Hamster is Elon Musk’s attempt at a Berlin techno club, but it’s only for Tesla employees. Some locals say they would prefer not to go anyways.
Open a “rave cave,” they said. It will be fun, they said. It remains to be seen whether Elon Musk‘s new staff-only techno club in Tesla‘s Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg will indeed be a good time, but a fair number of locals seem skeptical.
Musk floated the idea for Hamster, as the club is called, in a survey on X back in 2020 (when the platform was still called Twitter). Factory manager André Thierig first announced the club’s opening in a LinkedIn post with a video teaser which was then shared on the X account for Tesla Manufacturing at the end of June.
The video shows people walking through a corridor akin to what you might find on a Star Trek: The Next Generation film set. Once inside, the entrants are greeted by a DJ, lasers, and LED tracks running across the ceiling.
Musk has previously garnered criticism from participants in Berlin nightlife, where techno is held in high regard as it practically soundtracked Germany’s reunification over three decades ago. This led to him allegedly being denied entrance to Berghain in 2022, with him later claiming that he refused to enter.
The Local points out that Berliners are not letting him off easy now, either. “If the first place you announce a club is on LinkedIn it’s definitely not a club you want to visit,” wrote artist Adam Ghebremichael in a social media comment. Another joked that people would be happy to get rejected from Hamster.
So will Elon Musk’s new nightclub, Hamster, be worth a visit? That’s hard to say. As soon as Tesla decides to employ us for some reason, we promise we’ll get right back to you about that.
