Place Clichy

I tried a new bar last evening, not very far from my place. I guess I like to stay around when I go out. It’s called Kunstliche Beatmung. There is a play on words with Beatmung. In the German language, you would read be at mung. But they did it another way and you have to read beat mung. The original translation would be kiss of life when they play with the beat movement. Isn’t it clever ? We went too early so we had the time to have a round in the bar. It’s well done 70’s like with color orange everywhere, some red and white. the deliriously retro look may well take your breath away. The psychedelic wallpaper could cause flashbacks while the white-ribbed tunnel will make you feel like Jonah inside the whale. Mellow electro, attentive bar staff and wallet-friendly cocktails give this place at the quiet end of Simon-Dach-Strasse an edge. The low-domed ceiling, plastic furniture and colored neon are like a cross between cocktail bar and space capsule. I heard from a friend that around midnight, the beautiful young things start dribbling in and any oddness is soon swallowed in the crush. But we decided to move because the friend I was with never went to the bar next door which I love, certainly because It’s French, Place Clichy. The bar Place Clichy gives a determinedly Parisian tone to Simon-Dach Strasse, one of the fullest of life streets of Friedrichshain. Thomas Laroche cultivates his nostalgia from Paris to East Berlin. In Simon-Dach Strasse, the banner attracts the eye of the Frenchman : place Clichy is a human-sized bar held by Thomas Laroche, a Parisian settled in Berlin for 3 years. The bar would have been able as well to be called Trocadéro or The Red Ball, but Thomas Laroche decided for Place Clichy. " The place in itself is not the madness, but it is the symbol of an alive thing. It is good Paris somewhere " he explains. Plate glass windows allow in a blow of eye to have an overview on the inside of the bar. A counter was papered with Canard Enchaîné, some posters of the Stiff Heads and old postcards hung on on the wall set the tone. The bar consists of two small rooms, lit by a warm light which inhale the Bohemia, a small charming port which could become a mark of writers, sailors and troubadours. The manager wanted exactly " a small place, an alive counter, where people of the counter are not far from based people, a place which made that people are close ". The music sticks very well on the atmosphere, we can hear it of the Noir Desir, Gainsbourg or Nina Simone. Tired by the Berlin bars, Thomas, big brown in the franc to speak, decides to realize this idea which trots him(her) in the head for a long time: " I had just a little short the bowl of it of bars in Berlin, or you have the old bars of district, "Kneipe", or you have the bars of factory as in the street, "bar-Ikéa", or bars " new Berlin ", I like but at the end of moment that makes too much grandmother's apartment of the 50s. I wanted a small bar as in Paris ". But Thomas, also professor to the French Institute, also wished that Place Clichy gives the opportunity to Germans to speak French and in a general way that it becomes a meeting place of all the horizons. The place was fool when we arrived and still fool when we left a few hours later, the bar completely smoky with cigarettes and our head with the (very) good wine.