The Year Berghain Had a Door Policy for People Who Read Press Releases

There are three kinds of people in Berlin: those who get into Berghain, those who don’t, and those who’ve stopped pretending to try. For three days in August 2015, a fourth option briefly existed.

The inaugural Pop-Kultur Festival took place inside Berghain—the city’s most mythologized club—and you could get in with a ticket that cost between five and twenty-five euros. No bouncer reading your soul at the door. No standing in the cold rehearsing your outfit justification. Just a festival pass and a low-key sense of triumph.

The official language around the event was the kind of spectacular opacity Berlin cultural institutions have perfected: a contemporary diversity and internationality, where the Berlin scene also comes into its own and an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. Sure. But once you got past the press release, the lineup was actually interesting. Bianca Casady of CocoRosie. Sophie Hunger doing an exclusive set. Matthew Herbert. Kiasmos. Elijah Wood, who apparently DJs and is completely serious about it. The festival also made a pointed decision not to invite a wave of YouTube personalities who were flooding every other bill that year—which, as a statement of curatorial intent, said more than any mission statement sentence could.

Dissing influencers before it was mandatory, and letting the Berghain-adjacent masses walk through that door with their dignity intact. That’s a legacy I can get behind.