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We Are Proud Of Our Choices
On being in the club (February 2009)
I live three minutes from Berlin’s former “Haus der Einheit”, a building with a quite a history. Once a Jewish department store, it was stolen from its owners and became the Hitler Youth’s headquarters, and after partition, the seat of the East German Communist Party. Left to decay for years post-Unification, a new fate was revealed last autumn – to become a branch of the Soho House private members’ club.
Friends’ reactions to this news were mixed – a couple gleefully said they would join as soon as they could. Another launched into a string of expletives, insisting that “getting away from those c***s was the reason I moved to Berlin in the first place”. Although I’m sure the facilities will be nice, when it comes to clubbability I’m with Groucho Marx.
It is easy to dislike a place that only lets in the rich, but before we get too self-satisfied let’s remember that nightclubs have never been the most democratic of institutions. The domains of cliques and gangs, they tread a fine line between the two meanings of the verb ‘to discriminate’. Trying to keep out those who aren’t regulars, don’t wear the right clothes, don’t get the music or take the right drugs even if done with the best of intentions – creating an exciting other space for freaks and their friends – still tips easily into exclusivity. Even the biggest, most seemingly democratic places contain velvet ropes, backrooms, inner-sanctums, huts and caravans for workers, owners, friends and random people who think that to be there means to be somehow special. Élitism, even if it’s only against those who don’t possess the right subcultural capital, is still an -ism (if not one of the really nasty kinds).
And just as some of us like to exclude, so many in turn perversely enjoy the challenge of overcoming that exclusion. I still remember the thrill of vying with club door staff as a kid, pleading to be let in. Succeeding was all the more delicious for the arbitrary callousness with which we were usually treated. Still we queue outside Bar 25 and Berghain in the rain craning our necks to get noticed by the door staff. But at least we don’t have to pay €1000 a year for the privilege.