Monkeys Music Club

Monkeys Music Club is a 350-capacity live room in Hamburg’s Ottensen district, inside the Barnerstraße premises once used by the Kir club. Its useful distinction is scale: this is a mid-sized standing concert space, large enough for a packed audience while its separate pub creates a place to regroup between sets. The current club also carries a direct link to a previous chapter of Hamburg nightlife: Monkeys moved into the address shortly after Kir’s January 2015 farewell.

A production hall takes its next turn

In October 2003, Kir left Max-Brauer-Allee after redevelopment displaced it and shifted to Barnerstraße 16 near Fabrik. Its new home came from an old production space on a commercial courtyard, converted into a larger club room. Kir occupied that space for almost ten years, although its concert program grew thinner in its final stretch. In January 2015, owner Michael Westeroth sold Kir after 27 years. The farewell party drew a queue of over 100 people at 3 a.m.; soon afterward, Monkeys Music Club took over the rooms and put live music at the center of the program. The German Music Information Centre lists Monkeys with a 1994 opening history, while the Barnerstraße chapter began with that 2015 handover.

The room at showtime

The booking range reaches across soul, punk, metal, reggae, hardcore, folk and jazz, with open-stage nights, pub quizzes and smaller-format concerts sharing the venue with regular gigs. A stage and wooden dance floor form the main room. Beside it sits an Irish-pub-style smoking room, stocked with rum, whiskey and Guinness on draft. Expect a 350-person club built around standing crowds, with the pub giving the evening a second space away from the stage.