Review: Farbfernseher
A few weeks back I got an email from a reader asking for recomendations of a "few nice bars with good techy house tunes with a bit minimalistic sounds". I sent them to Farbfernseher.
It was only after doing that that I realized I haven't actually been to FF yet, despite hearing rave reviews about it over the past couple of years. The club is centrally located on Skalitzer Strasse, Kreuzberg, and it is better known than the place that I usually try to write about on this blog. (Maybe that's why I never went; not enough of a challenge?).
In the interest of keeping readers up to speed on the state of Berlin clubland I grabbed a friend and went down to Kreuzberg to check this Colour TV (which is what Farbfernseher translates to) place out.
It was a rainy Friday night when we arrived but we didn't have to wait in the line too long. The security did hum and haw a bit before letting us in, even though it was still early and we had guest list entry. The regular price on the door was four euros. As I'd already been warned about the small size of FF, I was pretty sure that that was too much to pay. Seeing the place made me revise my opinion: even two Euros would have been a bit much (sorry guys).
The main dancefloor was the size of a kitchen in your average shared flat. Above the dancefloor, set in the back, was a balcony about the size of a balcony in your average shared flat. There were a few podium spaces on the dancefloor - vital in a place that size, in the event that you actually fancy doing more than nodding to the beat like a suave sardine in a can. Sitting was out of the question, though, and talking was too, because of the adittedly ace soundsystem filling every inch of the air with reverberations of sound.
After wading through dozens of briney punters in the tinned up dancefloor and up the stairs to the bar, we ordered drinks, which were cheap to make up for the door price - a bonus. The crowd was your usual mix of tourists, eager to dance, and hipsters that are getting drunk because they know they probably won't get the chance to get order cheeseburgers and take selfies with them.
I could not work out what anyone was expected to do with a space this size, though... and believe me, I am used to parties of all odd shapes and sizes. The club's crowded setup put me face-to-face with a succession of strangers. That should have encouraged small talk but whenever I tried this, the sound was so full on I couldn't hear a word. This was where having a second room or sitting area would have been a good idea.
The music, although it was tech house, was okay. It's not a favourite of mine but my friend loves it and he couldn't find any space to dance. He'd have had to queue up for the popular dance podiums in order to 'get down' anyway. I did however come away from the club with a new appreciation of the Berlin club scene's fashion sense: there was oodles of opportunity for me to people-watch on a too-loud, too-packed dancefloor. A bit too much time.
Farbfernseher has not really decided whether it's a chilled, pre-party hangout or the main event. It seems like it is trying to fit both things into a space that can only really accommodate one or the other. With a great soundsystem and cheap drinks, it could do either thing quite well: fill the dancefloor with seats and turn the music down, or else accept less people and put a 'sorry not today' sign on the bouncer's forehead. Then, they would not have to stand there making silly excuses to send people away.
In the end, the reader who went to Farbfernseher wrote back later to tell me that they had gotten turned away by the bouncer because they had knocked on the club's door, a move that the bouncer took issue with.
Stories like that make me wonder why Berlin clubs bother hiring certain bouncers. They clearly don't have enough real work to do - people here are generally too well-behaved - and they don't seem to like parties or the people who go to them very much, either.
Fascism is alive and well in the ranks of Berlin's door staff, it seems... or maybe it's just testosterone? The question is, how long can the scene put up with their nonsense before they start to demand tighter official regulation of the Berlin bouncer mob and Berlin clubs in general? When that day eventually comes and word-of-mouth spots start getting shut down, perhaps people won't care because hey, at least they won't have to deal with that crap anymore.
However. In most cases, bouncer behaviour is not reflective of the club, the people inside or the party itself. As a friend said to me last week, "The people who run Berghain are so lovely, they'll even give you cheesecake... but on the door it's a completely different story!"
The same reader recommended Bohnen Gold as a good alternative to FF: "Relaxed people, different rooms to explore and small corners to hang out, and a very nice french dj playing in the back sort of lazy minimal techy tunes. Not too packed & normal prices". If you strike out at FF then consider giving that a go!
It was only after doing that that I realized I haven't actually been to FF yet, despite hearing rave reviews about it over the past couple of years. The club is centrally located on Skalitzer Strasse, Kreuzberg, and it is better known than the place that I usually try to write about on this blog. (Maybe that's why I never went; not enough of a challenge?).
In the interest of keeping readers up to speed on the state of Berlin clubland I grabbed a friend and went down to Kreuzberg to check this Colour TV (which is what Farbfernseher translates to) place out.
It was a rainy Friday night when we arrived but we didn't have to wait in the line too long. The security did hum and haw a bit before letting us in, even though it was still early and we had guest list entry. The regular price on the door was four euros. As I'd already been warned about the small size of FF, I was pretty sure that that was too much to pay. Seeing the place made me revise my opinion: even two Euros would have been a bit much (sorry guys).
The main dancefloor was the size of a kitchen in your average shared flat. Above the dancefloor, set in the back, was a balcony about the size of a balcony in your average shared flat. There were a few podium spaces on the dancefloor - vital in a place that size, in the event that you actually fancy doing more than nodding to the beat like a suave sardine in a can. Sitting was out of the question, though, and talking was too, because of the adittedly ace soundsystem filling every inch of the air with reverberations of sound.
After wading through dozens of briney punters in the tinned up dancefloor and up the stairs to the bar, we ordered drinks, which were cheap to make up for the door price - a bonus. The crowd was your usual mix of tourists, eager to dance, and hipsters that are getting drunk because they know they probably won't get the chance to get order cheeseburgers and take selfies with them.
I could not work out what anyone was expected to do with a space this size, though... and believe me, I am used to parties of all odd shapes and sizes. The club's crowded setup put me face-to-face with a succession of strangers. That should have encouraged small talk but whenever I tried this, the sound was so full on I couldn't hear a word. This was where having a second room or sitting area would have been a good idea.
The music, although it was tech house, was okay. It's not a favourite of mine but my friend loves it and he couldn't find any space to dance. He'd have had to queue up for the popular dance podiums in order to 'get down' anyway. I did however come away from the club with a new appreciation of the Berlin club scene's fashion sense: there was oodles of opportunity for me to people-watch on a too-loud, too-packed dancefloor. A bit too much time.
Farbfernseher has not really decided whether it's a chilled, pre-party hangout or the main event. It seems like it is trying to fit both things into a space that can only really accommodate one or the other. With a great soundsystem and cheap drinks, it could do either thing quite well: fill the dancefloor with seats and turn the music down, or else accept less people and put a 'sorry not today' sign on the bouncer's forehead. Then, they would not have to stand there making silly excuses to send people away.
In the end, the reader who went to Farbfernseher wrote back later to tell me that they had gotten turned away by the bouncer because they had knocked on the club's door, a move that the bouncer took issue with.
Stories like that make me wonder why Berlin clubs bother hiring certain bouncers. They clearly don't have enough real work to do - people here are generally too well-behaved - and they don't seem to like parties or the people who go to them very much, either.
Fascism is alive and well in the ranks of Berlin's door staff, it seems... or maybe it's just testosterone? The question is, how long can the scene put up with their nonsense before they start to demand tighter official regulation of the Berlin bouncer mob and Berlin clubs in general? When that day eventually comes and word-of-mouth spots start getting shut down, perhaps people won't care because hey, at least they won't have to deal with that crap anymore.
However. In most cases, bouncer behaviour is not reflective of the club, the people inside or the party itself. As a friend said to me last week, "The people who run Berghain are so lovely, they'll even give you cheesecake... but on the door it's a completely different story!"
The same reader recommended Bohnen Gold as a good alternative to FF: "Relaxed people, different rooms to explore and small corners to hang out, and a very nice french dj playing in the back sort of lazy minimal techy tunes. Not too packed & normal prices". If you strike out at FF then consider giving that a go!
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