Until the end of the 1980s, the walled city attracted radicals with its military service-exemption and subsidised dissidence. Geopolitical circumstances also made it hard to get out of town at weekends, so drinking and nightclubbing became the central form of leisure. After the Wall fell many scenes moved east, converting abandoned warehouses and industrial buildings into techno and house clubs that opened for days at a time. As the Love Parade grew and the underground scene spilled out on to the streets and into the mainstream, at times it seemed like the whole city was a club that wouldn't close. Liberal licensing laws still do not specify any closing hours and evenings out follow the classic continental time-frame, with restaurants serving until 11pm or midnight and clubs peaking between 2am and 4am.
Scenes vary according to neighbourhood, style, sexual persuasion and degree of sanity.
And like club and bar cultures in most big cities, Berlin's nightlife can be seen as a confluence of both locally expressed global developments in music and fashion and nocturnal distortions of the frictions and trends of daily life. While a comprehensive survey of Berlin clubland would require a whole book, musically oriented stylistic indicators can give rough impressions of particular Berlin scenes. Clubs and bars appear and disappear like pimples on the city's changing face. Particularly for clubs, we recommend you cross-check against local listings. To this end, clubbers and party-goers of all persuasions will be happy to find Berlin has a very developed information infrastructure.