Photograph: Adam Berry/Getty Imagesīy Pansy, founder and co-director of the YO! SISSY music festival Dragĭrag queen Gloria Viagra AKA The Empire State Building of Drag. Drinks are cheap and the social atmosphere inside (plus long hours: often open until 8am or later), make it the perfect bar for a debaucherous night out. You go there when you want to feel furry and glittery. One of Kreuzberg’s legendary nightlife spots, Roses, is undoubtedly the kitschest bar in town thanks to its red velvet-lined walls and fake leather chairs. Himmelreich, on Simon-Dach-Straße, is a lesbian hangout, with happy hours, suffused lights, music that’s not too loud, and plenty of tables, making it a great bar for casual conversations and meeting new friends. The mismatched chairs and couches, colourful walls and smoke-filled rooms make it a warm place to spend a leisurely evening. The bar also runs regular queer events and cultural activities, such as Cabaret Opera.īarbie Deinhoff’s, also in Kreuzberg, is a gay bar featuring art on the walls, often with political or dissident themes. Warm and welcoming, you might find yourself singing karaoke with broomsticks with the table next to you while throwing back grappa shots. Facciola is a lesbian-owned and operated wine bar – where everything is possible. It also hosts many diverse queer events such as Queerblock Female hip-hop gigs and a meet-up of Berlin’s queer disabled community every first Tuesday of the month. Südblock, in the heart of Kreuzberg, is a bar and restaurant serving vegetarian and vegan food. Photograph: Alamyīy Federica Calbini, cultural anthropologist, event organiser and roller derby player and coach for the Berlin Bombshells Barsīarbie Deinhoff’s club and bar in Kreuzberg. The most popular party is Madonnamania, on every three months, where all 16 Junior Vasquez remixes of Don’t Cry for Me Argentina get played.
On Fridays and Saturdays, up to three floors open with occasional shows onstage. Its DJ bookings are equally diverse, from Aérea Negrot playing tech-house to Lotic playing abstract beats. The club caters to all colours of the LGBTIQ rainbow, with teens to silver foxes passing under the disco ball. In 2013, SchwuZ tripled in size by relocating to a former brewery in the city’s rapidly gentrifying Neukölln district. The SchwuZ club, short for Schwules Zentrum (gay centre), has been a community institution since 1977. The glitter-bombed karaoke bar hosts a free-for-all in which all 10 of its private booths are fair game, allowing you to bounce around and share the mic with strangers or, if you prefer, step into the lounge where you can strain your vocal cords in front of a larger audience. Every Monday night at Monster Ronson’s is Multisexual Boxhopping. In Berlin, the weekend only ends if you let it. Gymrats with tight shirts rub against hipster goth lesbians through industrial caverns as a black-lit dragon sculpture on the ceiling shoots fire and screams “GOA!” Gegen happens on the first Friday of every other month. They also abolished the dress code, allowing a greater influx of guests. DJ Warbear and VJ Boxikus maintain their brand with a music policy of hard techno and experimental sounds, along with an adventurous visual aesthetic created by Stefan Fähler. When the Gegen crew stepped into KitKat a few years ago, the swinger club found itself home to one of the city’s most successful parties.
Many Berliners feel the “underground vibe” of Berghain has been overshadowed by tourists seeking spectacle, creating space for other parties and venues to open up.
GAY SEX CLUB SING FULL
Because the queue gets very long at peak hours, locals tend to get a full night’s sleep and eat brunch before going on Sunday afternoon. It closes sometime after sunrise and the sweat and broken glass are mopped up before Saturday night when the massive main techno floor opens. On Fridays, only the house-centric Panorama Bar is open. Once inside, there are no mirrors in the bathrooms to possibly judge your decisions, and the club enforces a no-camera policy to preserve its mystique. But the sexually permissive atmosphere happens every weekend.
It’s been in a former power plant since 2004, but the nightclub’s roots go back 20 years to a gay sex party called Snax, which still happens twice a year (at Easter and in November). Even Hollywood celebrities talk about the world-famous nightclub on daytime talk shows! Homeland star Claire Danes called Berghain the “ best place on Earth” on The Ellen Show in September – which made lots of news in Berlin. You can’t talk about Berlin’s gay nightlife without mentioning techno mecca, Berghain.
GAY SEX CLUB SING FREE
By Joey Hansom, musician and DJ, English language editor of Siegessäule (Berlin’s free monthly LGBT magazine )