Berliner Raucher Kneipe

The kneipe is a special place in Berlin where you can find a few locals crammed together in corners watching sports on the telly and drinking cheap beer in small glasses.  The wiki translation of 'kneipe' is 'pub,' but this isn't exactly accurate.  To me, a pub is a place where large groups of English or Irish people gather together and drink ales and stouts from LARGE mugs and watch sports on the telly.

Most of the Berliner Kneipe are raucher, or smoking pubs.  Most European pubs have followed the popular trend of banning smoking; England, Ireland and Germany all share the same laws concerning smoking in bars. To whit:  it is not allowed.  In Berlin, however, people just plain don't give a fuck.  They smoke in bars anyway.  Technically, this is illegal, but if a kneipe owner scrawls the word 'raucher' in crayon on a bar napkin and duct tapes it to the door of his establishment, alles in ordnung.

"So, db, why in the hell do you go to the raucher kneipe if you don't like smoke, you California beeotch?"

Glad you asked.  Two words:  CHEAP BEER.  Sure, the beer is crappy, mostly warm off-brands that nobody has ever heard of outside of Berlin.  But I'll be god damned if I'll ever be caught DEAD in the typical over-lit, over-priced, bistro-slash-faggy-slash-dancy cafe-slash-bar-slash-fuckers-I-don't-like-SLASH-em-ALL!!!

Ahem, excuse me.  I prefer dark corners and dark people.  I don't mean the local African watering holes per se, but those would be welcome as well.  I mean, normal people who have no problem with the dual stigmas of being butt suckers and alcoholics.  The lungs and the livers are shot, but these people are REAL.

FALLING DOWN is my local raucher kneipe.  It is practically right across the street from me, which makes it an easy stagger home.  I suppose the name of the place, in the immortal words of Bukowski, 'sort of fondled my scrotum.'  It's not normal to have an English name on a German bar.  And this bar is all German, mostly Prenzlauer Bergers of the old sort: unemployed, hard drinking, DDR-raised people who like cigarettes and beer more than life itself.  The bar is owned by a man of Mediterranean origin.  His name is 'Shefki,' which he told me means 'happy man' in Arabic.  It's true:  the man is happy.  Even when his bar is dead empty, he just smiles and asks me 'where are the people do you suppose?'  Then he rips open a bag of chips and brings the darts out for a game or two.

He opened the pub on Christmas Day "for the lonely people who don't have Christmas today."  I thanked him profusely by eating his chips, drinking his beer and throwing his darts.  I had to ask him about the decision to name the bar 'Falling Down.'  Was it about the gambling machines tucked in the corner?  Does 'Falling Down' mean the falling of coins?  Or is it about the more unfortunate patrons who can't handle the new uber-Captialist economy and the heavy amount of alcohol one must consume to deal with the aforementioned regime change?

To which Shefki replied:  "I think it is the last place people go in the neighborhood.  After they have gone to all the other kneipe in the neighborhood, they come here last and fall down."

Don't be scared.  Please visit Falling Down on Paul-Robeson-str. today.  Sure, your lungs may fall out of your ass from the smoke, but Shefki is a happy man who plays a mean game of darts and peddles a cheap bottle of beer.  Tell him the big American sent you.

Secret Tiki Bar

Voodoo Drinks and Pagan Idolatry
in the Lush Jungles of Berlin

It’s an underground thang. The owner specifically told me not to blog about his bar. This after he had poured me some of the best cocktails I’ve ever had. This after my friend had snapped a pic of my outrageous Tiki bowling shirt with the hula-girl-grass-skirt-party on my back. How did he know I was a blogger? “What if I were to say something like ‘there’s a Tiki bar in Berlin, but I don’t say where it is?” The owner seemed to accept this proposal for the time being. Then I asked him to explain why it was so important that customers NEVER FIND HIS BAR. I’m always open to new ways of marketing in troubled economic times. I also respect the idea that some people just don’t want to work to make a living. Because, y’know, like, customers are like, so lame. They make you work and make drinks and stuff. But this was not the case with the Big Kahuna at the Secret Tiki Bar. He was pouring and shaking and measuring up a storm. Good Tiki drinks take time and effort to make.

I told him the secret was already out—at least a few clues. He asked me how and why. I needed another drink. Then he could ply me with his questions. The next drink was what my granny would call ‘a doozy’ if she drank. The mixmeister said it was a creation from LA in the golden era of Tiki bars, when said bar was surrounded by Tiki bars and said bar needed a drink to compete with them. A rum drink, to boot, and strong. He said the name at least 3 times but all I can remember is this: it was strong. It had lots of rum and a strong bite with a blackberry pucker. He makes all his drinks from memory. Why? Because he is a professional. The man runs a bar in a space you will never find if you walk by five times in a row. If you got the address from a very clever Tiki bar website, you would STILL walk by the place. It has no markings whatsoever on the outside of the building. If you pressed your face on the dirty glass of the abandoned storefront hiding the bar, you wouldn’t see much; maybe a shadow moving in the back amid shafts of dim lighting. You would probably think it was just a hoax or bad info.

“I just don’t want large groups coming in here,” the owner said, “I’m trying to cater to the locals and my regulars. I don’t need big groups of drunks coming here to fill the space.” Well, that was an understatement. Ten people could fill the space. A friend of mine had a home Tiki bar in the basement of his Prague flat. It was only a little bit smaller.

“What about the front space?” my drinking partner added, “You could easily add tables and chairs and….”

“I just don’t want to do it,” The Man proclaimed. Well, it was his bar. Why have menus when you have the whole shebang in your head? Why have customers banging on your door when you have 6 feverish locals who can pay you a few bucks a night? Why have the hassles of more customers? The Big Kahuna added that he welcomes die hard Tiki bar fans and locals rather than drunken college kids. (If any freaky Tiki people are reading this, I’ll be happy to give you the address of The Secret Tiki Bar. But you really have to be freaky about Tiki; I mean with a profile on Tiki Central Dot Com and Tiki mugs in your house).

The Secret Tiki Bar’s mojo is working and the camouflage is in full effect. Before we got there that night I nearly walked by the bar again. I had been there a few times before, once by myself, once with another friend, and this time with a different friend. We walked in the snow for a while and I nearly lost him in it. When we finally got there and pushed through the dark façade into the inner sanctum of the Berlin Tiki gods in the ultimate unrecognized underground Tiki bar, my friend said, “I’m impressed!”

And I guess that’s the point.

Tiki shirt photo by Niall O'Hara

Berlin Film Scene: Glitz n Glam or Grime n Grunge?

I used to be a film fest junky. I would travel to obscure film festivals, get in line for hours to get tickets and even sleep outside on the ground when hotels were booked. I've seen world premier films in San Francisco, Dublin, London, Karlovy Vary and Berlin. I've shaken directors hands after sitting through double features and impossibly long film lectures with other pasty-faced film geeks.

Then I discovered Berlin's underground cinema scene. After planning to spend way too much money on films no one else would ever see at the Berlinale (Berlin Film Fest) last week, my eyes were opened and I saw the flickering light: Squat Cinema. That's right, bootleg copies of scratchy anarchist films projected through gray smoke clouds onto cracked bar walls. Drinking semi-warm bottles of the cheapest German beer while watching films with characters who fight the police, fight the landlords, fight the U Bahn ticket inspectors and fight the system. Watching these films in German when I don't speak 10 words of the language.

Many of these ad hoc cinemas have sprung up in the grungier areas of Berlin: Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, etc., where punks and anarchists find refuge in grafitti-ridden block house squats. Often you wouldn't even know there was a cinema--let alone a functioning bar--in these buildings if you were leaning on the front door. From the outside, many of these bars have shuttered windows plastered with punk posters and about 450 layers of spray paint. One such Friedrichshain squat cinema down the street from where I live has impressive red velvet curtains which are ceremoniously parted at showtime to reveal the weathered plaster wall which will receive the evening's images of anarchy. Once you've snaked your way through the bowels of the squat/bar/cinema, you can see an eclectic mix of Berlin characters: punks, anarchists, leftist intellectuals, unemployed slackers and shiftless night owls.

And maybe in the corner, a former pasty-faced film geek, wondering how he might look in a mohawk at age 42.