Fire at the Pudel - Park Fiction / Golden Pudel Club
Around 3 a.m. on 14 February 2016, fire tore through the Golden Pudel, St. Pauli's legendary little club at the foot of Park Fiction; all 150 guests escaped unhurt, police investigated aggravated arson, and the fire setter was never identified.
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The Golden Pudel Club is a scruffy legend of Hamburg nightlife. Since 1995 it has occupied an 1872 house at the foot of Park Fiction, the residents' park with artificial palm trees and a sweeping harbour view that St. Pauli neighbours fought for from 1994 and finally completed in 2005. In the early hours of Sunday 14 February 2016, with around 150 guests still inside, a police patrol spotted a fire that had started in an annex of the club. The flames spread onto the roof and into the café upstairs, even damaging the Park Fiction archive stored under the roof, while water from the fire hoses flooded the club below. Everyone escaped unhurt, but investigators soon announced that they suspected aggravated arson. The building, already headed for a forced auction because of an ownership dispute, seemed lost. No suspect was ever identified. Instead, a nonprofit foundation bought out one owner's share in July 2016, the city and the Altona district put in 300,000 euros, and the Pudel reopened in August 2017, with its upper floor following in 2019. The fire itself remains one of St. Pauli's unsolved mysteries.
Fatti principali
- 150 guests — About 150 people were inside the club when the fire broke out around 3 a.m.; every one of them escaped unhurt.
- 1872 year built — The house is said to have started life as a prison for smugglers before it became the Café Elbterrassen and, from 1995, the Golden Pudel.
- 18 months — The club stayed dark for a year and a half after the fire; the ground floor reopened in August 2017 and the upper floor in July 2019.