Be seen or be nothing: Schicki-micki stikes in Munich
A friend and I were strolling north from the Odeonsplatz one sunny summer afternoon when we passed Cafe Annast and noticed something rather strange. The chairs were arranged like theater seats, facing the street and not each other, with the passers-by as the afternoon's entertainment. Every single person in the "audience" was sporting at least one designer item of clothing, was wearing a pair of the latest sunglasses and had recently been to the hairdresser. On every second table lay a shiny cordless phone. The sight was the complete antithesis of what we had expected to find in Munich. Instead of Gemütlichkeit, we had instead stumbled upon the dread phenomenon of Schicki-micki. A few days later, we encountered it again. In search of a post-movie coffee on the Leopoldstrasse, the nearest place was a big, bright bar called the Roxy. A burly chap at the door gave us the once-over five or six times, staring disbelievingly at my friend's disheveled high-top sneakers. Finally, he let out a muted "okay" and shuffled aside to let us pass. When the waitress proceeded to pointedly ignore us for the next 20 minutes we got embarrassed. Attired in genuinely unremarkable casual clothing, we had, in her eyes, unobtrusively blended into the rather garish chrome decor. Obviously, we would have to come back decked out in a little je-ne-sais-quoi by Alaia or Armani to have a chance at service. Schicki-micki had struck again. But what, exactly, is it? Clearly, the word Schicki-micki derives from the French chic, but does it refer to a class, an attitude, or a whole way of life? Are Schicki-mickis born or made? Once acquired, can you somehow lose the title? Or is it once a Schicki-micki always a Schicki-micki? The eyes of Germans and native Bavarians light up as they explain: "A Schicki-micki's basic instinct is to 'see and be seen at all costs'. They frequent any place with huge windows (or terraces in the summer), minimalist design and a snooty wait staff. Examples? Cafe Extrablatt, where the "scene" started in the early '80s, P1, Maximilian's Nightclub, and the Nachtcafe, to name but a few. Places where tables with cards marked Reserviert remain mysteriously empty for hours on end. After all, no clientele is better than the wrong clientele!" The notion of Schicki-micki is a relatively new development. For today's card-carrying Schicki-mickis are merely the grown-up sons and daughters of the old Munich Schickeria, or smart set. Like the famous Frauenwunder, the Schickeria started in the 1960s, when the fruits of the Wirtschaftswunder became fully apparent. Germans were rich, and the generation born in the late 1930s, their memories of the war fading along with their childhood, had money to burn. They skied at Gstaad and St. Moritz, summered on the Riviera and took in the festivals at Bayreuth and Salzburg. Schicki-mickis are their sons and daughters, aping the snobbish but weary been-there-done-that Weltschmerz of their moneyed counterparts in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and London, obsessed with what's new and "hot," and dismissive of those they view as their social inferiors. Schicki-mickis are a self-proclaimed "in-crowd" and if they're not quite as obnoxious as their fellows elsewhere, that's probably because, up to now, Schicki-micki- ism has pretty much been limited to Munich. No one I talked to had experienced quite the same thing in any other big German city. Although I've now learned where not to go for an evening on the town, at times I'm still taken aback by the customers in certain places, museum and art gallery openings, for example, where the folks seem far keener to be spotted doing the right thing (and admired for their fashionable raiment) than to view the art on the walls. This sort of people is what ensures that practically one of every two new bars, cafes or restaurants that opens is either posey, cliquey or pricey - in other words, perfect for the Schicki-micki set. I'm thinking of Dreigroschenkeller, Cafe Glockenspiel, Lardy, Kytaro and News Bar. To fully understand Munich's preoccupation with being in the right place at the right time, it is necessary to go as far back as the reign of Ludwig I early in the last century. With the importationof artists, many bearing radical new ideas from outside Bavaria and Germany, Munich was becoming an important cultural center. It was then that these cosmopolitan newcomers(Zugereiste), without an affinity for Bavarian culture and tradition but with the favor of the court, became the main purveyors of high culture in the city. A wealthy cultural elite, relatively unconcerned with the local populace and their parochial art, thus was born. While a lot has changed since then, the social cleavage remains. The popular 1980s television show Kir Royale, in which Franz Xaver Kroetz played a Munich Klatsch reporter with an uncanny resemblance to Michael Graeter (Übervater of all such journalists and the owner of Cafe Extrablatt), chronicled the comings and goings of the Schicki-micki. Today, with Munich thehigh-tech capital of Germany, there is a fresh horde of flatländer and Ausländer arrivistes in th eBavarian capital and they too have gravitated toward the Schicki-micki although with the advent of the recession, the scene has become ever more fragmented as the participants engage in frantic efforts to keep their turf untainted and their status intact. As for me, I'm off to my local. It's always buzzing and the Weissbier comes at a most un-Schicki-micki price of DM 4.80. Luckily, not all is see-and-be-seen.