Another Level: Space!

Saturday night was a big night for me.

After a couple months of having nothing to do locally on the weekends, beyond watching my own movies, this past Saturday night I had TWO parties to attend. One was a housewarming party in Jena, and the other was “Gays In Space” at Weimar’s Kunst Turm.

As the housewarming party was for a friend and colleague who probably doesn’t want dirty laundry aired here, I will skip discussing it in favor of the “Gays in Space,” which I went to with No Nickname Guy and his Hetero-sidekick.

We met up at a quarter to ten at Weimar’s Hauptbahnhof and headed over to the Kunst Turm, which is a renovated water tower. Where once steam engines bellied up to get watered, one can now enjoy art in a refined setting or, on certain occasions, a dance party. What follows are key points of the evening.

• The first thing I noted to No Nickname Guy and Hetro-sidekick was that for the first time, in memory, I was standing in line for something in Weimar! Seriously, we got there at about 11, and there was a line to get in.
• Ouch! Cover was steep—in theory it was 8€, unless you registered in advance for a 2€ discount. I didn’t, but the woman at the front door was distracted and gave me 4€ back from my tenner; she then tried to short No Nickhame Guy 10€ in change.
• The Kunst Turm is a fantastic party venue. It has four levels in the tower, and for Gays in Space, there was a lounge, dance floor, bar, and semi-dark dark room (bottom to top).
• The place was busy—I never would have guessed that there were that many gay or gay-friendly people in the area.
• Drinks were reasonably priced—a rarity for any bar or club in Germany. I was having Amaretto-Cherries for 3€. I didn’t feel ripped off.
• The dance floor seemed appropriately sized for Weimar; and the crowd was definitely mixed Homo-Hetero—which probably says something about the lack of dance venues in Thüringen.
• The DJ sucked. The music might have gotten the crowd dancing for a minute or two, but then he would change tracks and apparently not notice that the crowd had stopped dancing.
• When the lights went completely out in the darkroom, people wanted to see what was going on. Not that there was anything illicit going on when I was up there (other than me reaching for the Hetero-sidekick’s fly), but the people didn’t seem to understand that darkrooms ought to be dark.
• Free condoms were available in the darkroom the entire evening, right near the door.
• Besides No Nickname Guy and Hetero-sidekick, I recognized only Jörg Wätzel.
• Three urinals and one stall are probably three urinals and one stall too few for a men’s toilet at a gay dance party held in the Kunst Turm.
• The stairs were slippery—especially as the humidity built up through the party. With no air conditioning and people lining the stairs, I didn’t feel all that safe going from floor to floor.
• Holy Shit it was smoky! I didn’t take a shower when I got home, but when I woke up, I washed my hair twice and scrubbed my skin and I still could smell residual smoke. Why do Germans smoke so much—it’s enough to make me skip the next Another Level Party.