Most of the Beatles activity was concentrated on this street of strip clubs, peep shows and sex theaters. It was a much rougher area in the '60s than now. It is still a rough area with an interesting street crowd but it's much safer now that it's been taken over by tourists.

GEORGE: The city of Hamburg was brilliant; a big lake, and then the dirty part. The Reeperbahn and Große Freiheit were the best thing we'd ever seen, clubs and neon lights everywhere and lots of restaurants and entertainment. It looked really good. There were seedy things about it, obviously, including some of the conditions we had to live in when we first got there. The Indra was at the far end of Grosse Freiheit, off the Reeperbahn, the main club zone. The whole area was full of transvestites and prostitutes and gangsters, but I couldn't say that they were the audience. Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people.