The second part of my Welcome series created for ‘Update ’96’, Copenhagen, on the invitation of and with the assistance of Jens Haaning. An electronic ticketing system, generally found in banks, post offices and railways stations, was brought in to function in the city’s hippest nightspot, Stereobar.
The system consisted of three interconnected parts: a ticket machine, LED displays and an operator button that the bartenders had around their necks. Patrons lined up for tickets by the machine, which was programmed to display their number, date and waiting time; as the queue progressed, the bartender moved the numbers forward—which blinked (to the beat of techno) until the patron was served. People loved it.
All night, the otherwise rowdy crowd enjoyed taking their place in line and waited patiently to be served their beers in an orderly fashion. The gallerist Nicolai Wallner in attendance expressed particular appreciation. Being short, he said, always presents a difficulty in busy bars, but here it was all democratic and nice. The system was in operation until late, when one particular patron had had enough of it and pushed the ticket number repeatedly around a hundred times, so that the machine spat out a long string of numbers. Nobody could tell whose turn it was and the system completely broke down. In a split second, things were back to normal at Stereobar, with people yelling and waving for attention and bartenders serving the fittest. The next day, people were asking for ‘the cool machine’ again, but we only had it out for one night.
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