48 The Economist February 6th 2021
International
The future of nightclubsDon’t stand so close to me
I
n normal timesit is notoriously diffi-
cult to get past the bouncers at Berghain,
a techno nightclub in eastern Berlin. But in
September the establishment flung its
doors wide: anyone could come in, not to
dance, but to inspect work by 115 Berlin art-
ists. The organisers tried hard to recreate
the club’s forbidding atmosphere. Stickers
were placed over visitors’ phone-cameras.
Security officials, released from furlough,
exhibited an authentic grumpiness. Vis-
itors were denied anything as useful as
signs telling them about the art.
The venue’s motive was simple. As a
nightclub, it had had to close as part of
measures intended to limit the spread of
covid-19. But as a gallery, it could reopen
(though it had to close again in November).
It is not the only club to have found an in-
novative way to make ends meet during
the pandemic. KitKatClub, one of the city’s
fetish joints, is renting its outdoor space to
a firm offering covid-19 tests.
Like restaurants, cinemas and hotels,nightclubs are bound to suffer in a pan-
demic. Indeed, sars-cov-2, the virus
which causes covid-19, thrives in poorly
ventilated spaces and spreads more easily
at close quarters and when people are
breathing heavily—as they tend to on
dance floors.Saturday night fever
Even before governments had started to
shut down the hospitality industry, night-
clubs were recognised as an unusually se-
rious vector of infection. In May South Ko-
rea’s government advised them to close for
a month after tracing a number of cases
back to gay clubs in Seoul. Where clubs
were allowed to open, they tried to make it
work. But whereas al frescodining, or cine-
mas and theatres with half the seats out of
action, may still appeal, socially distanced
clubbing misses the point.
The questions posed by covid-19 for all
hospitality and social industries are: first,
whether you can hang on long enough forthe world to return to something like nor-
mal; and second, whether that normality
will include you. For restaurants that can
switch to home delivery, survival until re-
vival seems possible. Cinemas were thriv-
ing when the pandemic struck; they can
hope for the vigour to return afterwards.
For clubs, the trends diverge. In rich coun-
tries the pandemic may be over soon—but
populations were already ageing and clubs
ailing. In poor ones they entered the pan-
demic in better health. But a return to nor-
mality could take much longer: Africa may
not reach herd immunity until 2024. If
dance floors are to host a repeat of the
Roaring Twenties, clubs everywhere will
have to innovate.
In rich countries fewer people are going
clubbing because of greater competition,
online-dating sites, growing abstemious-
ness—and, above all, ageing. In the decade
before the pandemic, the number of night-
clubs shrank by 21% in Britain, and by 10%
in both America and Germany, according
to ibisWorld, a market-research firm. In
big cities the decline has been particularly
sharp. London has lost around half of its
clubs in the past decade. New ones have
opened but not in sufficient numbers to
offset the fall. Rents have risen and visitor
numbers have declined. In Britain licens-
ing changes introduced in 2005 have al-
lowed pubs and bars to stay open later, vy-
ing with clubs for late-night custom. SinceBERLIN
Even before covid-19 nightclubs were struggling. The pandemic has left them
fighting for their survival