Hipster Village: Berlin Nightlife Grows Up

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/nightclub-owners-plan-latest-berlin-city-quarter-a-989359.html



For a decade, Bar 25 was one of Berlin's wildest clubs. Now, its founders want to create a new development on the site. It is to cater to former clubbers and preserve an element of 1990s Berlin. But the hurdles are high.

Hipster Village: Berlin Nightlife Grows Up
By Philipp Oehmke
September 04, 2014 – 01:58 PM



It is the 56th visit he has made to some kind of local authority, Juval Dieziger says after a bit of arithmetic. It's not, he notes, the kind of life he had envisioned for himself.

Dieziger is a club owner. He used to run Bar 25, a nightclub that helped ensure that Berlin became known around the world for over-the-top nights on the town -- nights that often went from Friday to Monday. He's wears a shaggy black and gray beard that reaches almost to his chest; locks of his dark hair stick out from beneath his cap. His t-shirt has holes in it and he looks a bit like the captain of a stranded pirate ship.

A taxi is standing by and Dieziger is waiting for business partner Christoph Klenzendorf, with whom he opened Bar 25 some 10 years ago and, later, the almost equally legendary club KaterHolzig. Together, they are visiting the building permits office in Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district. The issues to be discussed are technical in nature -- minimum distances allowed between buildings, a bothersome noise study and construction permits.

Lifting the Underground into the Mainstream

As tedious as they are, the appointments with bureaucracy are necessary. Now in their forties, Dieziger and Klenzendorf are no longer intent on just running their own club. They want to build an urban district in central Berlin, along the banks of the Spree River at a location known as Holzmarkt. The quarter will provide a new home for a lifestyle that has thus far existed only in the underground world of the clubs, at night and in exclusive places that aren't accessible to all. After 25 years of club culture in Berlin, this underground culture is now being given a place in the world above -- and in a prime location, too.