Marcel Winatschek

The Berghain Shortcut

Berlin has three types of people: the ones who get into Berghain, the ones who get rejected, and the ones who don’t bother trying anymore. If you’re in the last two groups, there’s now supposedly a way around it.

Pop-Kultur is a festival at Berghain August 26–28. Their pitch: contemporary diversity and international representation. Translation: they hired some real artists so maybe the bouncers will be slightly less awful. Doubtful, but here we are.

The lineup: Cocorosie, Sophie Hunger, Matthew Herbert, Kiasmos, Elijah Wood. Real musicians who actually know what they’re doing. They also made a point of not inviting certain YouTubers, which is petty but fair.

None of this matters though. You don’t care about the artists. You want to get inside Berghain. Tickets are 5 to 25 euros—basically nothing. You’re paying for a cover story to walk past the world’s most famous bouncer. Will it work? Who knows. But five euros is worth the chance if you’ve been rejected enough times.