The secret behind the world’s coolest clubs
Berlin’s nightclub policies are some of the toughest in the world. Sarah Hurtes works the doors to find out why… ›
it’s 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. Clouds of weed surround me, the smoke catching in my throat. I’ve already been standing for an hour and I have around three more hours of waiting ahead of me. It could be longer than that. I don’t dare ask. By 7pm, as the sky turns pink, descending into night, everyone around me has fallen silent. We are united by one mission – the door in front of us. The silence is punctuated by a woman with an afro bob and purple lipstick ordering those closest to her to keep smiling or they’ll be rejected. I am afraid that when we eventually get close to her, she will simply look us up and down and say “no”. That all this waiting is, ultimately, pointless. I’m in the queue for one of the world’s hardest-to-getinto clubs. This woman is the bouncer who decides which of us succeeds and who goes home.
Party people
Two months later, it’s 1am, and I’m standing in front of an iconic club, only this time I’m wearing a bulletproof vest. The only way for me to find out the answer to that muchGoogled question “how exactly do you get into Berlin’s superclubs?” was to guard the doors myself.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 it marked a new political beginning for
Germany. It also set off a chain of events that led to Berlin becoming the clubbing capital of Europe: the end of the divide between the East and the West created a new sound – and a new way to party – that brought everyone together. Week-long parties began to burgeon at full speed. Clubbing became a lifestyle, music a religion – and it garnered worldwide attention. Once The Wall fell, several East German businesses closed down, leading to soap factories and power plants being revamped into illegal clubs. Over the years these forbidden parties gave way to venues with permits – but many retained the grit that made them so special in the first place. Tourists flooded to the city, and locals wanted to keep the atmosphere created sacred. Berlin’s nightclub door policies got so strict that they became almost as famous as the clubs themselves.
Today, endless online forums detail what to say, what to wear and how to act in order to get in. The bouncers have become celebrities, with head doorman of the club
Berghain, Sven Marquardt, the man to impress (it’s rumoured Berghain once turned away Britney Spears for wearing the wrong shoes). Yet Berghain is just one of a network of clubs with strict door policies, and although Marquardt and his male colleagues are the ones who dominate newspaper columns and documentaries, there’s a group of women who wield just as much power. They’re super-secretive and their world is hard to penetrate – it took over a month of club-hopping, day and night, to get to know them. Mostly I was shunned and told that journalists are not trusted until, with some persistence, a few party promoters took me aside to whisper their names
“I began to lose all empathy. I started work pissed off”
as if they were state secrets. There’s Saskia, who has the word “no” tattooed on her left palm; Steffi-Lotta, the bouncer of club Kater Blau and founder of “marketvillage” Holzmarkt25, who prefers to be known as a “concierge” rather than a bouncer; Esther, known as “mutti” (mum), who once caught two underage boys climbing over the fence of her club and, instead of calling the police, called their mothers to come and pick them up. Then there’s Eli, who I chat to while inside the club simply called ://aboutblank. It’s a Monday afternoon and the club’s 24-hour monthly queer party, Buttons, is still palpable in the musty air. She became a bouncer 10 years ago, after seeing a club with an all-female door crew for the first time.“I wanted to be one of them,” she says, running her hand through her cropped strawcoloured hair.“I started practising martial arts and then a friend told me about a position opening up.” That was at ://aboutblank – once an illegal club, now one of Berlin’s top destinations. It’s also the club where Eli agrees to put me on shift, to see the work for myself. Eli is dubbed the club’s “Ice Princess” – from her cold and tough door manner, which is, she admits, downright unfriendly at times.“Especially at the beginning when I wasn’t too confident and sure if guests would accept me as a woman. I think sometimes I was acting too strict or arrogant. Now I’m softer.”
“You welcome and take care of a lot more people than you send away,” says Steffi-Lotta, who chats to me via a translator over a lemonade one day. She says this looking straight into my eyes without blinking – and I nod in agreement, knowing that her nickname (unprintable here) implies she’s one of the strictest to get past in the city. Despite their reputations, all the women I meet are funny, friendly and caring, yet I know that they have also, at times, been impossible to get past. You just have to look at Saskia’s tattooed palm to see that.
On shift
Taking my position at the exit doors of ://aboutblank (I have to watch closely to ensure no one tries to sneak through them), I observe the queue that’s next to it, trying to guess who will get that elusive “yes”. Eli’s off tonight, but in her place is Alina – whose T-shirt lists all the weight-lifting competitions she’s participated in. She stands square on, in front of the queue, and to her right is a bulky, shaven-headed man who reports back to her if anything – or anyone – seems suspicious. The line is an eclectic mix: one man looks like Neo from The Matrix, while others have a dishevelled look akin to Stranger Things’ Chief Hopper. One woman has a gigantic spider tattooed on her chest, dreads to the floor, and a leather cropped top and jeans. They all get in. The group of late-teen boys swaying in a fog of aftershave? Nope. The single guy with short yellow hair and eyeliner? Yes. In my three-hour shift I watch as Alina fires questions at approaching punters. “German or English?” she demands.“How are you? Have you been here before? Do you know the name of tonight’s party?” If the answer’s yes, she says: “It’s 13 Euros. You may enter one by one, but only when I tell you so.” If it’s a no, instead, a brief: “Not tonight.” Why do people want in so badly? Why are they willing to queue for hours when getting in is far from guaranteed? It’s because that sacred atmosphere is unlike anything most clubbers have experienced. Berlin’s venues usually open their doors at midnight, and few people bother to show up before 2am. Party-goers are dressed for dancing for at least six hours straight, rather than to show off