This legendary Kreuzberg club has been the standard bearer of Berlin’s punk scene for most of the the past three decades. What CBGB’s is to New York, so SO36—its name derived from its postcode—is to Berlin. When it opened its doors in 1978 in the center of Berlin’s anarchist squat scene, the club was just the latest in long line of tenants, among them a 19th-century beer garden, a wartime cinema, an artist’s atelier and a supermarket. But the gods of musical politics smiled on the club’s founders and soon the crowds and controversy packed the joint every night.

The list of musicians crossing the stage (or watching from the shadows) reads like an encyclopedia of rock history: Suicide, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten, Wire, The Dead Kennedys and many more. True to form, the management has been as varied as the audience—artist Martin Kippenberger was even a manager during the club’s infancy.

Despite its internal chaos, SO36 has continued to serve up a steady diet of raging guitars and angry shouts to Berlin’s spiked collar set and, after renovations in the ‘90s, has expanded its booking to offer techno, electronic and queercore beats, not to mention the last Saturday of every month, Berlin’s favorite gay Turkish disco Gayhane!