Squatting Amsterdam — Ep. 4: The Return of the Squatters

bakfiets (cargo bike): we used these vehicles to move our furniture

In the previous episode (3) we were kicked out of our flat at the Ruyschstraat under pressure from the maffia and a granted renovation permit. In this instalment we break into our new house: an abandoned pharmacy.

The Pharmacy

After we left the apartment, me and Lena both stayed at different addresses. She stayed with some friends and I had a girlfriend called Anna (pseudo) at the time where I slept. Lena already had her eyes on a large office space that used to be a pharmacy on the Admiraal de Ruyterweg. Whilst we were working out the details and planned the next break in with KSU West (another jurisdiction, same procedures though).

In this liminal time I’d sometimes still enter the old squat at the Ruyschstraat. Though we had abandoned it, we still had the keys and could still walk into the apartment. One time I went back with Anna to remember good times. We had actually first kissed in this place while watching True Romance from Tarantino. It was a clandestine date I’ll never forget.

Then a few weeks later came the Sunday we gathered to open up the pharmacy in Amsterdam West. It went in similar fashion. A large group of people from another squat around the corner. The prospects of our next house looked much better. It had been empty for about two years and it was an office space that was available for rent, but during the Great Financial Crisis. Only in retrospect I realized we squatted this spot at a perfect time.

When we broke in we found a large 200 square meter space with a similar sized basement. Funny enough we later figured out that one of the front doors was actually open. So they had forced one door open with a crowbar, but the other entrance you could just turn the knob and walk in.

Because this was one large space, one of the first things we started to do was to build walls to divide our new place into rooms. We also had two toilets. One we removed and converted into a shower. Also an electric boiler was available, so we did some welding and made a warm water shower. It was good enough. You could shower for 5 minutes and have it at the right temperature (before warm water would drop off).

Our owner was just a regular real estate agent and no maffia. We actually negotiated with him through our lawyer and told him we were open to receive potential renters. They’d have to make an appointment at least a week in advance and then we’d cooperate. Both parties were happy with this arrangement. The real estate agent knew we were cool and he could still rent out the place for prospective renters; and we were not obstructing anything legally which made our position holdable as long as there were no renters.

We got our first visitation round only after we had occupied the pharmacy for already 2 years. And these folks declined the rent.

French Neighbors

During the GFC more office space was open in our area. One time we had some french aspirant squatters coming to our door one day and they wanted to open up 2 places across the street. They eventually used our place as gathering point to open up these spaces. The very same day there were 3 squats on our street. Funny enough it was within earshot of a police station. We were afraid this might have provoked them, but there was never any issue.

These Frenchies were interesting folks. They were also in their early twenties and really liked to party. On Queen’s Night, the major party evening of the year in the Netherlands , I was introduced to MDMA. We cycled across a dyke and the trees were releasing blossom in the wind and the crystal I had swallowed started to work. I saw living rays of light dancing off the trees. All of us started beatboxing and making our own music. While we were tripping hard we took a shuttle boat across the river to reach Amsterdam North. People were laughing at our music. Eventually we got to another squat where they were throwing a wild drum and bass party. Somewhere around midnight I had a god moment and asked the bar girl for a pen and paper to quickly write everything down I saw in that instant. I wrote down: “The world is a reflection of myself. I am king. I can change reality.”

After this magical night I was high for another half a year. I can’t explain what happened, because others never reported on these long lasting effects. But some part of me had really awakened, and I surfed that wave for many months. Or it was just exceptionally good stuff those frenchies had. I joined them twice for such a night. They, however, were doing this on a weekly basis. This shows again how I wasn’t really deep into this squatting movement. Because there were many of these squatting raves and parties on a monthly if not weekly basis. I only saw a couple of them. Understand you could have an entire squatting life, with paying no rent, eating at squat restaurants on donation throughout the week, get your clothes from giveaway shops, and then rave in the weekends with 1 dollar alternative beers. It was a genuine subculture, an alternate life within normie capitalist world.

The Give Away Shop

After about two years living in the pharmacy, Lena thought it would be interesting to open up one of our rooms and turn it into a give away shop. This is known concept with the squatting scene. It’s basically a free shop which you supply with items people freely give away. She opened it one weekend in 2008 and it was an instant hit. Mostly we received clothes, and kitchen stuff, but sometimes computers and other hardware would be donated to the shop.

joes garage KSU Oost; not our place

We were open two days a week and people were waiting inline in the morning before we opened. Word of mouth spread even to the other side of the city, where people in East would cycle half an hour to reach our place and go shopping for free.

That’s it for this episode folks. Hope you enjoyed it. In next and final episode I’ll tell you about how this part of my story ended when the dutch squatting ban came into effect in early 2011.

@Signal312 @02d769cb73 @BITC0IN @Artilektt @optimism @Scoresby @k00b

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