Berlin’s new Soho House Squat Simulator.
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I decided to blow it all up for the big 10th Issue of your new favorite newsletter and start fresh. I’ve scrapped the “five pieces of content” format for something quicker, cleaner, and more readable.
Welcome to Public Service.
A review of Berlin’s hottest new venue: The Soho House Squat Simulator.
“Phantom” means “a ghost, not real, illusory.” It also, fittingly, describes the complete lack of vibes emanating from the secretive new Mitte hotspot that the art crowd keeps name-dropping. Can’t find it? It’s the one with the long queue twice a week policed by door guys giving “AFD telegram group chat” vibes (and who seem to know every monied, straight German man with a fade and too-tight trousers who cuts the queue).
The bar boldly answers these very important questions: What if you took a squat and filtered it through the lens of Soho House? What if you overcrowded it with wealthy West Berliners, Julia Fox cosplayers, anonymous twinks, wealthy Gen Z youth flirting with rebellion as they do bumps on the dance floor, the worst straight finance bros Germany has to offer and, admittedly, a sprinkling of genuinely interesting people? What if you were too focused on stocking the bars with overpriced drinks and forgot to make sure the plumbing didn’t immediately cause a sewage pool to form?
I wanted to like this bar. I did. Who doesn’t love a trendy new place you can disassociate at (and then quickly flee at 3 am after questioning your life choices)? This is Berlin. That’s what the city’s (vaguely) creative class thrives on. I did have some fun there, to be fair. I flirted and had someone’s tongue in my mouth on the dancefloor who shall remain anonymous; I talked about being an old auntie in a bathroom stall with a friend I hadn’t seen in months. But… I did all this while navigating the grim vibes of a trendy new venue full of people whose solitary mission seemed to be making sure they were seen in this trendy new venue. I’m not going to throw stones in any glass houses here. I’ve packed into my fair share of bars around Berlin that are overhyped and overcrowded; that’s the nature of openings and the hunt for newness.
The problem isn’t a hyped-up new venue; the problem is that this bar felt like an approximation of a ChatGPT prompt. “Build a bar that captures the essence of Berlin’s anticapitalist, punk glory days and package it to appeal to people who post selfies poolside at Soho House.” Because I am a glutton for punishment, I fed the prompt into ChatGPT and… the result was not far off! The whole space was giving Fotografiska (the city’s nasty new ode to gentrification, in the form of a museum that makes the Ice Cream Museum look like the Louvre). It’s telling that they’re nearly around the corner from each other.
It’s no understatement to say Berlin’s soul is on life support. I live in the shadow of the looming Amazon tower and have seen how quickly things can erode. Every year, the club scene shrinks as venues are forced to close because of greedy landlords or, worse, the city government’s braindead efforts to expand the freeway. As I wandered around the labyrinth of rooms, I saw echoes of what I’d noticed in 2021 when, at the height of the pandemic, Bottega Veneta staged a secret fashion show at Halle am Berghain followed by a secret Soho House afterparty — all while the clubs were shuttered and the city was on lockdown. As I said in my Highsnobiety feature, that scandal was a bright neon sign warning of the “commodification of a cultural scene on the brink of collapse.”
Three years later, the new bar/club/sweatbox on everyone’s lips isn’t exactly reversing the collapse. As a friend told me, between being shoved by West Berliners carrying their Marc Jacobs totes like a weapon, the space succeeded in one thing: It feels extremely New York. I spent nearly five years there during my early 20s before fleeing to Berlin in 2018. Over the past year, there’s been a lot of discussion about certain people trying to bring “New York energy to Berlin.” I speak for myself here, but… keep it lol. There’s a reason we have an ocean between these cities. Berlin is in an identity crisis, sure, but the answer isn’t lurking in the shadow of Manhattan’s skyscrapers or within the darkness of Basement’s steroid-and-chemsex class of muscle gays.
Living in Berlin in 2024 means watching the city’s crusty old punks relegated to the Spätkauf as the price of groceries and falafel rises nearly as fast as the AFD voter share. It’s grim and demoralizing. I’m not here to say don’t go to the overhyped new venue that all your friends are going to (if you catch me there again, no you didn’t). I just think that it’s also fine to be critical. If anything, we should be more critical. Put on your critic hat, head to Mitte, and glimpse Berlin nightlife’s hollowed-out future at the Soho House Squat simulator. Open twice weekly.
Announcements:
For ARTnews, I wrote a guide to Berlin Art Week. Many shows will be going on for the next few weeks and months, so check the programming (and see “Pier Paolo Pasolini. Porcili” at Neue Berliner Kunstverein).
For ARTnews, I also wrote a reported feature on Francesca Gavin, the new director of viennacontemporary. As part of my coverage, I went on a press trip to Vienna to see the fair, eat nice food, and check out great museums. Besides the terrible rain and wind, the trip was lovely.
BTW, if you’re planning a trip to Vienna, you have to see Erwin Wurm exhibition at the Albertina Modern. I went in knowing nothing about him and left a huge fan. I successfully laid on about a dozen tennis balls in the One Minute Sculptures section. The photos of me doing this are not flattering, so I will not be sharing, sorry.
I watched Charlie Kaufman’s 2008 film (and directorial debut), Synecdoche, New York, for the first time on my train back from Vienna on Saturday. Besides emotionally wrecking me, it gave me this perfect description of how the vibes feel lately: “September, the beginning of fall... is when the bloom is off the rose and things start to die. It's a melancholy month and maybe because of that, quite beautiful.”
This feels very Miuccia Prada in a way that I will not be expanding on at this time.
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