Bar25

The 25 from the van and the 25 from the street

Before settling on the riverbank, Bar25 was an East German van. The TÜV plate limited it to 25 km/h and that is how the name was born, at illegal raves on the Michaelbrücke. When Christoph Klenzendorf and his friends looked for a permanent spot, the lot at Holzmarktstraße 25 —trash, weeds, and a dead strip next to the Spree— matched the number. The blue stamp with a 25 on the forearm was the passport: behind a high wooden fence opened a village that did not look like Berlin.

A saloon on the banks of the Spree

The heart was a wooden shed like a Western saloon, habitable only in summer; in winter the venue closed. Year after year the lot swelled with planks salvaged from neighboring construction sites: Juval Dieziger's restaurant in the back, a stage, a circus tent for cinema and theater, a hostel, a pizzeria, a sauna with a pool, a bonfire, swings, a retired bumper car, and the vodka wheel. It was cinema, theater, park, restaurant, nightclub, and a caravan village with a wellness area. Klenzendorf called himself a business-hippie: an entrance fee was charged, staff were paid, and people lived on the premises. The operators estimated that about 200 seasonal jobs were lost when it closed.

Techno, confetti, and a whimsical door

The pulse on the dancefloor was techno —often minimal— and sometimes rock. The costume and confetti parties lasted 48 hours or more: from Saturday night until Monday morning, with Sunday reserved for those still standing. At the door, Steffi Lotta filtered with an opaque and tough criteria. The Bar 25 Music label, promoted by Danny Faber, was born inside the club itself. In 2007, Hannes Stöhr filmed scenes for Berlin Calling among those planks. DJ Thomas Schumacher summarized it without technical romanticism: everyone knew that the sound was not the draw; the music was the soundtrack to an amusement park for adults.

Goodbye with a siren and the drift of the lot

The land belonged to the BSR and was in the crosshairs of Mediaspree. Every autumn a closing party was held and every year the contract was extended, until it wasn't. In September 2010, after several days of non-stop partying, Bar25 closed and the venue was dismantled. The documentary Bar25 – Tage außerhalb der Zeit, by Britta Mischer and Nana Yuriko, premiered in 2012. The same operators opened Kater Holzig in an old soap factory on the other side of the river and, later, Kater Blau next to the original lot, which was converted into the cooperative neighborhood Holzmarkt 25. The physical club no longer exists; its myth continues on the riverbank.