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    With Stickers on Phone Cameras, Clubs Defend the Party Vibe

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    It’s standard practice in Berlin, and camera covering is catching on in London, Ibiza and New York as clubs seek to protect an anything-goes atmosphere.On a recent Sunday afternoon, the line outside Berghain, the Berlin techno club, stretched for hours. Hundreds of visitors, sweating in black outfits, lined the dusty path to the door, hoping to be allowed into the former power station, which is known worldwide for its tough door policy, starry D.J. lineups and hedonistic parties lasting nearly 36 hours.The club is also notorious because, despite its reputation as one of the world’s pre-eminent techno venues, its parties aren’t documented online. Clubgoers are warned at the door that photos and videos are banned: Any violation will result in expulsion. To ensure compliance, door staff place stickers on the front and back of patrons’ smartphones, covering their cameras.Although this may seem excessive to visitors, such camera policies have become standard practice in Berlin clubs as a crucial tool for maintaining an anything-goes atmosphere, and clubs elsewhere are increasingly following Berlin’s lead.Respected venues, including Fabric in London and Radion in Amsterdam have all brought in similar sticker rules in recent years. Pikes Ibiza, on the Spanish island famous for its nightlife, announced last month that all visitors must now cover their cameras, so that “what happens at Pikes stays at Pikes.”Téa Abashidze, a founder of Basement, a Brooklyn techno club that has been stickering visitors’ phones since 2019, said in an email that it was part of a “cultural shift” toward “genuine, distraction-free experiences.” The club rigorously enforced the rule, she said, sometimes throwing several rule-breakers out per night.On a recent Sunday night, people lining up to enter R.S.O. were uniformly in support of the club’s stickering policy.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Making Up for Lost Time as Ibiza’s Clubs Reopen

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      IBIZA, Spain — As the sun was setting over Ibiza last Saturday, the party at Ushuaïa was just hitting its stride. Nearly 8,000 people had gathered at the outdoor mega-club for the beginning of the island’s first clubbing season in three years, and the crowd — including many women in tasseled bikinis and tanned, musclebound men — seemed intent on making up for lost time.While Artbat, a Ukrainian D.J. duo, played a high-octane blend of house and techno, the dancers heaved around the club’s large pool, cheered on by guests from the overlooking hotel balconies. In the V.I.P. section, a parade of staff carrying sparklers announced that a high-paying guest had just purchased another pricey bottle of champagne.Sipping a drink at the bar, Mina Mallet, a heavily tattooed 25-year-old finance worker from Zurich, said that the reopening of Ibiza’s clubs marked the end of a difficult and tedious period in Europe. “It means a new beginning: for enjoying life, enjoying our freedom and getting wasted,” she said. “I actually think people are going harder than before.”After more than two years of uncertainty for nightclubs, governments across Europe have gradually dropped many of their pandemic restrictions over the last few months, allowing clubs to reopen with a sense of relative stability for the first time in two years.On the dance floor at Amnesia, one of Ibiza’s mega-clubs. Roughly 30,000 people traveled to Ibiza this past weekend to go to the clubs, according to a local nightlife association.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesIn many countries, including Spain, Germany and Britain, governments now allow clubs to welcome visitors without any vaccine checks, masks or distancing requirements. And although the pandemic is not yet over, and a new variant could appear anytime to spoil the fun, Europe’s clubbers seem ready to relive the days when nobody had ever heard of Covid-19.The return of the clubs has come as a relief to many workers in the nightlife sector, which has been especially hard-hit. Before the pandemic, 45 percent of the gross domestic product in the Balearic Islands, which include Ibiza, came from tourism, for which clubbing is a major draw. In the first half of last year, tourist spending in Ibiza and the nearby island of Formentera was less than one-third of prepandemic levels, according to the Statistical Institute of the Balearic Islands.Ocio de Ibiza, a local nightlife association, estimates that 30,000 people traveled to Ibiza this past weekend to go to the clubs, a number on par with a prepandemic opening weekend. Sanjay Nandi, the chief executive of the group that runs the large Pacha nightclub, said in an interview before the opening that advance ticket sales had surpassed those of previous years. Of the island’s major clubs, only one, Privilege, does not yet have plans to reopen this summer.“I know we are very lucky,” Nandi said, explaining that, like other clubs, Pacha had received help from Spain’s government in the form of a furlough program for staff. The company also received a loan of 18 million euros, about $19 million, from the government’s Recapitalization Fund for pandemic-hit businesses, and it was able to get some revenue through its constellation of restaurants and other venues. Nandi said that the size of Ibiza’s major clubs — whose capacities range from around 3,000 to 7,800 — and their associated political clout allowed them to weather the pandemic better than smaller venues. “Being bigger helps,” he said.Nearly 8,000 people gathered at the outdoor mega-club Ushuaïa on Saturday.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesA professional dancer getting ready for the opening party at Pacha, another Ibiza club.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesOther clubs in Europe have been less fortunate. According to France24, the French broadcaster, 200 clubbing venues in the country had permanently closed because of the pandemic as of last fall. A survey released in October by the Night Time Industries Association, a British lobbying group, found that 22 percent of the city’s clubs had shuttered since the pandemic’s start.Amy Lamé, London’s “night czar,” a city hall official charged with liaising between nightlife businesses and city authorities, said in an interview that the city was still doing its own assessment of the damage done. Although the British government gave relief grants to venues, she said, the country’s unpredictable public health measures, “which sometimes changed from one day to the next,” had posed a particular challenge.Lamé added that the city had also provided targeted aid to what she described as the most “vulnerable” venues, including L.G.B.T.Q. clubs. Those grants meant that all of London’s L.G.B.T.Q. clubs survived the pandemic, she said. “If we lose those kinds of venues, we lose part of the essence of London,” said Lamé.Perhaps the most ambitious measures to protect the clubbing sector were taken in Berlin, another European clubbing capital where nightlife is recognized as a key driver of the city economy. According to a 2018 study by the Berlin Club Commission, tourists visiting the German capital for its club scene contributed approximately $1.7 billion to the city’s economy.Partygoers at Ushuaïa. Before the pandemic, 45 percent of the gross domestic product in the Balearic Islands, which include Ibiza, came from tourism, for which clubbing is a major draw. Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesAs well as offering financial aid for small and large businesses during the pandemic, German officials classified clubs as cultural venues, allowing them to access a 2-billion-euro fund meant for institutions such as museums and theaters. In Berlin, extra emergency funding was also made available for shuttered clubs. Kyle Van Horn, the managing director of Trauma Bar und Kino, a Berlin club and arts venue, said the pandemic was a turning point in the way officials have treated clubs. “I think there was a change from the side of the government; they are finally seeing us as relevant contributors to society,” he said.In an interview, Lutz Leichsenring, a Club Commission spokesman, said that thanks to the support, no Berlin clubs had closed as a direct result of pandemic restrictions. “The aid money was done in a very well-targeted way,” he said by phone. He explained that the pandemic had vindicated yearslong efforts by Berlin’s clubbing industry to mobilize as a political force. “We were very well networked as a sector,” he said.And perhaps inevitably, the social changes of the past two years are also making themselves felt on the dance floor. Steven Braines, a co-founder of He.She.They, a London-based record label and event company organizing L.G.B.T.Q.-inclusive parties at Ibiza’s Amnesia mega-club this season, said club organizers were now more focused on expanding gender and racial diversity among the acts they booked, which he said was partly a result of the heightened international visibility of movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter during the pandemic.Braines added that he sensed that men “maybe aren’t as predatorial anymore on the dance floor.” Club culture would now be reshaped, he said, by a cohort of 18- to 20-year-olds who were now visiting clubs for the first time, and who had less experience with drugs and alcohol. “This will be a new breed,” he said.The dance floor at Amnesia on Friday night.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesUshuaïa on Saturday.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesOn Friday night, some of these newcomers were gathering outside Amnesia, on a highway outside Ibiza’s largest town. “I had just turned 18 when the pandemic happened, and everyone told me that I had lost the best years of going out,” said Sebastian Ochoa, 20, who works in social media in Madrid. “When I go out at home, there’s a limit, but here there’s the party, the after-party, the after-after-party. I’m here to make up for lost time.”A few feet away, Richard Stone, 58, said he had been coming to the club for 30 years, often four times a season, so he felt he couldn’t miss the reopening. “This is a milestone,” he said.A few minutes away by car, at Pacha, near Ibiza’s main yacht marina, a more glamorous party was taking place. A line of several hundred snaked around the exterior of the hulking white club, which includes a rooftop terrace, garden, restaurant and gift shop, where visitors could buy a scooter helmet bearing the club’s logo ($221) or a Pacha-branded game of Monopoly.The upstairs area of the V.I.P. section, where guests paid up to 25,000 euros for a table, was filled with groups of men in white dinner jackets and women in sparkly minidresses dancing to a set by Solomun, a German-Bosnian D.J. At one of the tables, Arthur Coutis, a 20-year-old visitor from Paris, said he had the feeling that the pandemic had led clubbers to shift their priorities.“Before it was much more about money and drinking — now it’s much more about freedom, and enjoying the music,” he said, looking out over the crowd. As the music reached a new climax, a nearby group raised a bottle of champagne, and screamed with joy.Opening weekend celebrations at Pacha.The club received about $19 million from the Spanish government’s Recapitalization Fund for pandemic-hit businesses.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times More

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      With MOMEN, Frankfurt Officials Give Techno the Stamp of Approval

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      FRANKFURT — These days, this German city is known as a staid financial capital and home to the European Central Bank. But in the 1980s, it held another, more underground distinction, as a hub for Europe’s budding techno scene. Although the electronic music genre’s origins are largely in Detroit, Frankfurt’s clubs were among the first to bring the sound to Europeans.Among the most influential venues was Dorian Gray, a club with a famously decadent reputation. “It was a place for all the freaks of the night: drag queens, hard-core leather people, the cocaine crowd,” said Alex Azary, the director and a founder of Frankfurt’s new Museum of Modern Electronic Music. “When the subwoofer was turned up, your heartbeat would match the rhythm.”Now Azary has taken on the task of educating the mainstream public about electronic music’s legacy and culture — and Frankfurt city officials are backing him. The new museum, which is known as MOMEM and opened Wednesday, is a $1.3-million attempt to translate the experience of going to a club into an institutional environment. MOMEM will host rotating and permanent exhibitions incorporating videos, music and interactive elements, alongside live events.The museum is also the most high-profile example of German policymakers’ increasing efforts to embrace clubbing as an economic and cultural force, and as part of the country’s heritage.The director of the Museum of Modern Electronic Music, Alex Azary, in a D.J. booth set up as specified in Sven Väth’s tour rider.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesLocal and federal leaders have recently taken a variety of measures to protect and promote clubbing. Last year, Germany’s Parliament changed zoning rules to reclassify clubs as equal to concert halls and better protect them from encroaching gentrification. The Free Democrats, a pro-business party that is a member of the governing coalition, has also backed an initiative to have techno music declared an item of “intangible heritage” by UNESCO. Politicians in several cities, including Berlin and Leipzig, have moved to protect clubs on a local level.But MOMEM appears to be the first time a German municipality has financed the construction of an institution of this kind. Housed in Frankfurt’s former Children’s Museum, MOMEM is the newest addition to the city’s famous Museumsufer, a string of high-profile cultural institutions near the River Main that include the Städel Museum and the house where Goethe was born. Aside from providing the location free of charge, the city has cofinanced the project with a starting loan of 500,000 euros, around $550,000, and allowed the museum to hold its opening party in the Paulskirche, one of the country’s most historically significant churches.The Eclectic Beats of Electronic MusicFrom house to techno, the entrancing balance of sound and technology keeps fans on the dancefloor. The Roots: Black artists played a critical role in the genesis of electronic music genres like Detroit techno. The Dweller festival celebrates their contributions.A New Museum: Frankfurt’s clubs were among the first to bring the sound of techno to Europe. A new venue celebrates that legacy. Unsung Heroines: Women in electronic music have largely been written out of the genre’s history. A documentary corrects the record. Remembering Avicii: The globe-trotting D.J., who died in 2018, revolutionized electronic dance music. An exhibition in Stockholm takes visitors into his world.Ina Hartwig, the city’s head of cultural affairs, said in an email that the city had supported MOMEM in the hope it would be a “cultural magnet” that would draw international visitors to Frankfurt.For its opening exhibition, MOMEM is dedicating its entire space to an exhibition about Sven Väth, one of Germany’s best-known D.J.s. Curated by Tobias Rehberger, an artist who won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2009, the exhibition includes records from Väth’s collection, virtual-reality recordings of his D.J. sets and dangling headphones on which visitors can listen to his original music. One area features a D.J. booth — set up as specified in Väth’s tour rider — at which visitors can play records of their choosing.“This is the beginning,” Azary said. “The first museum dedicated to modern art appeared in 1908, and now they’re in every small town. I think soon that will happen, but for this subject.”Although Frankfurt played a key role in the early days of Germany’s techno scene, its center of gravity shifted to Berlin in the 1990s, after German reunification. The German capital has since become known globally for its anything-goes clubbing culture. According to a study by the Club Commission, a group dedicate to promoting and protecting Berlin’s nightlife, the scene pumped approximately $1.66 billion into the city economy in 2018.MOMEM will host rotating and permanent exhibitions incorporating videos, music and interactive elements, alongside live events.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesVäth donated thousands of vinyl records to MOMEM from his own collection. Visitors can play them at the museum.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesThe artist Tobias Rehberger beside a piece he created for MOMEM’s opening exhibition.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesMatthias Pasdzierny, a musicologist at the University of the Arts in Berlin who has written about electronic music in Germany, said in a phone interview that the German authorities’ support for clubbing and for projects like MOMEM stemmed largely from marketing considerations. “There is a global competition among cities for a certain class of well-educated young people,” he said. Highlighting a city’s club culture, he said, “is a way of saying, ‘We have interesting jobs, and you can have fun here.’”Such concerns have become salient in business-oriented Frankfurt, which had hoped to attract bank finance workers relocating from London after Brexit, but struggled. As one writer in Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper put it: “Not too many London-based bankers are willing to leave one of the world’s great metropolises, teeming with cultural riches, to move to sleepy little Frankfurt.”Pasdzierny explained that German leaders in recent decades have also come to view techno as a form of “soft power” to help improve the country’s reputation internationally. “It became a narrative freeing Germany from its Nazi past,” he said, adding that by emphasizing the country’s inclusive club culture, officials aimed to perpetuate the image of a kinder Germany.But he added that the coronavirus pandemic had shown the limits of German politicians’ willingness to offer concrete support to nightlife, as nightclubs were often the first venues to be closed when cases rose, even though they often enacted stringent safety measures. “I think politicians are only interested when it helps them economically, or their image,” he said. “There is still the view that clubs are dangerous and dirty.”MOMEM is the newest addition to Frankfurt’s Museumsufer, a string of high-profile cultural institutions near the River Main that include the Städel art museum and the house where Goethe was born. Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesOne of Azary’s goals is to dispel simplistic views of clubbing and to explore the ideas and values that electronic music transports. A 40-year veteran of the Frankfurt club scene, he said he had long believed that clubbing could be a utopian force that could encourage open-mindedness, love and egalitarianism. “It was a revolutionary feeling — we sincerely thought we could change the world,” he said. Yet given the current state of the world, “we need to admit that it hadn’t turned out exactly as we wanted,” he added.With Russia waging war in Ukraine, he said, he had even doubted if it was appropriate for the museum to throw an opening party. “But then we decided we need to turn what we are doing into a symbol,” he said. “Club culture is about mutual respect — and about being allowed to be who you are.” More