A Portrait of Bouncers
KILLA SCHUETZE, ROBERT JOHNSON (OFFENBACH) & TRESOR (BERLIN)
The Robert Johnson in Offenbach near Frankfurt am Main and Tresor in Berlin are both world-renowned clubs that have been around since the 1990s. Killa Schuetze has been guarding club doors for 15 years – first in Frankfurt, now in Berlin.
By Sascha Ehlert
Sascha Ehlert: Did this job come to you – or did you come to the job? And when and where did it happen?
Killa Schuetze: You could say the job came to me. That was in 2008, in Frankfurt am Main. I’d just got back from Portugal and needed work. Back then, I was part of a close circle of friends, and a lot of them worked at the Robert Johnson. When one of the women got pregnant, I was asked if I wanted to take her place.
Did you get used to the work quickly or did you have to develop a thick skin first to be able to deal with all the experiences you had at the door of a techno club?
Both a bit. Obviously, when you start out as a bouncer, you have certain preconceptions about the job, and at first you try to live up to them. You don’t have formal training or anything like that beforehand. It’s all about learning by doing. But all the people working at the Robert Johnson at that time were friends, so it all happened very naturally.
To what extent has this job shaped you as a person, and how much of a club-goer were you before?
In the 1990s, I used to go to hip-hop clubs in Frankfurt and the surrounding area. Then in around 2000, I started going to house and techno clubs like Monza or the Robert Johnson. Then I lived abroad for a few years and I didn’t go out much during that time. It was only when I came back and suddenly landed this job at the Robert Johnson that I started getting into techno and house culture. And it was only then that I started understanding what subculture can achieve – and how much you can be part of this change yourself, for example as a woman bouncer at a club door like that.
From today’s perspective, how did the Robert Johnson’s decision to work with a female door team impact Frankfurt’s nightlife at that time?
I think this was one of many small steps towards equality in club door policies. The Robert Johnson wasn’t the first club to do something like this. The legendary Dorian Gray at Frankfurt airport also had a female bouncer. And around the same time in Berlin, women were also starting to get door jobs. But it has definitely progressed since then, so it’s now relatively common for people who are perceived as female to work on the doors.
We’re always sober and on guard.
That’s a good question. First of all, of course, it doesn’t usually feel like we’re part of the party. We’re always sober and on guard. And we have a certain responsibility to ensure that the people inside, the ones who want to behave freely, have fun and who aren’t sober, are safe. We’re also in a different room from the group of people who don’t want to “be careful”. Nevertheless, we still feel like we’re part of the party. After all, we see each guest twice an evening. And the second time, when they leave, they usually look very different to the time when they arrived. Ideally, you can tell they’ve had a great night out.
So in a way you’re like Cerberus guarding these clubs, these spaces that are, to some extent, detached from reality.
That’s really how I feel sometimes, or at least I can understand the metaphor. Guests cross a kind of threshold when they come in – and that also means a change of consciousness, regardless of whether this is triggered by the room, the music, the dancing or drugs.
You told me during our initial talk that you quit the Robert Johnson when the pandemic struck and then didn’t work as a bouncer for a while before you took a door job in Berlin. How did it feel for you in that in-between time, without the routine of working nights at weekends?
Actually, being a bouncer has always only ever been a small part of my life – as it was for most of my friends back then in Frankfurt. Everyone was sort of studying, had part-time jobs or were involved with art, and they were working on the doors just to do something different. But the pandemic was a tough time for many because clubs aren’t businesses in the traditional sense. The people who regularly work there usually do so on a freelance or mini-job basis. So it’s not the kind of job where you’re covered by social security, where you work reduced hours or anything like that. It’s different in some big clubs, of course, but most club workers have very precarious employment. This was a really hard time for me as well, but I did finish my degree in photography at Folkwang University during that time, and I really enjoyed being able to immerse myself completely in my art. Then came the job offer from Tresor.
Were you aware of the club’s background when the invitation came?
I had no reason to find out about Tresor before, but when I came into contact with the club, of course, I soon heard all about it. It quickly became clear to me that a club like Tresor needs an anti-harassment team. So while I was at Tresor Berlin and Tresor.West in Dortmund, I set up three teams and linked them with each other. There are the security people, the guest selection or crowd management people and the anti-harassment team. In the past, clubs usually had one team that was responsible for all three roles. On the one hand, we were the crowd managers, in other words the ones who decided who to let in and who to keep out. But we also checked bags and kicked out people we were uncertain about. Or called an ambulance if someone needed one, settled disputes, and so on. I’ve tried to set the teams up so that they each have their own responsibilities, but the boundaries are still fluid. And it’s not just the club workers but also the managers who have to learn and actively practice anti-harassment policies, so that everyone works together and everything runs smoothly. This are usually the biggest hurdles.
More professional structures are being implemented to ensure that all people – without exception – feel comfortable in clubs. To what extent has this changed the parties themselves? Or is this not the case at all?
What really has changed is that more and more people have reached the point where they’re saying, enough is enough. We don’t want to be sexually harassed when we’re out at night or experience discrimination at night club doors any more. This has meant that the standards clubs set themselves have also evolved. But at the same time though, I think we have to be clear that a space like a night club can never be 100 percent safe. All we can do is make it as safe as possible. And that also means training door staff in subjects such as gender diversity or how to address non-binary people. We also need to look at questions such as how to deal with new types of drugs or forms of consumption like spiking. Some of these issues have been around in the club scene for a while, but for a long time nobody talked about them. This needs to change. Fortunately, more and more knowledge is being shared and this helps make clubs safer for everyone.