Mel Gordon - Voluptuous Panic - The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin

Small nightclub with limited floor seating in the back. Sofa-like chairs are arranged against the walls. Along the secluded second-floor balustrade, there are a dozen partitioned areas, consisting of low-lying tables with sunken leg spaces underneath.

Entertainment:Dapper-looking orchestra. Dancing on a long red carpet spread over parquet floor. Most customers come here for the dining and private socializing although rhapsodic female impersonators perform in the early evening.

Unusual:This is the only Berlin club where male and female transvestitism is a natural, if elevated, form of erotic display. The darkened and comfortable surroundings on the balcony are ideal spots for midnight trysts. Little in the way of commercial sex.

Area:NORTH BERLIN. Behind the St. Johannes Evangelical Church. (Also called the LINIEN-CELLAR.)

Atmosphere:Extremely friendly, if a bit on the wild side. Each patron is checked out or greeted by Karl, the elder of Berlin’s Spanners. He sits studiously on a wooden block outside the Kaschemme. Only Karl’s clicking approval opens the cellar door for approaching customers.

Clientele:Wealthy Crackers and their colleagues, pickpockets, mulatto prostitutes in revealing blouses, boxers, assorted cocaine addicts; hand-job whores; cocky Alphonses; suspicious Polish-Jewish smugglers, and sickly Gravelstones. After 1:30 a.m., the “Hub of Berlin’s Lowlife” begins to heat up.

Decor:Fifteen or so bare tables and a bar-counter. Dim, blue lighting.

Entertainment:A droopy zither-player intermittently plays a few chords. Singer-Franz (a late-evening patron who claims he once sung with the Komische Oper) provides obscene ditties while his Kalle , the refined Cold Ente, and her promiscuous rival, Bootjob-Else, flash their tits.

Tourists:Not if Karl can help it.

Unusual:This is the best place to come for underworld gossip. The Stocking’s Boost , Uncle Hans, knows all and tells all. Also, Hans specializes in settling petty disputes among his oft-feuding customers.

Area:BERLIN NORTH. Near STETTINER Train Station. (Formerly the BORSIG-CELLAR.)

Atmosphere:Air thick with mischief but friendly. Place picks up considerably after 3 a.m. Hundegustav, the Boost , and his wife attempt to make everyone feel at home. A waiter, who wears a white coat over his nightshirt, also helps maintain order.

Clientele:Gangster bar habitués: pickpockets, assorted Grids, Kontroll-Girls and their Louies , sadistic Johns, German-speaking Africans from the Cameroons, a few homeless types. All the Berlin Police Commissioners (the Bulls) and City Public Defenders like to make a showing here afterhours as private citizens and have their own tables.

Decor:An old coal cellar with tables and chairs.

Entertainment:A trio of musicians: a guitarist, a banjo player, and a piano/accordion-player vocalist. Spectators also sing along and play percussion at their tables. Execrable, homemade Berlin North imitations of tango and Charleston music.

Tourists:Good number of thrill-seekers—although the neighborhood is a bit on the dangerous side. Outside are always a few limousines and hired cars. (Police usually raid Hundegustav’s the day after any reported violent hold-up.)

Unusual:Dive named after the Boost Gustav, who once worked as a dogcatcher. Also rumored that he still enjoys eating dog meat. Hence the name “Dog-Gustav.”

Area:BERLIN EAST. 200 feet south from SCHLESSISCHER Train Station.

Atmosphere:Lowest of the low. Disorderly and crowded after 9 p.m. Tumultuous every night. (Said to be the inspiration for Bertolt Brecht’s The Three Penny Opera. )

Clientele:All deadbeat underworld types, especially Ludwigs , Grids, cocaine dealers, marriage-swindlers, and Kontroll-Girls .

Decor:Old restaurant cellar.

Entertainment:Music by the “Armchair Orchestra.” Starting at 10 p.m., a cabaret. This normally consists of six standard acts: a dopey over-the-hill chanteuse; a “quick-poet,” who creates clever rhythms from audience suggestions (almost all obscene); a “husband-and-wife” dance-team; a Bavarian folk singer; a neighborhood ventriloquist, and Jack, the Escape-King, who demonstrates how to slip out of regulation police handcuffs and other arm and leg restraints.

Tourists:Occasional.

Unusual:Lots of drunken behavior, culminating in shouting and inane threats to the cabaret performers, who are called “Shits,” “Garbage,” “Pimps,” “Fart-gas,” and “Bulls.” The headwaiter Erich does a heavy trade in loan-sharking and high-quality cocaine transactions.

Area:BERLIN NORTH. Near the ORANIENBURGER TOR. (Sometimes referred to by its old name, the CAFÉ ROLAND.

Atmosphere:Rough. Bizarre. The cauliflower-eared Spanner is dressed in a prison guard’s uniform and menacingly slaps a rubber truncheon against his palm. Only open from 1 to 6 a.m.

Clientele:Real gangster-types, Grids, pickpockets, big-shot pimps, Kontroll-Girls , petty thieves, hangers-on, lovesick Nuttes . Many tough-looking ex-cons with shaved heads and tattoos.

Decor:The entire establishment is designed like a hideous prison restaurant- cum -execution chamber. (Largely based on the actual dining quarters of the Berlin penitentiary at Plötzensee.) The windows are outfitted with thick iron grills, the tables are made of heavy wood, and waiters wear stripped and numbered convict uniforms. Against the main wall stands a crude replica of Sing Sing’s electric chair.

Entertainment:Each night, usually between 2 and 3 a.m., a customer is selected to be executed on the Iron Lady. As soon as the “condemned” is seated and placed behind the “Swedish curtains,” which conceal his face, a mad ruckus ensues throughout the restaurant with whistles, obscene jeering, much banging and stumping of boots. A particularly convincing victim, who squirms in realistic agony, is often encouraged to face the coup de grace several times before his delighted public.

Food:Prison fare. All the cutlery and dishware are regulation cell-block tin. (Not worth stealing.)

Tourists:Acceptable if subdued in dress and respectable of the real cons, who look with disdain on anyone with less than one year’s hard-time incarceration. Unattended coats, wallets, passports, and wrist-watches are sometimes outsiders’ involuntary contribution to this jaunty, underworld milieu.