What I was trying to say was that in certain contexts, such as the “Fuck the Spain away”- t-shirts that Enghelhardt mentioned, the “complaining” about tourists reaches a level that I’m not really comfortable with.

Regarding Anders post - I agree to to all your points, also to Timon Engelhardts text in the Berghain flyer. Certainly my statement was not meant to be racist at all. I love traveling and have friend all around the world.
Clubs are great here in Berlin and extremely easy going. Just a few places I liked to go alot don´t feel right to me anymore.
I´m taking it as with my beloved vinyl and dig a little deeper. See you on the dancefloor

As for vinyl vs laptop… I’m kind of with Laptop Bob here. The tunes are what matters not the technology. As long as you know what you’re doing I don’t really care. But I have to admit that there is a certain charm about vinyl that just, err, turns me on

“…the club machinery is getting more commercial and touristic.”

statements about Berlin like the one above never ends to surprise and irritate me. I would be really surprised if someone could name a city whose club scene is even nearly as uncommercial and as vivid as Berlins. Of course there are more “commercial” (God i hate that word) clubs in Berlin and of course commercial interests play a certain role. But not to such an extent that it interfers with your weekend/mid week clubbing experience. I mean, all great acts come here, both underground and, well, less underground. Opening hours are fantastic, drinks and entrance are cheap, so what’s the problem?

And if you really can’t live with clubs beings sponsored by beer brands etc, there are PLENTY of other alternatives. If I say restrealitaet.de, I’m pretty sure you Berliners know what I’m talking about.

The same thing goes for the “touristic” bit. To bring up an example: At the moment many people are complaing about Berghain being overcrowded with tourists. Statements like that are not restricted to germans who have been residents here for a long time. No, it seems like as soon you have lived here for more than a month, you feel the urge to start complaining about all the spanish, italian, scandinavian and british ravers going there and destroying the once so fantastic mood. Exactly when Berghain had its peak time is however never explained. Was it perhaps around Easter 2006? I was there february 2005 (2 months after the opening) and as I can remeber it, there were plenty of “tourists” there back then too. I actually find the “tourist-destroying-the-night-life discourse” quite scary as it sometimes touches what you might even call plain racism.

Tourists play a great role in the night life and add up to the fantastic experience that a great night out actually can be. Of course there certain types of people (tourists or not) who are not desirable in a club environment (too drunk etc), but mostly these people are turned away already at the door.

Timon Engelhardts has written a really good piece on this in the latest Berghain flyer. Everyone who understands german should check it out. Can be found on the Berghain website. For you who don’t understand it, I can reveal that he is more or less on the same level as me.

I know that my comment has nothing to do with the post, and I’m sorry for taking up this space. But as this is a matter which I have been both thinking about and have been confronted with a lot lately, I just couldn’t keep myself from commenting on the statement.

My comment is, however, not aimed at Mr. Freer, nor at anyone else in particular. It seems like most people have an urge to complain about all kinds of things, and so do I (guees you could regard this comment as complaining). What I, however, will never accept nor understand is when the complaining is totally unjustified.