Look here, Charlie is there too. Unmissable with the 2.06 m furniture mover stature, the tattoos up to the neck and the polished bald head. But he has nothing to do that evening except to be there. Because the bouncer is also part of the cosmos Roy, this one-of-a-kind plush at Sendlinger Tor, which has rightly been celebrated as a cult bar for many years. It was closed in autumn 2020, but now the new beginning: 300 steps up Sendlinger Straße, the “Roy” begins a new phase of life on Friday, in the Schäffler vault of the Hackerhaus. And the way the pre-opening went, one can guess: it will be different, but it could be really good.
Transplanting pub institutions is one of those things. The “Schwabinger 7”? A knock-off of the former crash stronghold. The principle of Gerti’s “Fraunhofer Schoppenstube” could only be transferred to other locations to a limited extent, and with that one has listed almost all of Munich’s nightlife attractions of a somewhat different kind. In this respect, the principle of the new Roy makers could definitely work: “Schlager, until the doctor comes” is not a bad unique selling point, especially in times when the longing for a bit of rabble and booth magic is as great as it probably once was in Prohibition have to be.
And how does this rabble sound now? The spectrum ranges from “Country Roads” to “Mambo No.5” and “Maccarena” to Andreas Gabalier and Helene Fischer. That works: Already in the early evening there is dancing of the most exhilarated kind. There has to be a lot going on. No wonder, says Lorenz Stiftl, the proprietor of the Hackerhaus: “Pastor Rainer Maria Schiessler said it correctly during the blessing: People want to switch off again.” Stiftl often went to the “Roy” with his wife Christine for a nightcap after work, and when he couldn’t go any further there, an idea began to mature in him: “And if I convert the basement?”
Until now, company celebrations and other events have been held in the vault from 1417, where the brewery’s malt house used to be. Stiftl invested half a million euros in the conversion, but then received a rejection from former Roy landlord Günther Grauer, who recommended his ex-bar manager Daniel Schwarzkopf for the tough night job, but will remain as a DJ, as well most of the rest of the Roy crew. “It’s great that someone dares to do something like that,” says Grauer, and Schwarzkopf adds: “One can only thank the Stiftl family for having the courage.”
On Fridays and Saturdays, as well as before public holidays, people bang like hell from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. There won’t be any elaborate decorations, but Stiftl is sure that the collection, which once contained 750 celebrity photos and has now shrunk to two dozen, will grow: “It’s like the wardrobe: it’s getting more and more.” Where Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and Chris de Burgh used to come, things are now more down-to-earth: Waltraud and Mariechen, a couple of city councilors and Mayor Verena Dietl. One is missing: Roy Dubowy, with whom the madness began in 1978, which will be shown in cinemas in the autumn in the documentary “Roy – a legend comes to an end”. It is said that he had to go back to Lake Garda, but he wishes him the best of luck.