Amsterdam Red Light District


Window brothels replaced by Redlight Fashion
Wednesday, 19 March 2008 12:49
Window brothels replaced by Redlight FashionFor years, the brothels' large street-side windows have showcased women of all races, wearing minute bits of clothing as they preened and beckoned customers. But in some windows, women have recently been replaced by plastic mannequins in designer clothes (Redlight Fashion).

The city council has voted to clean up the historic but notorious district. The city is buying up brothels, and it has lent the first 18 windows and boudoirs for one year to young designers and photographers.

The elders of the Dutch capital, known for its broad-mindedness, insist they have not been seized by a wave of prudishness. They say they have been driven to act by new evidence that criminal gangs, including East Europeans and Russians, have encroached on the area, making it meaner, more violent and more in the grip of the underworld of international sex traffickers.

"We've realized this is no longer about small-scale entrepreneurs, but that big crime organizations are involved here in trafficking women, drugs, killings and other criminal activities," said Job Cohen, the mayor. "We're not banning prostitution, but we are cutting back on the whole circuit: the gambling halls, the pimps, the money laundering." The mayor said the cleanup was possible now because Amsterdam had adopted tough new zoning codes and, along with other cities, had been given more leeway to revoke licenses by the national government.

Redlight Fashion on dispay in former window brothels


By official estimates, sexual transactions alone yield about $100 million per year. But city planners hope they can reduce the smut and attract art galleries, boutiques, upscale restaurants and hotels to the city's oldest quarter, valuable real estate that is home to seven medieval churches and hundreds of historic buildings.

Once, prostitution was confined to a small area near the port. The brothels were usually run by older women who had retired from the trade. But a report prepared for the mayor's office last year said that in the past 20 years, power had shifted from madams to Dutch and Eastern European pimps.

On most days the district, covering less than half a square mile, has a parade of men moving along the canals and the alleyways, lined with peep shows, live-sex theaters, legal marijuana cafes and enough shops with erotic films and sex toys to equip an entire battalion. Brothels were legalized in 2000, and according to city statistics, there are now 142, with some 500 display windows for prostitutes. Many more, which work with illegal immigrants, operate around town secretly.

The planned makeover has angered the working residents and landlords, who have enlisted lawyers and formed action groups to defend "the unique character" of the neighborhood, as one of their protests said. Posters saying "Hands Off" have appeared in the windows of cafes and shops.

At the Love Club Thai 21, where a quartet of Asian women were waiting for clients on a recent evening, the club's owner, Robin Fischer, invited a journalist inside. "Come see, we are a normal business," he said, sitting down in his small office, fitted with a computer, a washing machine and a row of drying towels overhead. "We have a license, we pay taxes."

He and his friends believe city leaders are being hypocritical in demanding change in the district. "It's the diamond dealers, the hotel people, the banks who want to drive us away," he said. "Their business isn't clean, either."

Fischer, who has worked in the red-light district for 20 years, and two other Dutch landlords who did not want to be named, blame foreign pimps for ruining the atmosphere.

"The guys from Eastern Europe bring in young and frightened women, they threaten them and beat them," Fischer said. "In the old days, pimps mostly stuck to the rules, and police would warn people, like, 'Hey Jan, you're crossing the line.' There was a kind of balance. But the local sex bosses are too old or dead or in prison, and the market has opened up."

Karina Schaapman, a former prostitute and now a member of the Amsterdam City Council, in a report about the sex trade described a police face book with some 80 "violent pimps" of whom only three were Dutch-born. She said that more than 75 percent of Amsterdam's 8,000 to 11,000 prostitutes, including 1,000 male prostitutes, were from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia.

Metje Blaak, who runs the Red Thread, a support group for prostitutes, said her group had mixed feelings about the city's plans. Cutting back crime and trafficking was great, but cutting back brothels would be worse for women. "They may end up in a back room somewhere where we can't reach them," she said.

Along some alleyways like Korte Niezel and Lange Niezel, there are some signs of the new cleanup campaign. Pierre van Rossum, the campaign's project manager, pointed to Mata Hari, a gambling palace, and to Venekamp, a butcher shop, that had just been boarded up. "The butcher ran a few brothel rooms on the side; he was selling cold meat and warm flesh at the same time," van Rossum said. More closings will follow as the city applies tough new zoning codes and runs tax audits. "Right now people seem more eager to sell rather than fight," he said. "There's been a sudden surge of landlords and brothel keepers who want to sell out."

On the square facing Amsterdam's oldest church, the city has just bought five buildings used as brothels. In nearby streets it bought 18 similar buildings last year, most of which have now been lent to young designers.

Herbert van Hasselt, who heads the foundation that looks after the 14th century church and its tombs of prominent citizens, said he was "looking forward to a bit more loving discipline."

"I'm not looking for bourgeois boredom," he said, "but it would be nice to see a few more regular people and some normal restaurants here. I'm tired of the roaming drunks that urinate every night on our ancient walls."
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