Amsterdam Dims the Red Lights

Time ^ | September 27, 2007 | JOOST VAN EGMOND

[presidio9]

If the city authorities have their way, the widely sold tourist T-shirt proclaiming that "Good boys go to heaven and bad boys go to Amsterdam" will become a relic. Indeed, those bad boys may soon struggle to find their way to the city's fabled red-light district of "storefront" prostitution. Last week one of the main entrepreneurs in the city's perfectly legal sex industry cashed in, selling his properties in the district. The buyer, for $35 million, was a not-for-profit organization backed by the city of Amsterdam. The plan is to convert the buildings in which prostitutes pose in the windows into apartments and more conventional commercial space.

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From a strictly entrepreneurial point of view, this is not a good investment. The buyers reckon that the value of the properties may fall by $21 million, a deficit that the municipality would have to fund. But for the city elders, that may be the price of transforming the old city center, which they say has become clogged with undesired and outright criminal activities. While prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, the city has found the trade is a magnet for female trafficking and money laundering. "Our aim is to push back criminal activity, to gain more control over the area", mayor Job Cohen commented.

Nor is the sex-industry Mayor Cohen's only target: He also sees the buyout as a chance to begin clearing out the cannabis-selling coffee shops and what he calls "bad horeca"

[chrisser]

While prostitution is legal in the Netherlands, the city has found the trade is a magnet for female trafficking and money laundering.

Wait a minute. I thought that female trafficking and money laundering were exactly the sorts of problems that were caused by the illegality of prostitution and not prostitution itself.

[Bringbackthedraft]

So much for all the great window shopping.

[Panzerfaust]

Was in Amsterdam last week, glad I saw it at it’s peak. I walked all over the city and never saw any criminal activity, rarely saw a cop and there were literally thousands of people out partying. If the city elders call that a “crime problem”, they can export the business model to Philly. We need the help.....

[IronJack]

I visited Amsterdam years ago, and found it a bit too ... eclectic ... for my taste. It was certainly a wide-open city; you could get ANYTHING you wanted there, and probably a whole lot of things you didn’t know you wanted.

[Comparative Advantage]

How much longer before Mayor COHEN is stabbed to death riding his bicyle home from work in Amsterdam-stan?

[Savage Beast]

But men have been going arovin’ in Amsterdam for centuries. Why the damper now?

[snarks_when_bored]

Amsterdam Dims the Red Lights

Old Amsterdam bid fond adieu,
That whoredom's kingdom's done;
New Amsterdam's a pure milieu,
Flat boredom's kingdom's come.

[Philistone]

Which is why I'm a conservative libertarian. I believe that whether certain "victimless" activities are actually "victimless" is an empirical question, and not simply knowable a priori...

[Bringbackthedraft]

The last time I visited Amsterdam the police with 2 K-9s were chasing some guy down the street. The dealing of drugs over the counter didn’t impress me. The bar where we were at (Bulldog?)smelled like a mix of beer and marijuana. So much for my tour of the famous red light district. We went over the bridge to find a nice restaurant. (There were no shortage of them.)