Panoramabar é uma das faces -a HT, mais exatamente- do que, desde my very first time, reconheci como o melhor club do mundo:
a) porque cheguei às 7h da manha e o lugar estava apenas lubrificando as engrenagens;
b) porque as pessoas na pista, todas interessantíssimas (e isso engloba muitas concepcoes), eram também muito acessíveis, e na hora da fervecao cada um fazia o que dava na telha, sem espaco pra carao ou frescuras afins;
c) porque o club e o acesso a ele -um edifício estilo comunista no meio de um descampado, bem no meio do nada no centro de Berlim- por si sós, já renderiam, fosse qual fosse o desfecho, uma boa história.
d) porque, apesar de nao ser puteiro, havia umas cabines privadas que permitiam o conforto da intimidade de quem quisesse fazer uma boa pegación, mas com porta de trelica, sem desmerecer o desejo voyeurista de outros. Ou seja, libertinagem finíssima. Notável.
e)porque, em poucas palavras, eu cheguei sozinha, conheci um monte de gente, dancei como louca por horas a fio, subi no bar e dei show, saí e entrei n vezes (bem antes de toda essa hypacao em torno do lugar, acho que agora nao pode mais), me joguei com hippies pelo meio do mato alto ao redor, adentrei algumas cabines com x pessoas diferentes, bebi, fumei, me coloquei etc. -e saí de lá 12 horas depois, como quem, literalmente, deixa o paraíso.
É longo, mas fina literatura urbano/hedonística também, esse trecho que segue aqui abaixo, extraído de "Lost and Sound: Berlin, techno and the Easyjetset", livro do jornalista alemao Thomas Rapp, recém-publicado nas gringas. Pra quem nao conhece o Panoramabar -que também é conhecido como Berghain-, o autor descreve uma noite de sábado com riqueza de detalhes e um agucadíssimo senso de humor. Pra quem conhece, como eu, escorrem as babas pela boca de vontade de voltar. É isso aí:
Incidentally, when exactly is Saturday? Almost all clubs open at midnight, so a clubbing Saturday is always Sunday already. The time before the clubs open needs filling—in bars, on the street if you really have to, or at home. If you go to a club before one o'clock on a Saturday night, you inevitably end up on an empty dance floor, a dance floor being played to by a DJ who knows full well no one wants to dance at this hour, and who therefore plays music that no one would dance to, if there was anyone there. But there isn't. The people are outside. In the queue.
This is the case everywhere, but especially at Berghain. The queue snakes a long and orderly path over the sandy ground. Bordered at the very back by construction site fencing, then corralled into an S-shape by steel barriers near the door, it's as if these people are queuing to get into another country. And in a sense, they are. A common assumption is that the time spent waiting outside the door of a club has something to do with the exclusivity that the club in question claims to possess. This belief is probably a distant echo of the anguished groans of all those who, at some point in the late '70s, waited to be let into Studio 54 in New York, the most famous discotheque of the twentieth century. Here, the doorman's reign of terror created that mixture of celebrity, money, beauty and youth to which some still aspire today. You were beckoned to come inside—or not, in which case you just had to stand there and watch. This could go on all night. There was no one forcing you to persevere except for the sheer appeal of gaining some ground in the attention economy which governs the nightlife of cities where fame, wealth and taste belong together.
Berlin isn't one of those cities.
Indeed, all attempts by club promoters in the '90s to open a discotheque that followed this principle ended in fiasco. Taste and money just don't belong together in Berlin, except in the art scene. Since the '90s, however, this scene has almost entirely given up its once close alliance with the techno and house clubs, along with the idea that every exhibition opening absolutely must have a DJ. Nowadays artists, gallery owners, art collectors and critics prefer to gather in their own restaurants and bars in Berlin-Mitte. This district is also home to the only club where the door policy remotely recalls the principle of Studio 54: Cookies on Unter den Linden.
All these things may run through your mind as you stand in the famous queue outside Berghain. The first and most important difference between this and all other queues is that it's for everyone. There is a guestlist here, too, but it's relatively short and carries no symbolic weight. If you're on it, you still have to wait, you just don't have to pay. Only the night's DJs and their entourage can amble past the queue, plus a few people who have a particular connection with Berghain. This has little effect on the queue, however. Perhaps three or four small groups walk past you in the space of an hour, no more. You can watch them while you wait. It always takes a while, whether it's one, three or six o'clock in the morning. Sometimes there's an extra doorman who stands about halfway up the queue and whose sole responsibility is to send back any wannabees who think, for whatever reason, that all are equal before the door to Berghain—except for them.
In its implementation, this policy actually gives a faint sense of Jacobin Terror. Whether you're a queen or a farmer, it really can happen to anyone. Firstly, then, this door is radically democratic. Secondly, however, it exhibits a refreshing arbitrariness which makes you ask yourself the question each and every time, even after years of getting in without a problem: Will I get turned away tonight?
This is the question that all in the Berghain queue ask themselves. Whether it's the couple who keep telling each other off for fidgeting around, or the group of Italians who look as if they've been reading fanzines back home with style tips for Berlin clubs. Their new-rave look comprises huge coloured sunglasses and haircuts nurtured for maximum asymmetry. The girls are wearing purple leggings and poison-green tops, the guys have post-ironic slogans on their T-shirts. One woman is battling her fear of not getting in with an endless and increasingly confusing lecture on her home city of Wuppertal. The two Dutch guys she's befriended in the queue are preventing her monologue from petering out by muttering an occasional "hm" and "ah." Two other guys are making fun of those who aren't let in while warning one another not to laugh too loud, otherwise they might be on the receiving end themselves.
Berghain not only bears a certain architectural resemblance to a cathedral, it's an actual temple of techno. And whether by design or not, waiting in the queue is the first step in an initiation ritual, soon followed by an unmistakable feeling of butterflies in your stomach as you edge towards the door. You watch as people ahead of you get turned away. You try to figure out the criteria. Most of the time it's pretty simple: groups of young men always have a hard time. If on top of that they are tourists, straight or obviously drunk, things get even tougher. But these are just rough guesses. When a punk who doesn't get in shouts out, "Fuck you, Germany! You're scum! I'm from Vienna!" everyone has a little chuckle.
You don't want to party with just anyone, so no tears are shed for any of those who are turned away. At the same time, the price you pay for exclusivity is the risk of not getting in yourself.
Your identification with the tormentor is mixed with anticipation and fear—a multitude of contradictory feelings come together on the way into Berghain. And that's the way it has to be; it's the first tension to be released as you finally set foot in the club. The initiation ritual continues with the thorough drug search carried out in the entrance area beside the cash desk: the ritual cleansing. Then you pay your dues, another religious act, to gain passage to the cloakroom, a huge space which contains a few sofas and is dominated by a giant mural painted by the Polish artist Piotr Nathan. It's called The Rituals of Disappearance.
The lighting reinforces the feeling of an initiation: it's dark outside, dimly lit in the entrance area, bright in the cloakroom. Then, once you've crossed the final threshold and entered the large hall which you could hear booming from outside, it suddenly gets dark again. You cross the hall, climb the large steel stairs, and even if you already know what you've let yourself in for over the hours to come, you still get a sharp shock every time as you stand facing the dance floor and let the music thunder over you. For a few seconds, as your eyes try to adjust to the strobes, you stumble around in semi-blindness. It's a little like a punch in the face—not only do you have to jostle your way through a mass of sweating bodies which have already been there a couple of hours longer than your somewhat more sober self, you also get physically assaulted by the sound waves of the music.
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