Unscene Berlin

Some people say that the official Christopher Street Day parade is nothing but an excuse to dress up, get wasted and dance in the streets. I say, if you're going to do something you should at least do it right, and last Saturday's CSD "demo" showed that the city's queer scene succeeded, with bells on.  Literally, in some cases! The parade was a nonstop parade of amazing costumes, bubbling sekt and theatrical, exhibitionist ass-shaking. The highlight of the parade was the gaudy, glittery and just-a-tad gritty Alles Farben float which led an avid hoard of dancers a merry chase through the streets of Kreuzberg and Tiergarten; a teknival on wheels. The lowlight was probably the U.S.A. float that had a camp Statue of Liberty on top. "Homosexuality was only decriminalized in Texas in 2004!?" fumed my friend Andreas as we gawped at it in passing. There were also the usual corporate floats competing for free publicity, but those with the strongest foll...

The weather being what it is, I haven't made any serious plans to check out Fete de la musique today. Yesterday I received a request from a reader for free, cheap & 'genuine' techno party tips though and the need to create an entry about this event became unquestionable. After Mayday and CSD, FDLM is the best day for free techno in the Berlin club year.  The eclectic musical celebration that takes place every year on the summer solstice, June 21st (for those of you with jetlag and/or a hangover, that's today!) I've dubbed this festival the Long Night of the Clubs, as it offers everyone a free or cheap taster of Berlin's  party venues. It is a great chance to get the full techno experience at legendary venue Tresor for free. But an event that is more representative of the Fete's raison d'etre is the openair Neurocomic party at Schillingbruecke from 14:00 today. Later in the day check out hard acid party queen DJ Alienata at 's Griessmuehle. Irish...

It was a love of exploring unbroken tracts of urban jungle that got me going to parties in the first place, and a similar impulse seems to bring oodles of techno travelers to this city each summer, looking for uncharted party territory to explore. In a city the size of Berlin (890-odd square kilometers according to Wikipedia) finding out about all the little offbeat parties that pop up each weekend like magic mushrooms in a marsh - and then disappear just as quickly - can be an epic mission, even when you're only searching online! Take this Trulov party listing that I found for Saturday on Resident Advisor. The venue name was new to me, so I checked it out on Google Maps. It turns out that it's actually somewhere northeast of Hamburg . This can only mean one of two things: a) Berlin's city limits have recently been redrawn to include everything from here to the Baltic Sea (you go offline for one week in this city and everything changes) or b) that Trul...

Let me just start by saying that Berlin's party scene is not generally a druggy place. Unlike other cities with a 24 hour party scene, people in this city don't usually arm themselves with anything much harder than beer and ganja for a night (or day) out. That's one of the things I love about going out in Berlin: there's no pressure to be "out of it" in order to get into the music. In other major cities I've been to, people tend to use chemicals to force themselves into a higher or lower state, robot-like, in order to conform to strict opening times whereas Berliners are free to just ride with their own rhythms, whether they're going out at 5 p.m., 11:00 p.m. or 11:00 a.m. Still, it's not all that unusual to find someone in among all those tipsy, low-key smokers who is taking something harder. I was just reading on Spiegel.de that the rates of Meth use are going up each year in Germany (they jumped by 19.6% in 2011 alone). Personally, I ...

" Gegen U will turn you inside out only to reveal that your intestines are made of beautiful carnivorous flowers." I ask you, with media packs like these, who needs nightmares to keep them awake at night? Gegen seems to be the David Lynch of the club scene: it scripts both the scenery and the soundtrack that makes our subconscious wanna squelch into the slimelight . To get to their party this Friday, simply follow the chalk sidewalk arrows from S/U Bahnhof Frankfurter Allee and then listen for the sound of boundaries collapsing and intestines... er, blossoming. Unlike the upcoming Souterrain party at Stattbad, most of Berlin's really underground parties don't bother advertising the fact in their name. Check this one out at Scharnweberstr. 38 in Friedrichshain if you love techno and hate to revel without a cause. The Antira benefit features some of those lovely, militant about:blank's DJs too. C.R.A.S.H. is doing techno & dubstep this Saturday...