Berlin gilds yes as rough. If you draw comparisons, it seems exaggerated. With regard to nightlife, for example, I experienced it very differently in contrast to my old home in the Ruhr area: relaxed, diverse, largely free of masculinity rituals.

On the Metropol story that my colleague Sigrid Kneist on the occasion of a research project on theater construction at Nollendorfplatz [T+ Abo]I’m going to add a metropolitan anecdote from the 1980s that DJ Westbam tells in his autobiography “The Power of the Night” and in which I feel very much at home.

“Tropical humid air, wafts of fog and a pulsating sound suited me. Individual figures slowly appear in the fog. Bearded, wear biker boots, leather jackets, leather jeans and leather caps on their heads. One had sunglasses on.”

Westbam was “scared for a second” because the “guys looked hardcore, like Auge, the bouncer and rocker who used to punch me in the muzzle when I was a punk at the Old Daddy in Dortmund”.

But then “one of the leather guys turned to the bar and I saw that he had cut a circular hole in his leather jeans with his buttocks sticking out.” That saw “a lot less
martial”.

Westbam had arrived at the place that was to have a strong influence on him and his music.

Here are a few more topics that you will find in the current newsletter for Tempelhof-Schoeneberg from the Tagesspiegel:

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• Accommodation for refugees: Tempohomes are empty again
• Support for education: Hans-Jürgen Kuhn is involved in “Schöneberg helps”
• Fundraisers: This is still in use
• New apartments at Südkreuz: topping-out ceremony on the Schöneberger Linse
• Smelly Ginkgos: An initiative of the CDU
• Development plan, less money for the schools, Degewo construction project in Marienfelde: BVV topics
• Tempelhof under observation: An exhibition about Stasi activities
• Dispute over the pool planning for the district
• Vandalism and break-ins: The damage in city toilets is immense
• The newsletter is written by: Sigrid Kneist

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The Tagesspiegel newsletter you can order here for free, are available for all twelve Berlin districts with more than 262,000 subscriptions. In it we inform you once a week in a bundled and compact way about what’s going on in your district. We also let the readers have their say in the newsletters, after all nobody knows the Berlin neighborhoods as well as the people who live there.