They still exist — those little cafés, schnapps bars, dives or, as the regulars simply call them, “huts,” where time seems to have stood still. Walking past, you hear loud laughter through the half-open door, yet few go in. Too often such places appear in the local news with a stabbing among friends who stumbled over a misunderstanding in the course of an alcoholic session. Over several years, Klaus Pichler (photographs) and Clemens Marschall (text) did not walk past but went in. They explored and documented social parallel universes: Pichler captured moments of the patrons between everyday life, madness and drama; Marschall recorded conversations with the bar owners. What emerges are surrogate families in which daily rituals are performed. In these unofficial networks, barter flourishes; one is admitted only after a certain probation. The furniture often dates from the 1960s, the guests sometimes go back just as far. The only sign that time is gnawing: the people are dying off — and with them these establishments. On countless forays through Vienna, Pichler and Marschall still found some of these bars in the last throes of their existence. This book is a swan song to these places that shaped their patrons' lives for decades and will very soon be gone forever.