Discover YSY
the place where art, music and events meet
In the heart of Friedrichshain, in Berlin’s east, a new place opened where one can go into the deep night with music, art, conversations, and the sensorial experience between the warmth of the people surrounding, dim lights, and carefully crafted cocktails with a subtle Persian twist - YSY.
photo by Laura Markert
YSY opened officially on the 2nd of November, on the last steps of 2024.
The owner, Nico Mohammadi shares his path, struggles, learnings and pleasures of opening a venue like YSY, which Nico characterises as a
“classy establishment with a charm of a corner pub”.
Born and raised in Helmstedt, Lower Saxony, with an Iranian family history, Nico started doing music at the age of 14, playing bass and guitar.
Later he moved to Halle, Brussels and Graz. He started living full-time in Berlin only about 2 years ago, after graduating in 2022 from the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz.
Nico came to Berlin to fulfill a dream, DJ more under his artist name - DJ Durbin, and organise music events. However, without a plan and under the cuts in the cultural sector, his early days in Berlin were quite stressful:
“Many things didn't speak to me and there were also many developments in the club and music scene that didn't really appeal to me”
At the time, he was co-running an event venue in Berlin. For a long time, he felt that he had discovered his passion and professional purpose, and he was simply not a good employee because he always wanted to find his own way, says Nico: “so I packed my bags and googled bar venues for rent Berlin. Without a financial backup of any investor, a lot of it was probably naive, but
I find healthy naivety is absolutely underrated.
There is nothing better than trying things you really want to do and are convinced of”
Bar YSY finds itself on Frankfurter Allee 23, in the location of the formerly known Bar Palabra.
Nico came across the location listing quite by chance, he shares, but he felt straight away that the place has the potential to make his dream come true:
“I was missing a versatile place.
A place where you can organise events, party, where literature and art can have an equal place, but where you can also go for a good drink and enjoy music.
Moods and needs are different and I don't enjoy going to places that always function in a similar way”.
Nico adds that YSY is intended to be the place where one can enjoy feeling fancy, chic and special, but be surrounded by an approachable and unpretentious atmosphere.
With a secretive name, YSY engages you from the first glimpse:
“It’s a cipher of numbers and letters and a translation into Persian.
I knew that people would be bothered by it, that it would be a bit off-putting and that there would be many different versions of the pronunciation.
That's great because it immediately creates a relationship with the name and an engagement with it”.
Laura Markert by Tim Sonntag
büro bungalow by Stephie Braun
At the core of the Visual Identity of YSY is Laura Markert, one of the founders of büro bungalow - design agency with strong focus on strategy, branding and everything connected with it, and co-host of Ladies, Wine and Design Würzburg.
Laura has an endless passion for photography, graphic design and typography, and she loves combining it all in her projects.
She finds herself being “curious about almost anything”, which has led her to having an unique approach with the identity of YSY:
“ We worked a lot with the concepts that Dadaism was based on, such as randomness and Anti-Art.
We asked ourselves - What is Anti-Design then?”
Laura shares that, in her process, she worked a lot with liquids - an understandable starting pillar for a bar, this leading to the shapes used for the Visual Identity of YSY: “They can be seen as a metaphor for how
the bar soaks you—and others—in, and spits you out, during the night”.
I was particularly curious about the usage of text intertwined with the identity shapes, to which Laura shared that one particular practice of the Dada movement was sound poetry - poems without any meaning, performed as "weaponising nonsense”.
Together with Nico, she developed a series of nonsensical text and poems that serve as a fictional conversation between two potential bar visitors:
“I think bars, in general, are very special places: people come together, form new friendships, go there for first dates, have meaningful, or nonsensical, conversations…
and escape a bit from reality. From the very beginning, Nico and I were both very aware of these facts and had the idea of thematising it, while also
capturing the weirdness of the nights we spend at those places”.
When it comes to the process of opening a venue, Nico mentions that he can only advise for those longing for security and stability against it: “The stress of uncertainty, not knowing whether you'll be unemployed tomorrow and feel like you've made a mess of the last few months or whether you've achieved the impossible and will be flooded with pride - that was brutal”.
He notes that he was only prepared to give up if it really didn't work out and he was turned down for funding or as a tenant: “In fact, giving up was not an option for me. It may sound like a calendar saying,
but as soon as you doubt yourself and your vision at such a stage, you've lost straight away”
One important factor that kept him going was his bar crew and people that supported him along the way:
“Without the people who helped me, I would have failed catastrophically”.
A place that combines music, art, and versatile experiences, YSY also offers a unique selection of cocktails fusing Nico’s Persian influence such as Persian Mule or the Isfahan Kick with homemade Sekanjabin syrup.
It’s only the beginning, and 2025 is going to bring exciting events at YSY, so make sure to follow along on @ysy.berlin.
Lastly, many thanks to Nico for sharing his path with me for this article, and Laura for depicting so well her creative process.
You can find the beautiful work of Laura and büro bungalow at @buero_bungalow .
