Club CCCP (Berlin)

Berlin is one hot spot if it comes to Russian clubs. Squeezed between the best of the west and the crème de la crème de l’est it offers a strange Club-Crossover. As so, the Club CCCP in Berlin-Mitte is a Soviet Nightclub a go-go.

Berlin is one hot spot if it comes to Russian clubs. Squeezed between the best of the west and the crème de la crème de l’est it offers a strange Club-Crossover. As so, the Club CCCP in Berlin-Mitte is a Soviet Nightclub a go-go.

During the cold war this tiny location in Torstrasse was a top secret travel agency for apparatchiks and secret service agents, who wanted a golden ticket to the CCCP or to the west. From this time a sign of the Russian embassy at the main door still tells vivid stories. In the nineties the rooms served as a gallery and now it is one of the most authentic clubs in town.

The owners are Russian and the interior has a lot of a Komunalka in downtown Moskwa. But funny enough, none of the guests nor the barkeeper is Russian. Even funnier, Dzemek behind the counter, throwing the Vodka bottles, is polish. Now that is some kind international booze-conspiracy, which probably could only happen in a place like Berlin. The European melting pot creates its own breed of pale party people, who define themselves rather about the clubs they are going to, than about their national heritage. The guests in the club are mainly artists, students, travelers and on our very night out an MTV-crew from New Zealand.

It is the irony of the new millennium, that the deceased Soviet Union and its symbols have now no political but a fashionable image. Let’s face it, the CCCP is now a brand like American Apparel or Lomography, and I like it.

The ultimate de-politicalisation you can witness in the club CCCP. The name of the club is printed on a surfboard (an outrageous blasphemy;) and the soviet star in the club-logo blends mystery with history. The illumination inside is coherently low and red like the square and collects neat elements of a time, when the world was still a clearly structured place. The wallpaper is thick as a carpet and decorated with flowers, the lamps looks like the ones our grannies used to have. On the ceiling reflects a massive disco-ball the red sparkles and a wall of vodka-bottles is beautifully build behind the counter.

My favorite spot was a little séparée behind the toilet, where you could see the combined trophies of the west and the east: A flipper-machine in the one corner, which is secretly observed Towarischsch Breshnev, and traffic signals in the other. And in what color does the signal blink? Red! Of course! The spleen with the traffic-signal is quite a German issue, because the East-German “Ampelmännchen” (http://www.ampelmann.de) survived the re-unification and is now even adapted by West German streets, because he is a cool brother. Nowadays we even have a Ampelfrau, but this is another story. Everything is timeless design now and in what place could all blend better together then in the new CCCP, in Berlin?

Link: http://www.myspace.com/cccpclub

written by wil6ka on 2008-08-13 #places #party #red #nightlife #berlin #location