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Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

theguardian.com

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Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#111
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this specifically techno/underground clubs you mean? My pokey city in Aus has like a dozen "EDM" clubs that spin a decent breadth of techno to house to dnb etc. Perhaps I should count myself lucky?

EDM isn't Techno. It's a bit like saying that hard rock is like metal (somewhat bad analogy, but I hope you get the point). I know you listed a range of genres but it's important to note that the Berlin techno scene would never consider itself part of EDM. In Europe, most EDM is happening in Amsterdam.

How did Amsterdam become the EDM capital?

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#112
We need an acknowledgment of the past, the origins, which may no longer be present. Detroit starting in the ‘80s and into the 90s would be the prime example. I wrote a short essay about the latter :

https://technotarek.com/shows/richie-hawtin

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#113
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a finite supply that can be build upon over time. That's why the prices are going up. If everyone suddenly had the same amount of money as the "consumption class", some of the millionaire would have had to prepare the food and clean the toilets. The whole idea of money is that it is something you are supposed to receive for creating value and use it to extract value from others by trading it. Fiat, gold, crypto…

The finite supply is space, not DJs. And that’s a mostly political problem as it’s not like there is a lack of space in general, but what you are allowed to do with that space.

Someone needs to turn stuff into an Apartment or a burger no matter how libertarian or communist the policies are. It takes time, it transforms a society.

Generally speaking, money is for bookkeeping among agents that produce and consume value and the production and consumption has natural speed within the laws of physics. When people who move around faster and demand stuff to consume than the people who produce, then you have local bubbles that disrupts the society.

Also, since the output of the people is finite the larger is your elite class the less stuff to consume for everyone. Better have you elites becoming elites because they dramatically increased the production of the stuff they consume(for example, they might have invented the internet and the services on it and improved efficiency of trade or they might have made great music and improved the working conditions of people who work in insulation, thus more people accepted the job etc.). If you have an elite that is growing faster than they improve the yield, then you have a parasitic class that might end up destroyed if grows too big.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked this up because I was surprised to hear about this. Context for those unfamiliar: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-07/berlin-pl... This is the kind of mistake that we made in the US decades ago, and the results are plain to see today in any neighborhood bisected by a freeway.

atlanta is trying to fix this by building a park over the interstate in the city center. Only tangentially related but it blows me away how ambitious the project is. The stated goal is for reconnecting communities on either side

It's a widely recognized problem in the US - they built the highways through the politically marginalized communities. The Biden administration has a program to repair some of that, and I wonder if that's where Atlanta is getting funding.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#115
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are urban areas. If you instead count by city limits, Berlin is bigger by a large margin [1]. This is the perpetual problem with defining "biggest" - to some the urban area of Paris might still be "Paris" but the vast majority of it is outside the city limits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_European...

This insistence on these officialities is frustrating, because the city limits are pretty arbitrary and have no bearing on the discussion at hand. Did you know that London (City of London) has less than 10 000 inhabitants? Apart from being a legal and historical peculiarity, it's largely irrelevant in most discussions. For this discussion (cultural centers of Europe), Greater Paris, Greater London and Berlin (they ha…

City limits are important because each city in a metro area could have different zoning and noise ordinance laws. Or even just law enforcement that's more or less strict in one city than another. This can help to shape the culture in each city in a metropolitan area.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#116
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be a bit pedantic: techno didn't come from Chicago but from Detroit :)

My bad. But the point stands. Complaining about a cultural movement that they have almost entirely gentrified is massively ironic.

I wouldn't say "gentrified", techno just evolved from the Detroit roots, first in the UK and then continental Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, etc.).

Techno came from an already gentrified African-American community in Detroit, the Belleville Three [0] were from a more affluent part of Detroit at the time, inspired by the 70s/80s German and Japanese electronic music scene, it was never like the roots of hip-hop...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belleville_Three

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#117
post #81
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Berlin. This isn't true at all. Berlin's underground scene is still quite strong, perhaps just not as strong as it used to be. There's more "in the open" stuff due to the popularity, yes, but there's still plenty of (sometimes literal) underground raves happening. I'd also argue that the most recent accelerator for the shift in culture in Berlin isn't so much the tourism, but the pandemic. People haven't re…

Tourism definitely wasn't a major drag on the techno scene. There's always been the tourist clubs and the clubs that were more underground. Berliners usually don't go to Berlin's best known clubs. (Who the hell goes to Watergate or Tresor? Old joke was that Tresor was the biggest club in Dresden.) I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat…

A room in a flat now for €500? Maybe way outside the ringbahn...

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#118
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tourism definitely wasn't a major drag on the techno scene. There's always been the tourist clubs and the clubs that were more underground. Berliners usually don't go to Berlin's best known clubs. (Who the hell goes to Watergate or Tresor? Old joke was that Tresor was the biggest club in Dresden.) I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat…

A room in a flat now for €500? Maybe way outside the ringbahn...

I was trying to make a comparison to the €100 rooms from 20 years ago. That would be a single room in a 4-6 person shared flat. Those are still €500-ish. (In places just outside the ring like Treptow, Britz, Wedding, Lichtenberg.) In my shared two person flat back then I paid €300 (bills included). That room now would be way over €500.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#119
post #4

According to many people, including record shop owners I’ve talked to, Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. Rich people nowadays buy property in Potsdam, and the scene is moving towards Leipzig. In a more general sense the old rave cities are making way, and have been making way, to other cities. A movement spanning more than 20 years now, thank…

https://ra.co/events/de/berlin events tonight in Berlin... parties at 100+ clubs, doesn't seem like anywhere comes close.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed Zur Klappe when I visited Berlin pre-pandemic times. It's literally underground and used to be a public toilet. And it's very close to the famous Mustafa's Gemuse Kebab, so you can try that afterwards.

Just don’t queue an hour at Mustafa's - it’s good Kebap, but it’s not that extraordinary. Rüya(m), Superhahn or Servet's make the same style of Gemüsekebap and are just as good.

Why go to Germany to get a Turkish meal? Any kebab in Istanbul is going to be better than whatever is available in Berlin. Better get some Schweinshaxe mit Sauerkraut...
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