Luminaries of Berlin’s Bar 25 cruise into Ocean Bangkok

NIGHT PROWL DJ Sese once played an 18-hour live set at Bar 25 on a handmade DJ booth with wheels, rolling it through the wooden shed/club overlooking the River Spree in Berlin’s Friedrichshain. On birthdays, the techno club would drop two metric tons of confetti from the timber rafters. Once they even did a French Revolution theme, with all the party-goers turned aristocrats in powder wigs and silk stockings. Sese was Marie Antoinette – right down to the busty dress – before being hauled from the DJ booth to face his fate beneath a homemade guillotine.

It may sound crazy, but this was Bar 25. From 2004 to 2010, it became more than just a place to party with worldwide notoriety. Bar 25 was a movement. Sebastian Coupé (DJ Sese) was there for the transformation, quickly becoming a child of Bar 25 and moving to the forefront of the madness. On Saturday, Sese along with Marcus Meinhardt and Nico Stojan, another Bar 25 alum, are teaming up with Bangkok’s With Love boys to throw one hell of an all-day party at Ocean Bangkok.

Sese first earned his nickname from a primary school teacher, and it stuck well into his teenage years when he started out as a hip-hop DJ under the name Sese Diamond. At the time, he was mixing for live MCs and his group even got signed to Virgin Records – something not well-known about him in Berlin’s nightlife.

The Munich native actually started out as a techno DJ at Bar 25, a story that he endearingly opens with “one tragic morning.” Sese came into the club in the wee hours after wrapping up a hip-hop gig and was hanging around backstage when the DJ told him she’d had enough for the night. Sese kindly offered to finish her set, and that’s when his talents on the decks were observed by those in charge.

Congratulations, Sese. You just landed a job as the new bartender!

“You see, everybody who was part of the bar also worked at the bar,” he explained. “So lots of people told me, ‘Go there, but don’t ever work there because it’s the beginning of the end.’”

From that point, it was down the rabbit hole – and Sese recalls that summer as one of the best of his life. He remembers bartending for 25 hours straight, “but it didn’t seem that long,” he said. “It was in the flow of it, you were partying all the time and changing costumes every five hours. The last 10 hours, the bar wasn’t even open anymore, we just closed the door and the family started to party.”

Bar 25 slowly expanded into a village, built piece-by-piece by its dedicated following. There was a fine-dining restaurant, cinema, a hostel and by the last season, a swimming pool. Sese lived in a little log cabin with a big bed and a sound system.

The bar eventually had its five-day closing party in 2010, when they were forced to leave the property that was officially owned by the Berlin City Cleaning Services. The land would come to yield EUR1.1 million per quarter, and the service company wanted to sell it to investors for urban development. There was a huge movement to fight the inevitable, including radical protests and demonstrations. Bar 25 became a symbol against the gentrification of Berlin.

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“It wasn’t just a little beach bar, it was a way of life,” Sese said. “People treated it as if it was an island, and of course those people didn’t want it to be destroyed.”

Since the club’s closing, Sese went on to became one of the founders of a Berlin venue called Chalet. He says it’s “much more adult and decent,” a departure from the Bar 25 days. The DJ-turned-entrepreneur has since sold off his share and heads up entertainment bookings, focusing on traveling around Europe and playing gigs. After the party in Thailand, he’ll hit the decks down in Bali and Australia.

In Berlin, Bar 25’s successor has turned out to be KaterHolzig, a large indoor and outdoor club that has tried to emulate the same wooden cabin atmosphere. It’s closing party is expected at the end of this year, when founder Christoph Klenzendorf moves into the EUR50 million Holzmarkt project. In the spirit of Bar 25, Holzmarkt is a self-sustaining ecovillage with urban gardens, housing, businesses and cultural centers – and a club of course, but nothing close to the size or stature of the legendary original.

However, DJ Sese admits he probably won’t be packing up and disappearing back into the wilderness anytime soon. He’s looking for the next big business venture of his own.

“On one hand, I’m still traveling on the name of that place, but on the other, I grew out of it a little bit,” he said. “Those years were a lot of fun, but they were wild. I didn’t want to go on like this for a much longer time … I think I’m a halfway intelligent guy, and it really shouldn’t be wasted.”

Photo: Bar25.de

 

FIND IT:

Ciroc and With Love present: The Resident DJs of Bar 25 on Tour at Ocean Bangkok

4pm to 2am, Saturday, Nov. 23

Entry is THB 300 including one drink until 9 pm, and 400 THB including one drink after

Ocean Bangkok, Sukhumvit 33

BTS Phrom Pong



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