that. The crowd is
| generally considered a bit worse than the cool clubs, but
| nowhere near as bad as the actually uncool clubs (like
| say Watergate).
| groestl wrote:
| Tresor: As a tourist, could enter because I knew the DJs
| on the lineup and was wearing a black hoodie. Guy behind
| me with a fancy shirt got rejected subito, no questions
| asked.
| junon wrote:
| Meanwhile, at Sisyphos the bouncer thanked me for wearing
| bright clothing and told the ladies behind me wearing
| black "this isn't Berghain, ladies".
|
| So research where you're going first! Helped me get in
| without having to say a word!
| jijijijij wrote:
| > Do berliner straight dislike any tourist no matter how
| they behave?
|
| I think, no citizen of any larger city _likes_ tourists
| and the way tourism shapes the city. It 's mostly ugly,
| tasteless entertainment venues and ever the same groups
| of people standing in your way, the same questions asked.
| Don't expect anyone to be enthusiastic about your week
| long expedition through their lived reality. Do your own
| research.
|
| You have to behave like a "tourist" to be noticeable as
| one. If you are disgustingly drunk and obviously in
| "don't be gentle, it's a rental" mode, you may not get
| into some clubs, tourist or not. Some legendary clubs are
| very sex/kink positive, and/or queer spaces, bouncers
| take their job serious and filter out people who may
| disturb the peace or don't fit the general vibe. It's not
| a zoo. As a "tourist", or really anyone not in the scene,
| you likely won't get the info on anything "underground"
| going on.
|
| That said, Berlin's tourism really isn't that bad
| compared to e.g. Paris or Prague. The city feels very
| much like actual people are living there. Speaking
| English won't get you "flagged" per se and you won't have
| trouble communicating. Mind you, the "expat" type isn't
| exactly liked either...
|
| My advice, to get an authentic feel for Berlin: Explore
| the city by bike! Rent or cheaply buy one for the time
| being there. Traffic is intimidating, but the city is
| much, much less overwhelming and exhausting on a bike.
| (Don't clog the bike lanes, tho!) Berlin is incredibly
| green and got several lakes (!) inside and around, where
| you can swim and hang-out. It's also very explorable,
| meaning you can discover nice, or odd places and things
| just by walking around, in many areas. Don't get too
| focused on certain locations.
| luzojeda wrote:
| I live in Buenos Aires which became extremely attractive
| for expats, digital nomads and tourists in general last
| years due to the favorable exchange rate for first
| worlders. Considering this I started disliking _some_
| tourists as you say. Those that go drunk everywhere, are
| loud, obnoxious, etc. I don't mind and are actually nice
| to those that are just chill and want to get to know the
| city.}
|
| Thanks for the tips :) ! Will make sure to rent a bike
| while there.
| junon wrote:
| > Do berliner straight dislike any tourist no matter how
| they behave?
|
| No. Maybe some, but not many I've personally met.
|
| > Im travelling to Berlin and was recommended Tresor
|
| Not a bad club, not particular popular with people here.
| It is well known, though.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The rent thing doesn't exactly make sense to me because
| there are sometimes large underground scenes in expensive
| cities too. I have no idea how they coordinate warehouse
| parties in these places where the warehouse even for
| warehouse use would have a lot of value, but they do.
| larodi wrote:
| Yea prices, forgot to mention it. Indeed very massive
| factor, Berlin is much more expensive compared to... say
| 2005.
|
| Belgrade is long way from Europe although the scene is
| good, but I'd say Croatia and Albania are much more
| preferred by promoters
| wheels wrote:
| I think with the references to "promoters" a few times
| it's clear you're talking about a different metric than I
| am. Clubs in Tirana and Zagreb feel gltizier, more what
| one would expect from Balkan clubbing (which obviously
| exists in Belgrade too). Belgrade has some grittier clubs
| where both the decor and crowd feel like they're taking
| style cues from Berlin.
| immibis wrote:
| You are absolutely right about rent. Its effect is not
| limited to techno - rent extraction is a damper on
| _everything_ in the economy (except for rent extraction).
|
| Imagine a guy comes around to your house every month and
| demands $1000 or else he breaks your kneecaps. You'd be
| quite motivated to ensure you can make that $1000 each
| month and you'd not be left with as much energy for doing
| everything else you might want to do. That's essentially
| the economic effect of rent. At least taxes are indexed to
| your income, so you can always afford to pay them; rent is
| not.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Potsdam certainly is the place where the rich and famous
| live (Gunter Jauch, Hasso Plattner just to name a few),
| they are shaping the city by donations and philanthropy to
| restore it's historic glory.
| wheels wrote:
| Potsdam has almost exactly the same GDP per capita as
| Berlin (EUR45,378 vs. EUR45,074) and is ranked only 63rd
| highest GDP per capita of the 110 large-ish cities in
| Germany. I'm not convinced. ;-)
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| This sounds similar to what's happened in Oakland, CA. When
| I moved here 25 years ago there was a huge underground
| music and arts scene in West Oakland warehouses but the
| last 10 years of gentrification has wiped it out. After the
| pandemic (and constant right-wing propaganda) Oakland is
| now once again deemed a wasteland and businesses are
| fleeing, but I've started noticing a new youth culture is
| slowly starting to emerge here and there.
|
| I've seen the pattern in several other places as well: arts
| thrive in the affordable undesirable edges of society until
| it generates enough buzz for capitalists to notice it and
| move in seeking to profit off of it. The problem is that
| culture is not valued in capitalism because it has no
| landlord.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| The crackdown on all the spaces after the Ghostship fire
| basically obliterated it. Says something about the civic
| culture in the US that they chose to just wipe those
| spaces out instead of just making sure they were safe.
| ska wrote:
| > I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices
|
| This is a super common cycle. City gets economically
| depressed -> rents drop a lot -> lots of young people and
| artists, etc. move in -> great "scene" develops -> people
| with a bit more money start moving in because of the scene
| -> rents rise -> young people and artists move elsewhere ->
| scene slows or stagnates.
|
| Obviously that's an oversimplification, and just becoming
| cheap to live in isn't enough by itself, and just becoming
| more expensive isn't the death knell.
| whstl wrote:
| True, but I feel like in Berlin it was probably more
| drastic because, apart from gentrification, there was a
| huge wave of people moving in because of work (especially
| in tech), and more recently refugees.
|
| Charlottenburg, Steglitz, Wilmersdorf or Wedding were
| never known for "the scene" but prices still got way
| higher. And places like Prenzlauer Berg were already
| gentrified when prices got even crazier.
| AlgoRitmo wrote:
| Yes - I absolutely agree, any DJ who is familiar with the
| scene knows that is the #1 place on the planet as far as
| talent goes...there are residents at CDV who fly to Chile and
| Berlin a few times a week
| jamil7 wrote:
| There's still quite a lot of illegal/semi-legal free party
| scene type stuff going on, especially in summer. A lot of the
| scene has been pushed outside of the ring, though.
|
| Leipzig is lovely but tiny in comparision, you won't find even
| remotely as many clubs and parties.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Leipzig is lovely but tiny in comparision, you won't find
| even remotely as many clubs and parties.
|
| That's exactly what someone _would_ say, to keep the tourists
| away :p
|
| "No, there are no underground raves around here, nor have
| there ever been, nor will there ever be. Please stay away
| from this town."
| picadores wrote:
| You make two entrances - one is "backstage and delivery
| guys" - thats where the people you want get in- the other
| is for insta-noodles and hipster-replacement folk, who want
| to wait all night and then get rejected in some viral
| video..
| picadores wrote:
| Eh, because they do not want people there, who listen to
| promotions and whatever the socialsewersystems carries as hip
| to them.
|
| Where there is affordable housing, there be musicians doing
| brave new things instead of worrying about rent and rapping
| rants about gentrification.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > Where there is affordable housing, there be musicians
| doing brave new things instead of worrying about rent and
| rapping rants about gentrification.
|
| So I am not a techno aficionado, and I'm curious what the
| state of Detroit techno is now. It seems like it should be
| more notable (maybe it is and I'm not in the scene to know)
| given the history and cost of living.
|
| I regret the US turning away from house and techno,
| compared to Europe.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Detroit's cost of living is higher than the national
| average.
|
| https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-
| calculator/Michigan-...
|
| https://www.axios.com/local/detroit/2023/11/21/cost-of-
| livin...
| samatman wrote:
| > _I 'm curious what the state of Detroit techno is now_
|
| Still got it, never lost it.
| cribbles wrote:
| > the scene is moving towards Leipzig
|
| Speaking as someone who's split ~half my time between Leipzig
| and Berlin for the last 5 years, this is not true.
|
| Leipzig's club scene is an extension of its university
| population. It's younger, straighter, whiter, and about two
| orders of magnitude smaller. People visit the clubs while
| they're going to school there, then they graduate and move
| elsewhere. Often to Berlin.
|
| Why does this illusion exist? Because Leipzig is about an hour
| away from Berlin by train. Berliners visit for a weekend and
| think "wow, it's like Berlin in the 90s! Still cheap! And look
| at all these cool young kids at these scrappy clubs -- so
| that's where the underground has gone!". Then they go back to
| Berlin and spread the word to credulous out-of-towners, who go
| on to repeat this truism to people who have never visited
| either city.
|
| In reality, Berlin's club scene -- both "mainstream" and
| "underground" -- dwarfs that of any other city. Nothing short
| of an asteroid hit is likely to change that.
| jijijijij wrote:
| The main reason why Leipzig won't become the "next Berlin" is
| rents are increasing there, as fast as in Berlin. It is still
| cheaper, but not "let's try and find out" cheap.
|
| I think, for a moment around 15 years ago, Leipzig was _dirt
| cheap_ and had quite a bit of momentum, because you didn 't
| need a business plan to try and make things happen. People,
| students from west Germany, payed 100EUR for rent and 30EUR
| for an atelier. Lots of raw excitement and empty buildings.
|
| But the momentum died maybe 8 years ago. What's left is
| nothing like Berlin. Cheaper, but still expensive; liberal-
| ish, but all kartoffel. Leipzig doesn't feel exciting, but
| small now. And it's deep in enemy territory, very depressing
| region, the mere thought doesn't spark joy at all.
| larodi wrote:
| Techno has always been about that in Europe - young and
| white. And it is not in Berlin anymore.
|
| Berlin can have the heritage, NOW it's not there anymore, do
| u get it?
| aqme28 wrote:
| That's what they say about every scene. It's always too late.
| It's always getting too mainstream.
| lippihom wrote:
| https://ra.co/events/de/berlin events tonight in Berlin...
| parties at 100+ clubs, doesn't seem like anywhere comes close.
| larodi wrote:
| It's what commerce looks like. Abundance is not a mark of the
| underground.
| baxuz wrote:
| Zagreb. Seriously?
| rospaya wrote:
| Yeah, I'm wondering too.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >Berlin's scene is actually not so underground and not so cool
| anymore as a result of tourism and immigration.
|
| In my experience, people who like things because they are
| hidden and exclusive tend to be shitty, shallow, superficial
| people. Many, many, varied decades of life lived all over the
| world, and I've never witnessed a counterexample so I hesitate
| to make it an absolute.
|
| Same goes for people who think they like things more than
| others because they liked them first.
| ferongr wrote:
| On the other hand, normies do ruin everything.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| In my experience, 100% of all people who use the word
| "normie" unironically are shitty, shallow, superficial
| people.
| mtizim wrote:
| If you stop squinting, you'll see that neither the
| average exclusive activity enthusiast, nor a person using
| "normie" unironically are shallow nor superficial. Maybe
| your experience can be explained by how you see these
| people, not by how these people actually are.
| Tainnor wrote:
| Living in Berlin and being into techno, clubbing and drugs
| is the most "normie" thing ever. Try being a rock or jazz
| fan - or even Schlager.
| lukan wrote:
| "In my experience, people who like things because they are
| hidden"
|
| Sounds a bit like a strawmen. No one here said, they like
| something, because it is hidden.
|
| But hidden places are quite free and can cultivate a very
| different culture, than one that plays by all the legal
| rules. And where money took over everything.
|
| The best places I have been, were not listed in lonely
| planet. And I could not book them online. I had to find them.
| immibis wrote:
| How do you feel about Twitter vs Fediverse? People don't like
| Fediverse "because it's hidden", but they like it because of
| the qualities it has, many of which are influenced by it
| being hidden. If it was bigger and still had those qualities,
| that would be fine too.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Berlin is over, just like Burning Man is over
| barrenko wrote:
| Leipzig being known as Hypezig.
| mahmoudhossam wrote:
| Disclaimer: I live in Berlin currently but I've never been a
| techno person.
|
| From what I hear from people who are, the clubs have become
| basically tourist traps that are unaffordable to locals and some
| have even been priced out of their original locations so not sure
| if this decision will help much.
| piva00 wrote:
| They got much more expensive after the pandemic, in 2019 an
| expensive entrance was 18-20EUR, after it seems that some clubs
| are up to the 20-30EUR.
|
| I remember in 2015 paying 10-15EUR, even Berghain would be
| around 15-18EUR and that was expensive already.
|
| The techno scene is still pretty good music-wise if you check
| the line-up and avoid the new fad of celebrity DJs from the
| past 8-10ish years. I'm very fond of my early techno days where
| you could barely see the DJ from the dancefloor, they would be
| spinning in the shadows and the focus was dancing (this in the
| early 2000s so not an OG at all to the scene from the 90s, and
| not in Berlin).
| te_chris wrote:
| Berghain's door policy mostly still works: keeps the American
| tourists out and the club good times. It's starting to feel a
| bit dated in general, like the moment's moving past it, but
| it's always a good time.
| piva00 wrote:
| I agree, as ruthless as the door policy is every single
| time I've been there I had a good time, the crowd inside
| knew what they were there for and what the scene is about.
|
| To me personally since the big room/celebrity techno DJs
| took more space in the scene it has become much harder to
| find dancefloors like Berghain. I'm still sad for De School
| closing in Amsterdam, it was a very different place than
| Berghain but the crowd and dancefloors were very enjoyable.
| te_chris wrote:
| Totally. Skrillex at bhain is some end times shit
| walthamstow wrote:
| Same thing happened in London a long time ago. The antidote is
| word-of-mouth raves in abandoned buildings, forests, farms,
| canal boats, wherever
| dbspin wrote:
| Can't speak to London, but abandoned buildings are few and
| far between in today's Berlin. It's not the city it was even
| five or six years ago due to massive redevelopment. As
| regards forests, I guess there's the Grunwald, but good luck
| running a rave there, it's basically the backgarden for a
| whole bunch of old people's dachas.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I moved in Berlin in 2016, which isn't too long ago but the
| prices were much cheaper (for some places that means sub-10 vs
| over 20 euros now, for Berghain it means half the price back
| then), and even then locals were the minority. Foreigners self-
| select by coming especially for the scene, while the % of
| locals here who care for it isn't that much higher than the %
| of locals born in other cities.
| earthnail wrote:
| Even at today's prices, Berghain is a fraction of what you'd
| pay on proper tourist hotspots like Ibiza (think $70 upward).
| Or what you'd pay in other cities like London.
| mrtksn wrote:
| This is happening everywhere and with everything. IMHO its a
| result of the inflated "elite class", that is people who are
| well off enough to spend their days with consumption only or
| they were overpaid.
|
| As a result, these people go everywhere and do consumption and
| outcompete everyone who is not like them. Then everything gets
| adjusted to their pleasure and they consume all the
| resources(being housing, food, entertainment etc).
|
| Also, the supply and demand are not able to stabilize because
| the money moves around the globe freely but working people
| can't. So when a cryptobro from Russia moves to Portugal he can
| consume all the Portuguese resources but he can't bring fellow
| Russians to work and re-supply. Why wouldn't Portuguese just
| work harder and make buck by increasing the supply to meet the
| demand? Well because the cryptobro demands luxury housing,
| luxury food, massages, cars and cocaine but the Portuguese in
| the location they moved in are maybe painters, taxi drivers,
| chemical engineers or doctors and they can't simply start doing
| this new stuff.
|
| The folks are angry with working class immigrants but most of
| their troubles are actually due to a-few-millionaires who are
| not rich enough to do substantial long-term investment but are
| rich enough to consume like there's no tomorrow.
| epups wrote:
| You write as if there is a finite supply of "entertainment"
| which comes out of thin air. If someone is consuming, then
| someone is supplying. You mentioned yourself that the ones
| supplying are the locals. So, in your analogy the locals are
| getting jobs in night clubs, restaurants and construction to
| feed the needs of this "consumption class". In economies
| without tourism, this is done by producing export goods.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It is a finite supply that can be build upon over time.
| That's why the prices are going up. If everyone suddenly
| had the same amount of money as the "consumption class",
| some of the millionaire would have had to prepare the food
| and clean the toilets. The whole idea of money is that it
| is something you are supposed to receive for creating value
| and use it to extract value from others by trading it.
| Fiat, gold, crypto - it doesn't matter - you can't consume
| it directly. When you have a lot of people who own a lot of
| money but not enough people to do the stuff, prices go up.
| Basic supply-demand stuff.
|
| The real economy is not elastic enough to handle increase
| in demand instantly. It takes years to train people to do
| the things that are taken for granted.
|
| Think of it like the developer salaries in the USA when the
| money poured in, until it stopped.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| The finite supply is space, not DJs. And that's a mostly
| political problem as it's not like there is a lack of
| space in general, but what you are allowed to do with
| that space.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Someone needs to turn stuff into an Apartment or a burger
| no matter how libertarian or communist the policies are.
| It takes time, it transforms a society.
|
| Generally speaking, money is for bookkeeping among agents
| that produce and consume value and the production and
| consumption has natural speed within the laws of physics.
| When people who move around faster and demand stuff to
| consume than the people who produce, then you have local
| bubbles that disrupts the society.
|
| Also, since the output of the people is finite the larger
| is your elite class the less stuff to consume for
| everyone. Better have you elites becoming elites because
| they dramatically increased the production of the stuff
| they consume(for example, they might have invented the
| internet and the services on it and improved efficiency
| of trade or they might have made great music and improved
| the working conditions of people who work in insulation,
| thus more people accepted the job etc.). If you have an
| elite that is growing faster than they improve the yield,
| then you have a parasitic class that might end up
| destroyed if grows too big.
| aqme28 wrote:
| I think night clubs are always mostly tourist traps in most
| cities in the world. In Berlin, like other places, there are a
| few cream-of-the-crop that attract the locals.
|
| Interestingly, as an expat/immigrant I've met all my local
| Berlin friends clubbing, and most of my friends here are
| German. My colleagues who don't go clubbing seem to be in
| little bubbles of other expats.
| jen729w wrote:
| Any Australians here who were there for Melbourne's 'dirty
| electro' scene through the 00s-10s?
|
| I feel very privileged to have lived my 30s through that time.
| Public Office in West Melbourne. The Lounge! Oh my god the Lounge
| on Swanston. E55 at the bottom end of Elizabeth. And let's never
| forget Revolver, not that it needs forgetting as it's still
| going.
|
| Everyone in that scene was there for the music. We all danced, we
| all enjoyed each other, we went home together, we bonded over
| ciggies on the balcony, we stayed up all night, we shared
| everything. It was epic.
|
| I'm 47 now. I have no mid-life crisis, and I put it down to
| living in Melbourne through my 30s. A spectacular little bubble
| in human history. x
| defrost wrote:
| "I'm too old for that shit" ~ Lethal Weapon.
|
| _However_ .. I was there for
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yyUO93JpEw
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Band_scene
|
| and later made it to Berlin to being working tech crew for Wim
| Wenders _Wings of Desire_ when the scene with _Nick Cave and
| the Bad Seeds_ was shot
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPf6SWcENWo
|
| Two decades seems excessive, I was there for the shortest no-
| wave ever(?) _The Immaculate Consumptive_ in the time of
| _Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel_.
|
| Melbourne's always seemed to have several layers of music scene
| on the go at any one time, for better or worse many of the acts
| travel onwards and outwards, some returning to base camp.
| _kb wrote:
| My time in Melbourne was after that, but Revs was still a
| beautiful place. So many great memories, and some hazy ones.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Not Australian but I wanted to say thanks for all the vids of
| the melbourne shuffle that came out around that period. Very
| entertaining for an american teenager
| jen729w wrote:
| My friends call me 'Johnny two-step' to this day.
| treprinum wrote:
| OK, how are they going to preserve it? Where can I visit 1999
| Berlin techno scene and experience the rave?
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Fortunately, Odessa in Ukraine is also under the protection of
| UNESCO.
|
| When the russians hit Odessa with missiles today, only 14
| people died.
|
| Thanks UNESCO!
| low_tech_love wrote:
| The scene has thrived greatly under the watchful eye of the
| Techno Viking.
| smudgy wrote:
| Not gonna lie, this is awesome.
|
| Cybergoth Dance Party and Techno Viking are now even more
| important parts of our collective human heritage.
|
| Edit: It seems Cybergoth Dance Party was shot in Dusseldorf, my
| life is now even more full of lies.
| te_chris wrote:
| This is great, though it's hard to ignore that there's a bit of
| techno-industrial-complex going on there. Still, there's a proper
| industry for electronic music, nice people, good clubs, good
| music, good record stores and that sense of freedom that comes
| with long opening hours - not just in the clubs.
|
| One of my favourite things about Berlin is just sitting in a bar
| with friends till you're done for the night, no pressure to move
| on - often this can drag till 4 in the morning, but it doesn't
| feel laboured.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Bars in Berlin are so much more relaxing and enjoyable than in
| many other places fr
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's like they're going out of their way to make it uncool.
| HKH2 wrote:
| Won't that help preserve it?
| jamil7 wrote:
| How exactly does the city and federal Government square this with
| their plan to build a huge (unwanted) freeway through the city
| and bulldoze multiple clubs and music venues?
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I just looked this up because I was surprised to hear about
| this. Context for those unfamiliar:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-07/berlin-pl...
|
| This is the kind of mistake that we made in the US decades ago,
| and the results are plain to see today in any neighborhood
| bisected by a freeway.
| aketchum wrote:
| atlanta is trying to fix this by building a park over the
| interstate in the city center. Only tangentially related but
| it blows me away how ambitious the project is. The stated
| goal is for reconnecting communities on either side
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Philadelphia too: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| states/pennsylvania/article...
|
| It's a much-needed change, the side of Philly's Chinatown
| to the north of the freeway is clearly suffering compared
| to the south side. It's such a stark difference.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's a widely recognized problem in the US - they built the
| highways through the politically marginalized communities.
| The Biden administration has a program to repair some of
| that, and I wonder if that's where Atlanta is getting
| funding.
| immibis wrote:
| In Berlin there's a park, Westpark am Gleisdreieck, that
| occupies an old rail yard and covers up a rail tunnel
| underneath. I can testify although it still feels like the
| park is a dividing line between separate communities on
| each side, it's nowhere as divisive as an actual railway
| that you couldn't just walk over.
| itishappy wrote:
| My hometown did this in the 60s, and it was a major factor in
| creating one of the worst slums in the US.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/syracus.
| ..
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Considering the US chose an interstate highway system in
| large part due to Eisenhower's exposure to the Autobahn
| during WWII, there's sort of a karmic quality to this.
| scoofy wrote:
| The controlled-access highway system is a fantastic
| innovation for our automobile-based transportation system
| in America. It dramatically increases safety, fuel-
| efficiency, and throughput.
|
| This issue is that the controlled-access highways should
| have never been placed inside cities, but that precludes
| the automobile becoming the _de facto_ mode of
| transportation.
|
| It's important to remember that many of Robert Moses's
| city-splitting projects were started before WWII. I suspect
| that some of the worst aspects of what resulted from his
| legacy were based on vain attempt to use suburbia as
| defense mechanism to better survive a nuclear exchange.
|
| The irony is that the existing controlled access highways
| could be fairly easily repurposed to rail if we wanted to,
| it's just that the automobile addicts that we are would
| collectively lose our mind if we actually converted some of
| redundant urban highways into railways.
| masfuerte wrote:
| An egregious example:
|
| https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cairo-flats-are-handy-
| for...
| hobofan wrote:
| I mean they have to figure that out now. IIRC, having the
| UNESCO status as concrete evidence to point to in the future to
| prevent situations like this, where the club scene has to make
| was one of the main reasons the Berlin has advocated for that
| status.
| morkalork wrote:
| Every DJ and producer that goes to Berlin to do a "residency"
| comes back sounding the same and I hate it.
| dopamean wrote:
| couldn't agree more.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Hardwax.com still has the great picks, I definitely recommend
| looking there if you want great Berlin techno (and ambient,
| electro, etc.) that doesn't sound like the stale genre "Berlin
| techno"
| dopamean wrote:
| I wish Detroit had the marketing that Berlin does.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Yeah I associate techno a lot more with Detroit than Berlin.
| Detroit in Effect, Jeff Mills, Plastikman...
| technotarek wrote:
| We need an acknowledgment of the past, the origins, which may no
| longer be present. Detroit starting in the '80s and into the 90s
| would be the prime example. I wrote a short essay about the
| latter :
|
| https://technotarek.com/shows/richie-hawtin
| _bohm wrote:
| In the US it seems there's still a decent appetite to connect
| to the history of the genre. Carl Craig, Kevin Saunderson, Juan
| Atkins, Jeff Mills, etc. still tour regularly. In NYC, DJ
| Assault is currently holding a residency at Market Hotel.
| Nowadays has been running a series of "Foundations Nights"
| where they book a group of DJs representing the lineage of a
| particular style, which have been great. The Dweller festival
| has also been running for a few years which is a wonderful
| initiative (the name paying homage to Drexciya).
|
| I agree that it's worth considering why Berlin has been chosen
| without acknowledgement to its roots (no shade to Berlin, I
| love that city and much of the music it has produced).
|
| I enjoyed reading you essay. Coincidentally, U Street Music
| Hall was one of the venues that shaped my teenage years and
| served as my gateway into the electronic music scene.
| randomopining wrote:
| It's pervasive in Berlin from what I see, understand, and
| have read about the 90's. Realistically it's not a pervasive
| fabric of even a place like Detroit. Most people in Detroit
| don't even know that techno is "from" there.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Another recent addition from 2021 close to HN's heart:
|
| _Demoscene_
|
| https://www.unesco.de/en/culture-and-nature/intangible-cultu...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Entry on the German UNESCO site:
|
| https://www.unesco.de/kultur-und-natur/immaterielles-kulture...
| bowsamic wrote:
| Not enough mention of LGBT, especially gay male, scenes, which
| are the foundation of German techno. Until very recently,
| Berghain was a gay club that plays techno, not a techno club that
| supports gay people. Many Berlin clubs are still gay orgies,
| including the ocassional basement show in Berghain, but more
| famously kitkat club.
|
| I agree the scene is "dying" though, simply because Berlin is
| very different than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Robert Henke
| (Monolake) talks about this: after the wall collapsed, the
| factories in east Berlin were abandoned, and west Berlin were
| happily giving permission and even some money to any student who
| wanted to open an "artistic space" in one of the old factories.
| So it was easy, you had a very industrial space, you brought some
| speakers and some beer along, and suddenly you had a club.
|
| This is basically a very rare cultural moment: large amounts of
| unused industrial space being given away to anyone who wants to
| party. Berlin is, of course, nothing like this now.
| helloplanets wrote:
| "Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall"
| [0] is a good book on the origins of the Berlin Techno scene.
| It's based on interviews and discussions by the people originally
| setting up the whole thing, making it a pretty breezy read that
| you don't necessarily have to go through chronologically.
|
| No city can really replicate the absurd situation Berlin was in
| after the second world war. The absolute oppressive atmosphere,
| with one day the whole city getting flipped upside down. Anyone
| being able to take over a building on the East side and throw a
| party there. When before you could end up in a cell overnight for
| playing a boombox too loud on the street. The original location
| for Tresor (club) was the literal translation of the German word:
| A big old safe in a bank. That you had to climb down a ladder to
| get to.
|
| An unexpected connection of cities is between Berlin and Detroit:
| Underground Resistance (a group of Detroit born Techno producers)
| among many others playing gigs in Tresor going back to the early
| nineties.
|
| [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Klang-Familie-Felix-
| Denk/dp/373860429...
| hackandthink wrote:
| Can't remember climbing a ladder down to get into Tresor.
|
| The ladder was into the cellar of the Fischburo location
| somewhere in Kreuzberg 36. (these guys started Tresor later)
|
| (Eimer (Bucket) was a really bad location several years later,
| you wouldn't have been able to get out of the basement if ...)
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| What exactly is Kreuzberg 36? I always assumed that was a
| street number after hearing an old Smut Peddlers song.
|
| https://genius.com/Smut-peddlers-kreuzberg-36-lyrics
| luplex wrote:
| Kreuzberg is a borough in Berlin with 150k inhabitants, and
| it used to be divided into two postcodes: 36 and 61.
|
| 36 is the cooler, poorer, more political, younger half of
| the borough, it really was a center for non-conformists
| after reunification, but it's being gentrified these days.
| bravura wrote:
| https://needleberlin.com/2014/07/03/the-two-faces-of-
| kreuzbe...
|
| "36 Brennt, 61 Pennt"
|
| 'I've tried to come up with a rhyme that works in
| English: "36's on fire, 61's just tired" was one
| solution, but it doesn't carry the matter-of-factness of
| the German.'
| wrs wrote:
| ChatGPT suggests "36 blazes, 61 lazes".
| mitjam wrote:
| It's actually called SO36 and a famous punk / music club
| named after the former postal zone 1000 Berlin 36 which was
| a part of Berlin Kreuzberg.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SO36 https://www.so36.com/
| crucialfelix wrote:
| And it's still going strong
| helloplanets wrote:
| Sorry got my details mixed up, Tresor had a staircase that
| led downstairs to the vault!
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > after the second world war.
|
| I think you mean the cold war.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Wow, this exchange made me feel old.
| helloplanets wrote:
| No, I was talking about the atmosphere before the wall came
| down, during the cold war. That paragraph was written in a
| bit of a confusing way now that I look at it, though.
| aow83u45oaw8u wrote:
| I don't think they had boomboxes during WWII
| scns wrote:
| Tresor was the first club to fly over artists from Detroit.
| t_mann wrote:
| The museum-ification of Europe continues unabated. I can't get
| into the mind of the people who thought that this award was a
| good idea, much less anyone who'd feel happy about receiving it
| (it's usually not the 'real' locals anyway, but people who are
| close enough to feel some connection but far enough to not be
| exposed to the reality; or people with financial interests).
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That's similar to my initial response.
|
| The museum treatment is the end for any artform, IMHO; it's
| petrification. Did rock'n'roll grow and move and thrive after
| its Hall of Fame opened? I suppose there was grunge.
|
| It freezes the artform in a certain state (and by who and how
| is that state chosen?) and defines it that way for eternity.
| That's death - growth and change are ended; like the dearly
| departed it's defined by memories of it, not who it will be
| today or tomorrow; it's no longer doing something new that will
| surprise you or make you uncomfortable; it's sometimes
| reenacted by people who try to represent it, who miss the point
| of art - to express something of your own.
| immibis wrote:
| This is not a museum. It doesn't prevent new things from
| happening or old things from closing down, although it may
| provide some legal weight to prevent them from being _forced_
| to close down or not happen (e.g. because the CDU wants to
| build a highway through the poor part of town, as it does
| right now).
|
| Demoscene is on the same list, but that doesn't mean UNESCO
| is forcing demoparties to run a certain way or forcing
| demosceners to make demos a certain way or that any of it
| became a museum. It just means the government shouldn't try
| to shut it down. Maybe it enables the government to make some
| official demo archive in the future or something, but what's
| wrong with that? A demo museum can exist at the same time as
| an active scene, just like museums about the past of Berlin
| can exist at the same time as Berlin exists, and the same in
| techno.
| rightbyte wrote:
| It must feel really lame for those active in a subculture to be
| put on some Unesco heritage list. Like, really really lame.
| samstave wrote:
| The moment I saw this title, Immediately checked to see where
| Techno Viking is from!
|
| This is wonderful.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I'm somewhat into techno, and I cannot name a single artist from
| Berlin.
|
| If I zoom out further into EDM in general, I think of Paul van
| Dyk, but that's literally it.
|
| My knowledge is dated, but it does fall in the realm of "post
| cold war", so I'm wondering why I can't think of more if this
| scene was so important.
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