The Things I’ve Seen

“I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed.” - Marco Polo on his deathbed, 1324, apparently? Uncharted said so.

“I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.” Pierre de Fermat, though that was about maths.

I've seen at least four pieces of the Berlin Wall: in the Imperial War museum in London, in the Financial District of New York City, at a park in Suwanee, Georgia...

...and at the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando, in the CityWalk section of Universal Studios Florida.

Nestled between the entrances of Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida, the Hard Rock Cafe Orlando is in its second incarnation. Formerly, it was the first restaurant I can find that had entrances in both a theme park (Universal Studios Florida) and for public guests. You could go to the park and ride E.T., get a hand stamp (back when those were a thing), have a burger under a bunch of music memorabilia, take in a segment of the Berlin Wall...then go back for another round of E.T. You can't do this anymore, as the original Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando was torn down to build the Hard Rock Hotel, but the new location of the Hard Rock Cafe thoughtfully put the Berlin Wall segment outside behind the restaurant. It no longer has a prominent role inside the restaurant, but them's the breaks, as they say.

The Berlin Wall

Back when our enemies were our enemies, the self-important nations of the world divided themselves into the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. Who they were, of course, depended on which side of the ascending Iron Curtain your house landed. In French Three Estates fashion, NATO-aligned countries divided the world into three parts: The First World, or The Good Guys if you were so aligned; The Second World, or the Good Guys if you were aligned with the Soviet Union; and the Third World if you were everyone else. Yes, that means development had nothing to do with it, and nations like Switzerland were Third World countries. The First World won, and as the victors write history, First World became a synonym for highly developed while Third World was used to describe less developed countries. Former Third Worlders like Switzerland were welcomed into the First World club, because, look at them, over there. With those watches, and pocket knives, and their…uh…Gendarmerie? ¹

the Iron Curtain was the political and sometimes physical separation between the First and Second World² . The Berlin Wall was one of the physical instances of separation. The history of the separation of East and West Germany is deep and important, and I definitely am not informed enough to go through all of it, but at a high level the Berlin Wall was one step in a progressive lock-down of the First/Second World border in Berlin. As a step, though, it was a dramatic escalation: starting in August 1961, barbed wire went up. Days later the wall itself started going up. Roads were torn up to prevent vehicular traffic, whole city blocks were cleared to make a no man’s land where East German troops often had authority to kill from hastily erected guard towers. Within a year, the city carried the scar of the first generation of border wall. Within 15 years, the scar, infected, gnarlified, ended up as a 12 foot³ tall border wall, a no-man's landscape of death, towers, obstacles, additional walls…everything you need to assure defectors from East Germany had terrible odds of survival.

This dramatic escalation also came with a rapid ramp-up in violence to make good on the terrible landscape. A lot of people lost their lives, were separated from family, and otherwise found themselves in a new normal. The wall went through several iterations, many supporting changes came and went, all in service to the dramatic change in freedom to travel between East and West Germany. One of the first to die was Peter Fechter, on 17 August 1962. Up until a year earlier, he regularly visited his sister who had married and moved to West Berlin. Now 18, he hatched a plan with Helmut Kulbeik to cross what was at the time a 6.5’ wall and defect to West Germany. When crossing the final barrier, in view of hundreds of West Germans, Fechter was shot in the hip. He fell back into East German territory, bleeding to death in an hour. No East German would help, and West Germans were afraid of repercussions. They threw bandages over the wall for him, but he could not reach them. Journalists documented his cries, but other than bringing attention to his tragic and senseless death they could do nothing for him. Western forces were told to hold firm and not provoke an incident.

If there’s any consolation, two of the three soldiers stationed on the wall at the time faced justice in 1997, 35 years later. Rolf Friedrich and Erich Schreiber were convicted on manslaughter charges. The third soldier had already died by the time of the trial. Fechter, however, would never see his sister again. He could have been 81 today. Sadly, his story was not a warning to both sides that the Berlin Wall and its supporting deterrents were to become a meat grinder, a herald of senseless deaths to come.

Also out of scope of this article is the fall of the Soviet Union, but the dominoes of Soviet State failures in the late 1980s fell quickly along the European wing of the Iron Curtain. Checkpoints were loosened, barriers fell, and in 1989 those same pressures fell on the Germanies and the Berlin Wall. On 9 November 1989, the wall came down. This was 9 months too late for Chris Gueffroy, shot to death crossing the border on 6 February 1989. He was the last person known to be shot and killed in a border crossing attempt⁴ . Gueffroy was born into the Second World after the Berlin Wall had gone up, knowing only a fatal wall and inability to travel. He died attempting to escape conscription.

West and East Germany reunited very quickly, though there were definitely hold-outs. To this day, some folks still answer polls saying they believe the Wall shouldn’t have fallen. The overwhelming opinion though, both now and then, is that it should be torn down. Much of the wall was destroyed quickly, and chunks were taken as souvenirs. They’re not uncommon: you can find plenty of various sizes on eBay, though how could you authenticate that. While much of the wall was destroyed in short order, a few sections as well as other supporting structures, such as watchtowers, are still intact. Many parts of the final generation of concrete barrier were sent around the world to serve as museum pieces, and perhaps to preserve them from destruction. For example, the section that ended up in the collection of the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando.

OK, But Why Hard Rock Cafe?

Great question! The Hard Rock Cafe got its start in 1971 in Hyde Park, London, and over the next decade collected an array of music memorabilia. It opened a second location in Toronto, Canada in 1978 but really picked up speed once it entered the U.S. market in the 1980s⁵ . There was a need to pick up even more music memorabilia to Chotchkie's up the place, particularly over the top pieces, to feed the eclectic collections being amassed across the world. The Berlin Wall had attracted much attention from artists of all media, including Pink Floyd. Once they found out the wall was coming down, they wanted to do a performance in front of it, tearing it down in a grand finale. The only problem (for them, not the Germans) was this kind of concert would take months to prepare, and the wall was being torn down in days. In the end they put together a performance during which they built then tore down a massive prop wall. They performed in a former section of the no man’s land, the dangerous strip of territory (though not the same location) where Fechter, Gueffroy, and so many others lost their lives. As to Hard Rock’s piece of the wall, allegedly Roger Waters played guitar in front of this section at some point. We do know that at one point it had graffiti from The Wall - Live in Berlin, which (if you will) cements this in the books of music history⁶ .

This was especially timely, as the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando opened in early 1990. I can’t find a timeline for the acquisition of the wall segment, but unlike the many other Hard Rock Cafe locations which had some unique elements to it, this particular restaurant was uniquely unique in its uniqueness⁷ . This location was the company's first ground-up, free-standing construction project. It was located on the property of Universal Studios Florida, pre-CityWalk. The restaurant had both a public entrance and parking for visitors, as well as a second theme park gate. Universal Studios Florida vacationers could take a break from Jaws to chow down, once the devoured, now the devour-er. Guest goes into restaurant, restaurant goes into park.

Oh, and the building and entrance were SHAPED LIKE A GUITAR. The body was the building and park entrance side, and the neck was a bridge crossing over a road to the parking lot for the public entrance.

Point being, this was a massive project for Hard Rock corporate, and it was fitting that it received a similarly impactful piece of music—and world—history. It also fed into an appetite to branch out for Universal Studios Florida which was playing catch-up with Walt Disney World’s Pleasure Island. Universal Studios Hollywood opened their CityWalk in 1993. It took a bit longer to make the plan work in Orlando, as the project was bigger and introduced Islands of Adventure (a second park) along with several hotels. 1999 was the official launch of the Universal Studios Resort in Orlando, a shift in scale to match their competitor a bit further down I-4.

The Hard Rock Cafe rode the wave it helped create. A victim of its own success, the unique restaurant had to relocate to CityWalk. The new building is larger, though not nearly as cool. The Hard Rock corporation also got the opportunity to build a hotel in partnership with the Loews brand, backed up to the former cafe’s site. The original restaurant building survived until some time around 2010, well past the construction of the Hard Rock Hotel, though the guitar neck was taken down much earlier. If you look hard enough, you can still see the footprint of the original restaurant between The Trolls Trollercoaster and a gentle curve in the Hard Rock Hotel parking lot on aerial photography. The new restaurant was supposed to have a second entrance to Universal Studios Florida, though the long demolished Blue Man Group (now occupied by the soon to be demolished Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit) foreclosed that opportunity⁸ .

If you want to know more about stuff like this, I highly recommend Kevin Perjurer’s Defunctland channel. This is the exact kind of thing I would expect out of his oeuvre. The point is, we had a really unique Hard Rock Cafe location, it needed fitting memorabilia, and as soon as the charm wore off they tucked their Berlin Wall segment out behind the new restaurant, with no protection from the elements. They did it because they could, that’s why, stop asking questions.

Fun fact: in March 2007, the Seminole Tribe of Florida bought the Hard Rock Cafe, International company. That has nothing to do with the Berlin Wall, I just thought that was interesting.

That's All, Folks

And there you have it: a piece of history right here, just sitting outside being weathered daily by the harsh Florida elements. I think it's interesting that something which could be considered a symbol of the victory of capitalism over communism was taken up as a historic music artifact and displayed in a theme park resort, a mecca of capitalism in a way...just, you know, tucked behind the gift shop and restaurant. The real monument to the victory of capitalism was inside us all along, quite literally, as commercialism allows us to cram profitable burgers down our gullets⁹ .

Next up, probably more theme park stuff, then yes: back to Key West to close out a few items. Do you have any requests? I did get to see the new Epic Universe, which I know will factor in, but let me know what you think would be good to cover.

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Peter_Fechter

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Rock_Cafe

• https://orlandoinformer.com/blog/universal-studios-florida-30th-anniversary-hard-rock-cafe-orlando/

• Orange County Property Appraiser’s Office

• Historical aerials of Universal Studios theme park in Orlando

Thanks for joining me, where I’m one of today’s lucky 10,000! I hope you enjoyed it. Here’s all the beehiiv stuff that is required to be here.

— Lou

1  Bah! Foiled once again by the Rule of Threes. Maybe chocolate?

2  The Third World just hung out, waiting to see if the world would end in nuclear annihilation through no fault of their own. That must have been awesome, like watching neighbors fight but they also had the ability to level the entire block out of sheer pettiness.

3  I use freedom units here, but Germans both East and West would better recognize it at commonly 3.6m tall.

4  Though not the last to die in crossing. That dubious superlative belongs to Winfried Freudenberg, who fell from his makeshift hot air balloon after crossing into West Germany.

5  I was enraptured by this phenomenon and asked traveling family to get me Hard Rock t-shirts for my collection. I got discouraged in the early 2000s once I realized that there weren't, like…a dozen locations, which would've been a reasonable goal.

6  And if you won’t, here’s a fun story: the wall is basically stripped blank now. The rumor is that once the wall was moved outside, a cleaner ignorant of its historical significance pressure washed the graffiti off of it. It’s possible, though being outside full time in the Florida weather will certainly do pretty significant damage pretty quickly.

7  Yeah, yeah, sue me. Wait, don’t.

8  I don’t know for sure - maybe the second gate was available for a while. It would've outlasted the two attractions that came and went in its place though.

9  Fine, the Chestnuts and Kobayashis amongst us may opt for hot dogs. For more on that, read Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus.

10  The text reads below, capitalization mine as the plaque is in all capitals. Note this section of wall was very unlikely to have been constructed in August, 1961, but I’m not sure that’s really an important distinction given how quickly trying to cross the border became fatal.

In August, 1961 this infamous symbol of the Cold War was erected in order to keep the East Germans from fleeing to the West. The Soviets build a wall between the East and West sections of Berlin.
For the next 28 years, the Cold War raged on and “Checkpoint Charlie” governed passage. The wall stood as a harsh reminder of the chasm between the non-Communist West and Communist East.
On November 9, 1989, the wall was symbolically brought down. Only a few parts of the wall remain. The Hard Rock Cafe is proud to display this piece of history that symbolizes the wall of oppression.