Elon Musk is a dork. He’s a dork who likes things his way, and who’s willing to take his ball and go home when he doesn’t get what he wants. So, after Musk was famously blocked from entering Berghain, it’s only natural that he built his own perfect Berlin club: A room playing a mediocre techno remix of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” inside Tesla’s Brandenburg factory.
To be fair to Tesla’s club, apparently named “Hamster,” it’s not immediately clear that the music playing there is the same dull 2001: A Space Odyssey remix used in the promotional video — which, as all the coolest clubs do, debuted on LinkedIn. The video, also shared to Twitter, shows a narrow hallway that looks like the Tantive IV followed by what appears to be a single room with a DJ and rave lighting.
Clubgoers appear to be escorted through the “Star Wars” tunnel by security, who are presumably less choosy with who gets in than the Berghain bouncers. This approach makes sense when your venue is inside an active auto manufacturing plant — you don’t want people wandering off and getting pancaked by machinery. That’s for employees only.
Keeping in mind that Hamster exists in Giga Berlin, the space seems oddly large in Tesla’s video. It begs the question of how much space inside the facility is just sitting unused, and why the company paid to build it and then paid more to outfit it as a nightclub — all while laying off workers week after week.
Musk has a long history of being the boring guy at the club, but it’s not clear what exactly he’s trying to get out of the experience. Raves are queer spaces, a place to break free from those societal norms that Musk himself wants to rigidly enforce. Does he just want a dark room where no one can see how badly he dances?