When people go out to dance to techno, you’d have to be this specific type of person who takes everything very seriously, who has to stay up super late. It’s something that we’re not looking for anymore.
Daria, 24.
The pandemic saw a surge of illegal open-air raves in parks and other open spaces around Berlin, usually in defiance of pandemic rules, and that scene helped fuel a resurgence in the underground party scene. The kinds of empty spaces that fueled the club scene’s rise in the 1990s are mostly long gone from central Berlin, but there are now plenty of raves — some legally permitted, many not — hosted in fields along highways and in abandoned industrial spaces on the far outskirts of the city.
All that’s really needed for a good party, at its core, is a bit of electricity, a halfway decent sound system, a keen crowd — and perhaps a few crates of cheap pilsner.
Some of the more established clubs have also been changing sharply. Suicide Circus, for example, has been around in Berlin in one form or another for more than three decades and has been in a location in a former factory complex near the railway tracks in the heart of former East Berlin since 2009. But in early 2024, the club rechristened itself Lokschuppen (meaning “locomotive shed”) and turned over some of the parties to new event collectives, who brought with them a younger crowd.
‘Safer spaces’
“I remember times when people went there just for the club,” one of the club’s managers, Jermaine Fuchs, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper. “Today, guests tend to travel after DJs or collectives.”
Emiko Gejic, spokesperson for the Berlin Club Commission, a group that advocates for Berlin’s club scene, said a whole wave of younger music and events collectives have been bringing “a different style” to Berlin’s club scene and broadening the kinds of offerings in clubs.
“They often host more of a community space. There’s a lot of young collectives — POC collectives, queer-based collectives, FLINTA (female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, transgender and agender) collectives — that are much more about identity and creating safer spaces,” she said.
“They often host events that have a much more diverse programming with film screenings, with panel talks, with concerts, with live performances. It becomes definitely much more artsy in some way, rather than, let’s say, just a rave where people just go to dance in a dark room with loud techno music.”
Aziz Sarr, 44, grew up around the nightlife scene in Berlin. His father, a DJ originally from Senegal, regularly performed at Dschungel, a renowned hotspot in 1980s West Berlin. He started organizing and DJing his own parties more than a decade ago with a pair of collectives, Freak d’Afrique and RISE, both focused on some of the hottest music coming out of Africa. Along with Ukai Ndame, he opened MAAYA last year in a space next door to Lokschuppen.
“Berlin has become much more diverse, you can see that,” he said. “And all these communities, they want to party, and so of course they shape the nightlife.
“Berlin is definitely one of those cities where you can go out to any kind of music,” said Sarr. “You can go out to an Afropop party, a techno party, a Brazilian party, an Arab electro party, an Arab queer party. I think there’s a party for any scene in Berlin — I think that’s really beautiful and it’s getting more and more diverse.”
Zuher Jazmati started throwing what he calls Arabic queer events with the collective ADIRA in February 2023. He learned to love Berlin’s raucous nightlife scene growing up in the city in the 2000s, and while he complains that a more commercial, mainstream type of clubbing has crowded out some of the counterculture, there’s also been growing space for events beyond thumping raves. ADIRA throws pop parties that pack clubs, but also community events, art shows and book launches.
“A party like ours would not have happened in any of the clubs that you had in Berlin,” he said. “I mean, an Arabic queer pop music party? Where?”
‘Room to escape’
Rising costs have undeniably made it harder for the party scene to thrive, and a higher cost of living in Berlin — which once stood out among major European cities for its relatively cheap rents, which attracted artists and leisure-seeking party types — has put the damper on the party scene. Entry fees that used to hover around 10 to 15 euros ($11 to $17) not long ago have shot upward to 20 or even 30 euros. “A ton of my friends would be down to go out, but they’re just not really able to spend 40 euros,” said Daria.
“It’s becoming a luxurious thing to go out to buy drinks, to consume drugs. That all costs a lot of money,” added Jazmati, 35.
“Maybe some nepo babies, or some upper-class kids, but it’s not something that’s so easy to do as a working-class kid.”
He’s also noticed that the younger crowd doesn’t go out as much, partly after missing out on the ability to let loose at parties during the pandemic in their formative years. But the expense of nights out at established clubs has also driven a younger revival of some underground parties, and Jazmati said he’s hopeful that Berlin will find places — perhaps on the outskirts, in unfashionable neighborhoods or different kinds of spaces — to keep the subculture alive.
“Berlin’s nightlife scene was a subculture that was accessible, that was always for the weirdos, for the ones who never fit into society, who really wanted to have room to escape a little bit,” he said. “This is what makes Berlin fascinating and interesting.”
“For a long time in Berlin culture, clubbing was always extremely accessible for young people, for people’s low income, and that has changed a lot,” Gejic said.
But if there’s also been one constant about Berlin’s nightlife scene over the decades, it’s an older generation telling new arrivals that they’d missed out on all the best parties. “When I got here people already said it’s dead,” DJ, producer and Berlin club veteran Sven von Thülen recently told the city’s English-language magazine, The Berliner, about the club scene in 1996.
“I think the best times are over but I’m not sure where it’s still better, I’ll say it that way,” said Daria. “I mean just quantity-wise, and of the diversity of parties and clubs and people, I think Berlin is still top-notch.”
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