Amsterdam to close red light district

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

Amsterdam without the Red Light District? Wouldn't that be like Paris without the Eiffel Tower? Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, and his aldermen have demonstrated little nostalgia for the district, which has been the world's most famous home of ****** permissiveness since the 15th century. They first unveiled the plan to close it in December; last month they revoked the licenses of two widely known *** venues, the Casa Rosso and the Banana Bar. The next step is to buy out the real estate owners. Last fall the city struck a deal with a powerful brothel owner, Charles Geerts (known as "Fat Charlie"), to buy 20 buildings.
The driving force behind the cleanup is Lodewijk Asscher. A young star of the Dutch Labour Party and deputy mayor of Amsterdam, Asscher believes it's time to deliver his hometown from sleaze—even if he's scuppering a $100 million-a-year industry in the process. He is pleasantly surprised, he says, by the public support he's gotten for the plan. "Every day I get e-mails," he says. A recent survey confirms the sentiment: the city administration's polling agency found that 67 percent of Amsterdam's population supports a clampdown on sketchy business. The Amsterdam City Council approved the plan about two weeks ago by an overwhelming 43-2 majority.

But not everybody is happy about the change. Jan Broers, owner of Royal Taste, a hotel in the heart of the Red Light District, and eight ********** windows, has formed a protest committee called Platform 1012 (named after the area's ZIP code). He claims to have collected thousands of signatures. This week the group staged a protest march, starting in front of the Casa Rosso and ending in Dam Square, where thousands of people shared a minute of silence. They carried pink balloons and signs saying "Hands off the Red Light District" and a poster of Asscher doctored to look as if he was with a street hooker.

Broers is afraid that fewer tourists will come to a sexless Amsterdam, harming legitimate, legal businesses. Most of all, he says, he feels "stigmatized" by the city government. "With all his rhetoric, deputy mayor Asscher is giving the district a bad name throughout the world," he says. "People phone me up from abroad every day, worried we might be gone already." Broers questions the city's premise that ************ leads to criminal activities in the area. Indeed, the city, which is acting under laws that require only a suspicion of criminal activity, can point only to studies from the mid-1990s. "It's a shield. The city just wants to gentrify the neighborhood, so they can make some good money. And they're using public funds to buy all the real estate."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/109373

aww man, there goes my vacation plans //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crap.gif.7f4dd41e3e9b23fbd170a1ee6f65cecc.gif

Click to read more...

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

my uncle said it's really not all as it's hyped up to be.

 

[crunktimes.com 5,000+ posts]

Hopefully they don't close the coffee shops also.

 

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

In the article it also goes on to say the city will license city approved pimps //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

 

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

They've outlawed shrooms there //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

 

[crunktimes.com 5,000+ posts]

Wow thats nuts I wonder if they still sell space cake? I am sure they are going to hurt badly for tourists at this rate.

 

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

If anything I feel bad for the poor women.... all they wanted to do is put their way thru college //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crap.gif.7f4dd41e3e9b23fbd170a1ee6f65cecc.gif

 

[UndercoverPunk 5,000+ posts]

This is MADNESS!

 

[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

Snaps.

nG

 

[iagrdshaka 5,000+ posts]

there's always The Philippines //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[Flipx99 5,000+ posts]

This brings up a question....

say you do drugs in a legal place like here...come back to US, get a drug test, and fail. Can that still be held against you? I suppose it depends on if you are a right-to-work state or not.

 

[AVSTANG02]

This brings up a question....
say you do drugs in a legal place like here...come back to US, get a drug test, and fail. Can that still be held against you? I suppose it depends on if you are a right-to-work state or not.

Are you really that stupid?

 

[savagebee 10+ year member]

my uncle said it's really not all as it's hyped up to be.

x2