Reeperbahn

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The Reeperbahn is a street in Hamburg's St. Pauli district, the centre of Hamburg's nightlife and also the city's red-light district. In German it is also called "die sündige Meile" ("the sinful mile").

Name

The name Reeperbahn comes from the old Low German word Reep meaning "a heavy rope for a ship"; in former times the street was a ropewalk where these ropes were produced for the nearby harbour.

The street, and its side streets

The street is lined with many restaurants, night clubs and bars. There are also strip clubs, sex shops, brothels, a sex museum and the like. The Operettenhaus, a musical-theatre, is also located at the Reeperbahn. It played Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats for many years and now Mamma Mia!, an ABBA-musical. There are other theatres at the Reeperbahn (St. Pauli Theater, Imperial Theater, Schmidts Tivoli) and also several Cabarets/Varietés.

A famous landmark is the Davidwache, a police-station located on the South side of the Reeperbahn at the cross street Davidstraße. Street prostitution is legal during certain times of the day on Davidstraße. The Herbertstraße, a short side street of the Davidstraße, has prostitutes behind windows waiting for customers. Unlike De Wallen, the red-light district in Amsterdam, it is closed off with a large gate and juveniles and women are not allowed in. Despite the sign which says women are not allowed to enter the street, it is not officially prohibited, only strongly discouraged by the police. The prostitutes in the Herbertstraße are known to be hostile to those who enter with no intention of paying for sex, "just for a look", even throwing perfume-filled condoms at women.

The Große Freiheit ("Great Freedom") is a cross street on the North Side with several bars, clubs and a Catholic church. In former years, several sex theatres here (Salambo, Regina, Colibri, Safari) would show live sex acts on stage. As of 2007, the Safari is the only live sex theatre left in Germany. The popular table dance club Dollhouse now takes the place of the Salambo. The street's name comes from the fact that Catholics were allowed to practice their religion here at a time when this district did not yet belong to Hamburg; they were forbidden from doing so in Protestant Hamburg proper.

In 1967, Europe's largest brothel at the time, the six-floor Eros Center, was opened on the Reeperbahn. It was closed in the late 1980s amidst the AIDS scare.

In 2006/2007, ten members of the "Marek Gang" which controls brothels on and near the Reeperbahn were charged with pimping in a large trial. The judge rejected the charge of forming a criminal gang and handed out suspended sentences: the men had started relationships with young women in local discotheques in order to recruit them to work in their brothels, and this is illegal if the women are under 21 years of age; some men had also abused some of their women.

The Beatles

In the early 1960s, The Beatles (who had not yet become world-famous) played in several clubs around the Reeperbahn, including the Star-Club, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten and Indra. Stories about the band's residencies, onstage and offstage antics are legendary; some stories are true (on a dare, John Lennon played a song set in his underwear, while George Harrison replied by playing a later set with a toilet seat around his neck), others inflated (the band urinating in an alley as nuns walked past was told rather differently later). A fellow musician, Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, made a crude tape recording of their last New Year's Eve show, at the Star-Club in December 1962; a cleaned-up version of the tape was later released as an album, later characterized by Harrison as "Awful."

Famously John Lennon is quoted: "I might have been born in Liverpool - but I grew up in Hamburg".

In memory of this time it is planned to built a "Beatles Plaza" at the cross of Reeperbahn and Große Freiheit.

Movies, songs, etc.

The popular 1944 movie Große Freiheit Nr. 7 tells the story of a singer (played by Hans Albers) who works in a Reeperbahn club and falls in love with a girl played by Ilse Werner. Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann played in the 1954 movie Auf der Reeperbahn nachts um halb eins ("On the Reeperbahn at 00:30 am"). The title song, sung by Albers, is still popular to this day and can often be heard in St. Pauli.

In 1958, Trinidadian calypso artiste, Lord Invader recorded a track entitled My Experience On The Reeperbahn. It recalls a time when he was conned by a transvestite. You cannot tell a man from a woman. I was a man dancing hand in hand with a man dressed as woman on the Reeperbahn.

Reeperbahn is the name of a Swedish 80's band. The Finnish artist Irwin Goodman has made a song and an album called "St.Pauli ja Reeperbahn". It is also mentioned in the Elvis Costello song "Human Hands", in Van Morrison's song "Heavy Connection" and in the Midnight Oil song "Mountains of Burma". The punk band The Toy Dolls has a song titled "Caught up the Reeperbahn" first released on their 1993 album "Absurd-Ditties".

On May 14th, 1998, The Smashing Pumpkins played a free concert on the street, drawing so many people that some were forced to watch from the roofs of the newsstands.

Tom Waits' 2002 release Alice contains a track called "Reeperbahn." Australian pop-punk band The Hard-Ons have a song called "Don't Fear The Reaperbahn" on their 2007 album Most People Are Nicer Than Us. Its title is a play on the Blue Öyster Cult song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper".

The Toy Dolls released a song called "Caught Up Reeperbahn" on their Absurd-Ditties album.

Pubs, Discotheques, Shops

Aftershave (Funk/House/Black)
Angie's Nightclub (Soul/Jazz/Livebands)
Betty Ford Klinik
Beat Club
Café Keese
Change (Gay)(Electronica)
China Lounge (House) website
Cobra Bar
Condomerie Hamburg (shop) website
Docks (Trance/Latin/RnB/Mixed) website
Cult Club (70s, 80s, Classics) website
Dollhouse (Strip Club) Info
Echochamber (Reggae/Dancehall/Electro) website
Erotic Art Museum
Funky Pussy Club (HipHop/R&B) Info
Frida B (Mixed)
Große Freiheit 36 (Mixed) website
Grünspan (Mixed/Livebands) website
Hasenschaukel website
Kaiserkeller (rock/indie/alternative/crossover) (belongs to Große Freiheit 36)
La Cage (House/Techno)
Las Vegas Jackpot (Casino)
Lounge (House/Soul/Latin/Lounge) Info
LOVE Club (House, Jaava Electronica, Hip-Hop, R&B)
Mandarin Kasino (HipHop/RnB/Funk/Soul/Reggae/Livebands) Info
Molotow (Livemusic/Clubnights/Rock) website
Mojo Club (Blackmusic/Groove/Soul/Jazz)
Pacha (House) website
Panoptikum (waxworks) website
Rutsche (Dancehall/Techno/Pop/Rock) website
Schmidts Tivoli (Theater) website
Sexy Heaven (Sex Shop)
Soundgarden (Pop/Rock/Electro/Techno/Oldie)
Superfly (House/HipHop/Mixed) website
Thomas Read (House/Pop/R&B, Irish Pub) website
Tunnel (Trance/Techno/Hardstyle/Hardcore) website
Waagenbau (Electronica/Techno/HipHop) website

References

External links

http://reeperbahn.hamburg.de - links and information about the reeperbahn (in German)
http://www.reeperbahn.de - also links to different clubs, bars, restaurants, etc. (in German)
http://www.backtony.com - Nightlife and scene Magazine around the Reeperbahn. (in German)
http://21orover.com/discus/messages/43/1010.html - Guide to Sex in Hamburg area. (in English)
http://www.szene-in-hamburg.de/reeperbahn.html - the night life in Hamburg on the Reeperbahn. (in German)

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Last updated on Monday March 10, 2008 at 16:40:37 PDT (GMT -0700)
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