The WaPo travel reporter is an attractive mid-30s white woman. She writes: "When I got to the door, the bouncer said I could come in if I took my pants off." She'd prepared by wearing a black one-piece swimsuit as a base layer. She "soon realized I would have been in good company in my underwear alone — or even fully bottomless."
This gets my rarely used "underpants" tag.
I agree with the Berliner in the comments. It's sad when something local gets co-opted by tourists... even if the damned tourists will take off their pants as the price of entry and even if the pants-off price of entry only works if you are decently attractive and somewhat young.
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45 comments:
If you have to take your pants off to get in, how are they optional?
That's one way of addressing the immigrant pick-pocket problem.
You old, she pregnant
In a night club, pants are a supply driven problem.
Disrupting the supply of pants offers a chance for demand-reduction strategies to work, as they apparently did for that woman in Berlin.
I’m headed to The Masters tomorrow. I might try taking my pants off to get in the clubhouse. Wish me luck…
"If you have to take your pants off to get in, how are they optional?"
I see 2 possibilities:
1. It was the bouncers option. He decided who had to take off their pants.
2. The would-be clubgoer had the option of not entering the club. It's the kind of option traditionally known as a "Hobson's choice."
I've never been to Berlin.
Munich was a blast! Alcohol, lots of alcohol. Hofbrau Haus, if you go. Buxom blondes walk on the tables and bring you beer. In the bathroom, you pee with your hands on your hips. That's what I discovered. How do they aim? Is it magic? I gave that dude some room.
Also, in the bathroom, there's a non-attractive woman who is the towel girl. She just stands there, with towels. Probably because of all the hands-on-the-hips peeing that the Munichers are doing. I think I was supposed to tip her. I was just 16 and kind of freaked out by the Hofbrau Haus bathroom.
Poor old ann.
What a drag it is getting old.
Pretty sure if you agree to accept others in your holes, ladies will get in even if they're not so young, attractive or female... especially as the night goes on and men need release.
Pants are like seatbelts.
It's not just a good idea. It's the law.
IIRC, Hobson was that Englishman who told his horses, "Look, you can wear the horse pants or you can sod off to the glue factory."
Berliner here
…you know I can’t recall ever seeing pants on them. Powdered sugar yah, hole or no hole, sometimes choco glazed…oh, are we talking people from Berlin? Soory, ecer since Kennedy ruined it…
Waiting patiently for the first "Ich bin ein...." post/riff.
If you take off your pants, is there a pants check room, or do you have to carry them around with you?
If you check your pants at the pants check room, where do you put the claim check? How do you tip your waiter?
Berliners are as sophisticated as bars that give free pitchers of beer to women on Wednesday night.
There had been formerly no law against public nudity in Brattleboro, VT, except that you had to arrive naked, you could not strip in public, until an elderly German tourist walked down Main Street naked and well, the local business owners demanded that something be done, and amending the law to limit it to people in decent physical shape and young enough to not offend the eye would never pass scrutiny, they they changed the law that you could not parade around the business district naked, which kind of takes the point out of it for exhibitionists.
I bet they don't enforce that dress code for someone in a burka. What about men? How is this different, except selecting out certain groups for humiliation by identity?
Tina Trent- I wondered that, too. Are women the only ones who are asked to depants?
I had an MRI of my knee last week. The crazy noise from that machine sounded just like the demonic techno-pop I heard years ago at a night club in Berlin. And I kept my pants on for both of these experiences.
I see London
I see France
I see Hitlers Underpants.
Berlin Nightclub scene 1940
When we were on Safari in Africa last year, the Germans were notorious for walking around outside without shirts. For one day.
This sounds like the decadence of Germany in the Weimar Republic days of the 1920s. Who knew the Germans were capable of out depraving their neighbors to the west that they looked down upon as corrupt.
“No one goes there anymore because it is so crowded.”
Saint Croix said...
Munich was a blast!
..I was just 16..
people here Keep talking about Europe of the mid 20th century As IF that has ANY thing to do with today's Europe.
so, a serious (and respectful) question for Saint Croix..
within a decade or so.. how old are you?
i know that sounds rude, but what i'd really like to know is:
when was this? when you went to Munich?
the 90s?
the 80s?
1910?
i just think that;
a) it'd give clarity to people's comments, if we knew the decade
b) people NEED to consider the immortal words of SE Hinton:
That Was THEN.. This Is NOW
Some tourists take a photograph/Les Boys don't get one laugh/He says they're used to it....
https://youtu.be/3_dQVzQgdrY?si=9c6I-bt9meuCv8bs
CC, JSM
Aggie: "If you check your pants at the pants check room, ...[h]ow do you tip your waiter?"
I think they've figured out ways to 'tip' the waiter, iykwimaityd. CC, JSM
Some thoughts for WaPo, if you plan to send an undercover reporter to do a story on naked nightclubs.
1. For that undercover job, do NOT pick a reporter unwilling to go fully uncovered.
2. When you fail to get the story; when management fails to pick a qualified reporter for the job, do NOT try to punk your readers by printing a non-story story.
I lived in Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Mountains for 30 years. Every weekend during the summer and every weekend of good weather throughout the rest of the year. Hordes and hordes of Bay area flatlanders would clog up highway 17 to come to our beach and redwood Paradise.
I always viewed it as a small price to pay for living in One of the most geographically desirable pieces of real estate in the entire world. Besides, there was plenty of stuff to do where the tourons never ventured.
The loss of the black on black Berlin, nightclub vibe of Teutonic tattoos and increasing grotesque booger hooks sounds like a small price to pay for someone else contributing to your tax base.
Pics or it didnt happen nadine
Tourists are a scourge. Cheap air fares - and especially "adventure travel" tour packages (rolling eyes) - are the worst thing to have happened to many of the world's great places...and to actual travelers.
Germans are famous for stripping naked whenever and wherever. It's routine to see nude women workers sunbathing in the nude at lunch time all over the Englisher Garden in the center of Munich during summer. A Danish colleague, who was giving me a tour of the beaches on the West coast above Esberg, even apologized for the nudity everywhere on the beaches, explaining that they were all German tourists. When you get a Dane complaining about people exposing too much skin you know there's a problem!
Howard, the downfall of Santa Cruz was the installation of center divider crash barriers on 17. It used to take real guts to go over the hill. Nowadays any goof can do it.
On the Croation island of Brac, there are signs posted at the popular beaches (like Zlatni Rat) that "FKK is forbidden". I.e. no nudity.
Almost anyone who goes to a nightclub understands that it's a meat market with meat market rules. Those who complain...probably don't belong in that club...
A long time ago a couple computer programmers sued for being bounced at the door of a club -- they were not sexy and wearing office business casual clothes.
Yes, Germans get naked everywhere. They are easy to spot in National Parks without saying a word.
That's right Fred. Plus the Republican city fathers in the early '60s allowing the University of California to construct a campus within city limits.
What's the campus was constructed? It attracted liberals and Tommy do-gooders from all across the country, especially the Northeast to invade and pollute California with their flatlander philosophies. Of particular note, student Mike Rotkin wrote a thesis of how a small minority of progressives using votes from temporary residential college students could take over a sleepy tourist/industrial town and convert it into a progressive Paradise. Thus, laid the foundations for the Santa Cruz action Network that ultimately transformed Santa Cruz from a blue collar middle class, sleepy Beach Town into an elite playground for tech Moguls and their government leeches that keep the riff Raff out.
"Pants optional" was another joke that the Germans ruined by taking it seriously.
Munich has great art and science museums, but our school group ruined it by just hanging around the Hofbrauhaus. We did get to see the rococco Residenztheater though.
"Berlin? Yes, I know it well. I stabbed a woman in a bar in Berlin... I also sexually assaulted a horse in Berlin."
This was discussed this morning on the radio, coming home from the gym. A number of people called in and claimed to have been to the Berghain.
The man guarding the door is the infamous "Sven." There are websites that will help you determine if you are acceptable.
Apparently, one can spend several days in there without seeing the light of day.
“Touch my monkey… love him! Now we dance!”
—— Sprockets
imTay said...
“…….they changed the law that you could not parade around the business district naked, which kind of takes the point out of it for exhibitionists.”
Tell that to the old wrinkled naked dudes in the Castro. We’d all appreciate it.
If you're going to Santa Cruz by way of 17 you're doing it wrong.
Mid 30s is too old for the club scene, even in Berlin. Both the reporter and the Tourists ruined Berlin commenter need to grow up. Berlin will be all Muslim soon anyway.
It was 1985. I was 17, not 16. Mom, Dad, me and my brother, in the Hofbrau Haus. On the plane ride over, either Mom or Dad leaned over and asked me if I would like a beer. "Yes I would!" It was a fun trip.
I did try to smuggle out all the little bottles of alcohol out of one of the hotels. They were all in my luggage. And my Dad got the bill and he was like, "What the hell is this bill?" That's when I discovered that the little bottles of alcohol in the hotel rooms are not free.
I haven't been to Germany in a few years, but I used to visit regularly for business. The pictures in the article reminded me of my perpetual surprise at how much graffiti there is in Germany. Even the most glorious renaissance buildings would be tagged without apparent pushback.
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