Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're going on over
Speaker 2: to foggy Copenhagen town. Yeah, for this episode of Stuff
Speaker 2: you should know.
Speaker 1: That's right, because we were talking about a little sort
Speaker 1: of village neighborhood, anarchist commune in Copenhagen, Denmark called Freetown Christiania,
Speaker 1: which was founded in nineteen seventy one, and it has
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting story. Well, he continues to.
Speaker 2: You had me an anarchist squatter commune. Yeah, so it is.
Speaker 2: I think there's something like eight hundred nine hundred residents there,
Speaker 2: depending on who you ask. And they just basically showed up.
Speaker 2: They set up shop in this former military base and
Speaker 2: they said we're not leaving. This is a free, free territory.
Speaker 2: And in fact, when you walk into Christiania, I just
Speaker 2: want to say, Christiana is so bad.
Speaker 1: I know me too.
Speaker 2: That extra eye just throws me off. But it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter because I'm foreign to this. I'm foreign to the
Speaker 2: people of Denmark, so I will say I will just
Speaker 2: deal with it, right, that's right. At any rate. When
Speaker 2: you walk into Christiania, there's a sign that says you
Speaker 2: are now leaving the European Union.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty cool. So the backstory here is in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, that's the sixteen hundreds, by the way, and
Speaker 1: Copenhagen they built a big fortress and some ramparts there too,
Speaker 1: you know, as protection obviously, because that's what ramparts are.
Speaker 1: And in the eighteen thirties they built in our artillery
Speaker 1: barracks there. They grew over the course of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: but then in the nineteen hundreds Denmark was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, no one's gonna come after us. We're Denmark.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretty much likes this, so we don't need this
Speaker 1: kind of presence here. And so in nineteen sixteen the
Speaker 1: southern part of the base was closed and actually like
Speaker 1: converted by the country into a park. Then in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one parts of the ramparts on the northern end
Speaker 1: were transferred to the public, and then about six years later,
Speaker 1: between sixty seven and seventy one, they finally the military
Speaker 1: got out of it all together, and there was a
Speaker 1: completely abandoned military base there by nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean and it's pretty decent size. Part
Speaker 2: of it's a park, so it's alluring. It's in the
Speaker 2: middle of essentially downtown Copenhagen, so it's kind of like
Speaker 2: attractive to people. You know, it's not out in the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere. It's like, right there, let's do something
Speaker 2: with it. And there is a neighborhood right next to
Speaker 2: it called Christian Christian's Hoven Christians Haven if you anglicize it,
Speaker 2: and they apparently the parents there kept tearing down the
Speaker 2: security fences to allow their children to go in and
Speaker 2: play in this abandoned military barracks.
Speaker 1: You know, I actually looked up the V in Denmark
Speaker 1: and how you treated that thing?
Speaker 2: Did I? Butcher?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 2: Is that how I went?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, because I bet you're probably right,
Speaker 1: But what the internet said was that the V. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure someone can write in and let us know
Speaker 1: that the V is pronounced like a V when it's
Speaker 1: in the front of a word, but is treated as
Speaker 1: a W when it's in the middle or rear of
Speaker 1: a word.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let me try this again.
Speaker 1: Christian's holland maybe that's how they pronounced it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm genuinely curious because that's always thrown me.
Speaker 2: Chris John's hollowin. That's what I'm going.
Speaker 1: With, all right, that's what I'm going with too.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, anyway, it's a neighborhood and they tore down
Speaker 2: the fence, and apparently the local authorities I think the
Speaker 2: military at first, and then the government kept building the fence.
Speaker 2: They're like, this is to keep you out. Stop tearing
Speaker 2: it down. And the parents in the neighborhood said never,
Speaker 2: and they kept tearing it down. Finally, the government just
Speaker 2: gave up and just left it to them to let
Speaker 2: their children play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it became a kid's playground. In October of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, there's a guy named Jacob. Here's another bee.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, lugwigs and sure if the Internet is correct,
Speaker 1: and he is the or was then the editor of
Speaker 1: a Actually it turns out it's the most popular kind
Speaker 1: of counterculture rag in Denmark called the hod Blad.
Speaker 2: It means new leaf.
Speaker 1: Oh I saw it, the main paper.
Speaker 2: Oh, the main leaf. That's what I saw.
Speaker 1: Okay. I like new leaf too, because you can turn
Speaker 1: those over and good things happen.
Speaker 2: That's what I thought.
Speaker 1: So he was the editor of that thing. He needed
Speaker 1: some you know, some content to put in there. One week,
Speaker 1: and so he and some of his buddies went and
Speaker 1: did you know, kind of a fun little hey, we're
Speaker 1: going to take over this old barracks. And so they
Speaker 1: did an article. They took pictures of them, like having
Speaker 1: picnics and having and waving around air rifles and you know,
Speaker 1: you'll have to remember this is just after the military
Speaker 1: had left it, so it's very much like an anti
Speaker 1: war sort of little fun piece they were doing. And
Speaker 1: in the article he said civilians have taken over the
Speaker 1: Forbidden City, except he said it in the language there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And he also in the article that he wrote
Speaker 2: to accompany it, he said, hey, there's a bunch of
Speaker 2: different things we could do with this old military base.
Speaker 2: But there's a housing crisis right now. The prices of
Speaker 2: apartments and rents and all that are really really high.
Speaker 2: So young people are getting forced out of the city
Speaker 2: or can't move to the city. Let's turn this into
Speaker 2: affordable housing. And he said, and by affordable housing, I
Speaker 2: mean just free, come build your house here. Let's turn
Speaker 2: this into an anarchist compound. And they I think the
Speaker 2: local Colorful community answered the call pretty much immediately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you put out a call for anarchist commune,
Speaker 1: free rent, and doesn't matter where you are in the world,
Speaker 1: you're going to get some people knock out on your
Speaker 1: door pretty quickly with their petuli and their hackey sacks.
Speaker 1: And they were all in, certainly in Denmark. As far
Speaker 1: as the name Christiania, there's a bunch of stories that
Speaker 1: could have been named after the king who commissioned the barracks,
Speaker 1: or maybe a twist on that neighborhood that you talked about,
Speaker 1: the Christian showing, or maybe Oslo pre nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 1: So no one can quite pinpoint exactly why it was
Speaker 1: named Christiania, but that is what it was so dubbed.
Speaker 2: Right, and that's what it's still dubbed today because it
Speaker 2: is probably the most successful anarchist squat in history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: It's been around for seventy years or no, fifty years.
Speaker 1: Hey, buddy, I was born in seventy one.
Speaker 2: Sorry. Yeah, it's been around as long as Chuck and
Speaker 2: Chuck's been around, so it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fifty five years old. Just to say it
Speaker 1: like you said it was. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: said it, but they had a pretty good start there
Speaker 1: because you know, it was just abandoned by the military
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one, so it's not like it was
Speaker 1: falling apart or anything like that. It wasn't like fancy,
Speaker 1: but the buildings were all pretty great, and they had
Speaker 1: electricity and running water. And as they got going, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like, hey, let's get together and be a community.
Speaker 1: It was just like, hey, you can come here and
Speaker 1: do whatever you want. But one thing I love about
Speaker 1: people is when you get enough people together for a
Speaker 1: period of time, they don't like too much chaos, and
Speaker 1: they all tend to come together. I feel like, maybe
Speaker 1: it doesn't always work out, but initially I feel like
Speaker 1: they all seemed to come together and say like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's get like organized a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's very hobsy in yeah. And the point of
Speaker 2: that is that this group that started out as an
Speaker 2: anarchist commune and not even a commune, I guess, just
Speaker 2: a bunch of anarchist squatters, formed an anarchist commune. They
Speaker 2: like you said, they came together. They started making rules
Speaker 2: because even anarchists love rules.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: The first rule was no violence, which is a pretty
Speaker 2: good first rule, and that was the only rule for
Speaker 2: quite quite a long time actually, And the way that
Speaker 2: these anarchist squatters who lived in Christiania enforced the rules
Speaker 2: was through like social pressure, exclusion, shunning. They they policed themselves, right,
Speaker 2: so if you if you did commit violentce, you would
Speaker 2: be forced out of this neighborhood one way or another.
Speaker 2: And that was essentially one of the first things they
Speaker 2: came together to do was to kind of self police.
Speaker 2: And then the second thing they came together to do
Speaker 2: was to take care of the trash. Yeah, because there
Speaker 2: are two things that people do in any situation, especially
Speaker 2: when there are no rules. They'll fight and they'll generate
Speaker 2: garbage and just leave it places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they said, hey, you know, that was literally
Speaker 1: like the first thing they did is they formed a team,
Speaker 1: a garbage team to deal with the waste. Businesses started
Speaker 1: to open up a little bit, and it didn't take long.
Speaker 1: Within a few years kind of like by the mid seventies,
Speaker 1: it was it's, you know, own little society in there.
Speaker 1: They had communal bass that they built, they had cafes,
Speaker 1: they had shop collectives, they had a Kindergarten. They had
Speaker 1: a theater, a few theaters, I think, but the largest
Speaker 1: is the Gray Hall, which is still there today. I
Speaker 1: think I looked up the capacity. It looks like it.
Speaker 1: See it's about fifteen hundred people.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: And they've had some like Bob Dylan played there. Metallica
Speaker 1: and Rage Against the Machine both played there, so.
Speaker 2: Did no effects Morrissey Prodigy. Did Morrissey show up though
Speaker 2: probably not he was scheduled. Yeah, and I saw Steve
Speaker 2: Ignorant from Crass played there too. Who's that? I don't
Speaker 2: know that Crass, the punk band Crass, Yes you have.
Speaker 1: I have never heard of them, and.
Speaker 2: I know you listened to everything I say.
Speaker 1: All right, So Christiana was obviously I think they had
Speaker 1: their their motto at Versus Black Sheep from all Classes Unite.
Speaker 1: And they attracted a lot of artists, obviously early on
Speaker 1: and still the place is kind of teeming with art
Speaker 1: if you you can just look up pictures or you
Speaker 1: can go on YouTube, and there are quite a few
Speaker 1: YouTube videos of people just doing like a little walking
Speaker 1: tour of Freetown, Christiania, and it's awesome. It looks like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's murals everywhere. They started hosting plays and
Speaker 1: musicals at the Gray Hall over the years, and it's
Speaker 1: just sort of a lovely place if you're into art,
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of visual or musical art.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I said there were about eight hundred
Speaker 2: and nine hundred residents. I saw about one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty of those are kids, and there are children who
Speaker 2: are raised. Like you said, they've established kindergartens there. And
Speaker 2: there's a guy named Lucas Forshammer. He's the lead singer
Speaker 2: of a group, a band called Lucas Graham and they
Speaker 2: sing in English. I think they're big ish from what
Speaker 2: I saw, it's kind of pop country almost. He was
Speaker 2: born and raised in Christiania, and I was reading a
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone article with him, and it was really interesting
Speaker 2: him because he seems very mellow and nice and open.
Speaker 2: But one of his quotes was that he learned how
Speaker 2: to mix a Molotov cocktail before he learned how to
Speaker 2: mix a Long Island iced tea.
Speaker 1: Wow, which is interesting because they generally, I mean, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about think when things got a little violent, but
Speaker 1: they're a peaceful people.
Speaker 2: They are, but they also, you know, the cops show
Speaker 2: up whenever they want and this is like a group
Speaker 2: of anarchist squatters and they don't really like police presences,
Speaker 2: and yeah, yeah, so it's a there's this real undercurrent
Speaker 2: under this whole story, because the there's a it's a
Speaker 2: generally positive story, but you also can't forget we're talking
Speaker 2: about anarchists squatting in the middle of a modern city
Speaker 2: and being pressured from outside and pushing back on that
Speaker 2: pressure in ways that you know you can't forget.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So I think we sort of teased
Speaker 1: a bit of a dark side. And why don't we
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll talk about another type of
Speaker 1: person who moved to Christiania right after this. All right,
Speaker 1: So we mentioned that lots of like cool, free spirited
Speaker 1: artists moved to Christiania and put on plays and musicals
Speaker 1: and painted walls and did all kinds of fun stuff
Speaker 1: open shops and cafes. But also that became the what
Speaker 1: was known as the green Light District where even though
Speaker 1: marijuana was illegal and Denmark, they would sell drugs there,
Speaker 1: mainly pot, and it was called Pusher Street. They sold
Speaker 1: the street where they sold the drugs was ended up
Speaker 1: being called Pusher Street. It was generally like I said,
Speaker 1: selling weed and hash not the biggest deal. But anytime
Speaker 1: you have that kind of thing, you know somebody will
Speaker 1: come in wanting heroin or acid or you know, whatever
Speaker 1: you name a drug, and harder drugs did kind of
Speaker 1: come in and it got pretty out of hand and
Speaker 1: they had a lot of problems with the cops and
Speaker 1: eventually gangs over the years.
Speaker 2: Yeah they did, because I mean, marijuana is not recreational.
Speaker 2: Marijuana was not and I think still is not legal
Speaker 2: in Denmark. So this is like flagrant open selling of
Speaker 2: hash in particular, and because this is a black market,
Speaker 2: the people who are willing to kind of step up
Speaker 2: and you know, offer those services or those products are
Speaker 2: criminal elements. So those gangs in particular, the how are
Speaker 2: we going to say this, the BS Motorcycle Club.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean everybody knows what that is. We don't
Speaker 1: cuss on this show, but that was one of their names.
Speaker 2: And then the world famous Hell's Angels.
Speaker 1: I think you mean the h Double Hockey Stix Angel.
Speaker 2: That's right, thank you. They those two gangs ended up
Speaker 2: trying to take over Pusher Street and there was actually
Speaker 2: a gang war from nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: Between those two gangs, and a lot of it played
Speaker 2: out on Pusher Street. Now, like you said, the people
Speaker 2: who live there are pretty much peace loving, they're self governing,
Speaker 2: they're just generally mellow people. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: there's motorcycle gangs at a war in the middle of
Speaker 2: your town. And I saw there was an article by
Speaker 2: I think a guy in Vanity Fair of all places,
Speaker 2: about this, and he said, if you want to imagine
Speaker 2: Pusher Street, imagine a quaint, little small town with a
Speaker 2: strip mall going right through the middle, down main Street,
Speaker 2: with forty liquor stores on it. Yeah, that's essentially what
Speaker 2: he said. This is like. So this just basically developed.
Speaker 2: And remember, these people didn't like plan Pusher Street. It
Speaker 2: just started to happen, and then it got out of hand,
Speaker 2: certainly out of their hands because they're anarchists. They can't
Speaker 2: call the cops because they don't believe in that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. They can't sick the government on these people.
Speaker 2: They don't believe in that kind of stuff. So they
Speaker 2: had to do whatever they could to kind of try
Speaker 2: to keep this element out as much as possible, and
Speaker 2: they really had a hard time with it for decades.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean one of the other rules that they
Speaker 1: eventually brought in was that you can't wear gang colors.
Speaker 1: I think by two thousand and four, supposedly or reportedly,
Speaker 1: up to twenty five percent of Christiania was reliant on
Speaker 1: the drug economy. And that same Vanity Fair article said
Speaker 1: that Pusher Street had the biggest hash market on the
Speaker 1: planet and said it basically had forty different stalls selling
Speaker 1: forty different brands of hashish, and the cops in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen estimate that the drug trade had put on Pusher
Speaker 1: Street was worth about one hundred million American dollars a
Speaker 1: year or one billion kroner. So it was like that
Speaker 1: way for decades and decades. There was violence that was
Speaker 1: at least one killing. I think the cops in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven found a dismembered body under the floor of
Speaker 1: one of the gang's hangouts, and there was just a
Speaker 1: lot of push and pull over the years with the
Speaker 1: police trying to rid that scene from there, and certainly
Speaker 1: the people, you know, like most of the people on
Speaker 1: the inside wanting it gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there were like there were I think
Speaker 2: the the Hell's Angels eventually overpowered the BS motorcycle club
Speaker 2: to the point where they folded because they kept carrying
Speaker 2: out broad daylight hits on the BS motorcycle club's leaders,
Speaker 2: and one of those took place at Christiania. As recently
Speaker 2: as twenty twenty three, there was a fatal stabbing, fatal shootings.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two there was
Speaker 2: a shooting that injured three people, one of whom was
Speaker 2: a cop. So you can imagine, like if there's certain
Speaker 2: liberal vanguards of Danish society there, like let them live,
Speaker 2: let them stay. This is an experience, a social experiment.
Speaker 2: The cops in Copenhagen hate Christiania and are just I
Speaker 2: get the impression, pull their hair out over the idea
Speaker 2: that this is just allowed to continue, especially when cops
Speaker 2: start getting shot and other people get murdered in broad
Speaker 2: daylight in this place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean they had in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: like an eighteen month campaign to get all the drugs
Speaker 1: out of there that didn't work. At one point they
Speaker 1: were patrolling twenty four to seven. There's in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four they had built the cops had built a
Speaker 1: Pusher Street replica at their training facility. So they could
Speaker 1: literally train for like exactly how to handle that area.
Speaker 1: And there was a song even the district Police department
Speaker 1: wrote a song about the dealers that had the line
Speaker 1: clear out Christiania, take the s down. They will never
Speaker 1: never smoke a joint again. That's what happens when cops
Speaker 1: write songs, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, right. And they also in twenty twenty two alone,
Speaker 2: they raided Pusher Street one hundred times. Yeah, and they
Speaker 2: kept bouncing back. It kept bouncing back. I saw that
Speaker 2: even though they didn't call the police. This was somebody
Speaker 2: who was explaining it on Quora. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: what there their bona fides are, Yeah, so take this
Speaker 2: with a grain of salt, but they seem to not
Speaker 2: be quite sensationalists. They said that at one point, the
Speaker 2: residents of Christiania essentially baited a police rate is how
Speaker 2: they put it. They I'm not quite sure, but they
Speaker 2: did something that they knew would attract the police. They
Speaker 2: knew it was coming, and so they warned everybody who
Speaker 2: lived in Christiania about it. And they didn't warn any
Speaker 2: of the dealers on Pusher Street to base use the
Speaker 2: cops to get these guys out of Pusher Street. So
Speaker 2: that's I guess one tactic you could possibly use if
Speaker 2: you're not willing to call the cops. But they they
Speaker 2: also themselves would go disassemble these stalls. They would as
Speaker 2: a group stand up to the Hell's Angels in the
Speaker 2: BS Motorcycle Club and push them out. But even if
Speaker 2: the cops are doing it, if the residents of Christiania
Speaker 2: were doing it, it did not matter. For decades, they
Speaker 2: would come back and they would sell hash and make
Speaker 2: money and essentially intimidate the people who live there.
Speaker 1: That's right, And they even said, never mind, that's a
Speaker 1: terrible joke. I'm not even going to say it. But
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, they finally, finally, it was just
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, dug up Pusher Street. They
Speaker 1: literally dug up and got rid of that street all
Speaker 1: together and got everyone out of there, and they, I
Speaker 1: think cobin Hagen announced plans to build a pub some
Speaker 1: public housing on where Pusher Street used to be, so
Speaker 1: you know, there's like local crafts and stuff being sold
Speaker 1: on Push Now. It remains to be seen if the
Speaker 1: drug trade is going to come back, but hopefully that
Speaker 1: did the trick and it's out of there.
Speaker 2: And one of the other things I saw. Actually two
Speaker 2: other things that Christiani a residence did over the years
Speaker 2: to keep drugs out as best they could. The first one,
Speaker 2: I think came in the late seventies when heroin started
Speaker 2: to make a real apparance, and they were like, you
Speaker 2: know what, we don't want heroin here. We don't want
Speaker 2: hard drugs. You want to drink, you want to smoke hash,
Speaker 2: you want to smoke pot, whatever, that's fine, but we
Speaker 2: as a group are going to say we don't want
Speaker 2: heroin here. So they essentially forced out the heroin dealers
Speaker 2: and they said, you heroin addicts, if you want to stay, stay,
Speaker 2: but you have to quit heroin. You have to go
Speaker 2: into treatment. Yeah, and get this. They said, we're going
Speaker 2: to test your urine randomly to make sure that you're
Speaker 2: staying clean, and if you're not, we're going to force
Speaker 2: you out. And I was like, I looked into how
Speaker 2: they did. Then apparently there was a resident who could
Speaker 2: detect heroin and your urine with just one tiny sip
Speaker 2: at any rate. They really did drug test people. That
Speaker 2: was the first time they did it. The second time
Speaker 2: they appealed to the public and they said help save Christiania.
Speaker 2: Buy your hash somewhere else. So they were actually actively
Speaker 2: trying to keep people from buying hash in Christiania, which
Speaker 2: apparently it's supposedly not actually cool to do, but it's
Speaker 2: such a tourist spot, and tourists just will go buy
Speaker 2: hash whenever they can out in broad daylight. That it's
Speaker 2: it was just thriving for decades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think they said they get it
Speaker 1: in the like peak vacation summertime. They get like as
Speaker 1: many as ten thousand people touristing that area every day
Speaker 1: for sure, so it's very busy area. But it seems
Speaker 1: like they've eradicated the drugs at least for now. So
Speaker 1: their relationship with the government over the years is that
Speaker 1: has sort of been up and down, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about all that right after this.
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, you were saying that the government has had
Speaker 2: a love hate or lenient not so lenient relationship with
Speaker 2: Christiania over the years, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: How well, I mean, you know, they came in and
Speaker 1: took over a military base. They were building fences and
Speaker 1: they were getting torn down and sort of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have a playground, and then okay, you can
Speaker 1: live there, and you know, I think as it started
Speaker 1: to build there was just some raised eyebrows, but they
Speaker 1: weren't causing a lot of trouble, so they let them go.
Speaker 1: And by nineteen seventy two, the govern it's official stance
Speaker 1: was like, all right, this is a social experiment and
Speaker 1: let's see how it goes.
Speaker 2: Right, so you think, oh, that's great, they're going to
Speaker 2: leave us alone. Nope, the next year the government was saying, like,
Speaker 2: we're not sure about this social experiment experiment thing. Everybody
Speaker 2: needs to leave by April first, nineteen seventy six. And
Speaker 2: the people of Christiania did not take that sitting down.
Speaker 2: They sued the Danish government. They protested the court's rule
Speaker 2: against Christiania over and over again. But the despite you know,
Speaker 2: legally being able to go in and clear everybody out,
Speaker 2: the Danish government just would never go that far. They
Speaker 2: threatened to, they came up with plans, they came up
Speaker 2: with compromises, but they never went so far as to
Speaker 2: just go in and remove everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they've they've threatened eviction and like had
Speaker 1: official eviction decrees and then revoked. But yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: they I think it would be. It was so well
Speaker 1: known by that point, it would be a really bad
Speaker 1: look for the government to go in and you know,
Speaker 1: rip like literal families out of there that were basically
Speaker 1: doing pretty good. I mean, from what I saw, the
Speaker 1: only kind of downside was the hash trade that went
Speaker 1: on there for so long, and that was just in
Speaker 1: one localized area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that seems to be how the government and
Speaker 2: the police in particular really kept the heat on the
Speaker 2: residents of Christiania that, like you said, that seemed to
Speaker 2: be the only real problem with it. I've seen. If
Speaker 2: you remove that whole drug trade, the crime in Christiania
Speaker 2: is very very low, so regardless because nobody could get
Speaker 2: a handle on the drug trade. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: the government actually passed what they called the Christiania Act.
Speaker 2: I said, you guys can stay, but you're going to
Speaker 2: have to work with us a little more. Pub owners
Speaker 2: are going to have to start getting liquor licenses. We're
Speaker 2: gonna need to certify your kindergarten teachers stuff like that. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: there had to be some sort of governmental intervention. Their
Speaker 2: kids have to actually go to government schools. Outside of Christiania.
Speaker 2: There's just more involvement that the government insisted on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of years before that, in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: they said, all right, the new plan is you can
Speaker 1: stay here, but we're going to divide up this area
Speaker 1: and the neighborhood is going to be rezoned into two areas.
Speaker 1: The military ramparts where a lot of your homes are
Speaker 1: is going to be a conservation zone and you're going
Speaker 1: to have to move out eventually. And then the second
Speaker 1: area is what we're going to call the urban zone,
Speaker 1: and you can basically stay there. And then in a
Speaker 1: couple of years they announced all the plans just to
Speaker 1: make things a little more official.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's sae that way for a couple decades,
Speaker 2: and then two thousand and one the government's like, just
Speaker 2: forget that, forget it again. We're going to evict you guys.
Speaker 1: So finally in twenty eleven, the government in Denmark said
Speaker 1: all right, you guys can keep doing your thing, but
Speaker 1: you got to buy this land, like we got to
Speaker 1: get some then out of it. And that was a
Speaker 1: tough nut to crack for the residents there because first
Speaker 1: of all, like they didn't have that kind of dough
Speaker 1: and second of all, that was like not what they
Speaker 1: were all about, Like, individual property ownership wasn't their jam,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of them were turned off by
Speaker 1: the whole idea of kind of owning that. But then
Speaker 1: I think they saw the writing on the wall, which
Speaker 1: is like, well, this is what allow us to stay
Speaker 1: at least, So they raised the money. They didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: go out and buy individual parcels of land. They set
Speaker 1: up a foundation that would cover all of the land
Speaker 1: that they needed, and they raised the dough. They raised
Speaker 1: twelve and a half million kroner and that was enough
Speaker 1: to buy about a quarter of that land and then
Speaker 1: pay rent for the rest of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get this. They also took out bank loans,
Speaker 2: which can't you see them like showing up with like
Speaker 2: their hair kind of parted and in like styled as
Speaker 2: best as they can, but they're still wearing like their
Speaker 2: leather vest with the anarchy symbol painted on the back. Totally.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the movie version.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So the way that they got around that
Speaker 2: private ownership thing was they pulled everything together and they
Speaker 2: bought it collectively. So Christiania itself owns the land that
Speaker 2: these people live on. The people pay rent to the community.
Speaker 2: They also pay essentially an hoa fee of something like
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy six kroner I think are dollars
Speaker 2: worth a.
Speaker 1: Month thirteen hundred and fifty kroner. Well, see, that's the
Speaker 1: trade off is the rent is about four dollars and
Speaker 1: sixty seven cents a month American, right, but the maintenance
Speaker 1: fees are one hundred and ninety six a month. So
Speaker 1: they're basically saying like, hey, you can live here for
Speaker 1: almost nothing, but it still costs money to run this place,
Speaker 1: and you're all going to pitch.
Speaker 2: In for that exactly right. So that's actually a pretty
Speaker 2: good work around. If you're an anarchistic you need to
Speaker 2: make a deal with the capitalist devil. That's about the
Speaker 2: best you can hope for. So the government was like, well,
Speaker 2: it's your land now, Okay, we can't do anything, but
Speaker 2: that's about a quarter of the land. There's still a
Speaker 2: bunch of land left. And if you don't buy this,
Speaker 2: we're gonna build public housing. That seems to be the threat. Ironically, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the government now uses over Christiania is we're going to
Speaker 2: build housing that is open to the public and you're
Speaker 2: not going to have any say about who moves in,
Speaker 2: because over the years, in another great stroke of irony,
Speaker 2: the people of Christiania have gotten extremely selective of who
Speaker 2: moves in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you have to do an interview now
Speaker 1: to move in. It used to be like they would
Speaker 1: just accept anybody. But you know, they got more organized.
Speaker 1: I think there are fourteen different neighborhood groups there now,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a lot of I think it
Speaker 1: just got a little more complicated as time went on,
Speaker 1: like there has to be consensus for changing even very
Speaker 1: minor things like changing out the windows of a building.
Speaker 1: I think the New York Times did an article on
Speaker 1: it that said it was like an out of control
Speaker 1: cond association. And you know, like I said, you have
Speaker 1: to go through an interview process just to live there now.
Speaker 1: So I think sort of the idyllic days have come
Speaker 1: and gone. But from what I've read about just contemporary
Speaker 1: articles now, it seems to still be kind of a
Speaker 1: great thing for people who live there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Like there's a sewer system, like we said,
Speaker 2: garbage collection has been there a long time. They have
Speaker 2: recycling centers, they have the Gray Hall, there's cafes, beast shows,
Speaker 2: there's just a lot there's like a it's a city.
Speaker 2: It's like a little city that was self built and
Speaker 2: also self governed. They also Chuck have their own currency,
Speaker 2: the lune with a slash through it, the metal o
Speaker 2: and which means the wage. It's apparently equal to about
Speaker 2: fifty Danish kroner and it's a minted coin made of copper.
Speaker 2: I could not find where they have it minted, but
Speaker 2: they have minted currency in Christiania. There's a pot leaf
Speaker 2: and a snail on one side.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: On the other side it says free town of Christiania
Speaker 2: and live and let others live.
Speaker 1: Well, that's pretty nice.
Speaker 2: But they have minted coins.
Speaker 1: How you just you can get a coin minted?
Speaker 2: I can't. I have no idea where to go get
Speaker 2: a coin minted, and I don't even know how to
Speaker 2: begin to find out.
Speaker 1: We could get a coin minted. There's like podcasts and
Speaker 1: people do like challenge coins and stuff all the time,
Speaker 1: so it's a service you can have.
Speaker 2: Well, are my eyes open now?
Speaker 1: You've never gotten a challenge coin from someone or I
Speaker 1: don't even know.
Speaker 2: What that means.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like not even I think there are other
Speaker 1: names for them too. But you can get like a
Speaker 1: coin made like Ben and Adam, I think for greatest
Speaker 1: generation had coins made.
Speaker 2: Well, it didn't give me one.
Speaker 1: You could give them to people. My brother in law
Speaker 1: and the Marines, they got a coin minted for his
Speaker 1: I was about to say graduation, his retirement, and so
Speaker 1: he gave me one of those coins.
Speaker 2: So it's a thing that's awesome. Will you give me
Speaker 2: a coin? Sure?
Speaker 1: I'll just hop on over to coins r us and
Speaker 1: input my what do you want to have? Momo on
Speaker 1: one side and you me on the other? Perfect and
Speaker 1: maybe like a like a palm tree and a Georgia beach.
Speaker 2: Can you put them both in profile and make them
Speaker 2: look like queens?
Speaker 1: Well they already do. Okay, great, should be too hard.
Speaker 2: That's a great coin, man, Thank you. Let's see what else.
Speaker 2: Oh I talked about how there are only a couple
Speaker 2: of rules to start in the first one was violence.
Speaker 2: The second one was no hard drugs. As the gang's
Speaker 2: got more became more and more of a problem, you
Speaker 2: couldn't wear gang colors. Yeah, no stealing, no bulletproof vest.
Speaker 2: That's actually a pretty grim rule.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get shot, you're gonna die, exactly.
Speaker 2: Take it like a man. And guns and knives. That
Speaker 2: was all part of one rule and no running, No running,
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 1: Why they said that running causes chaos or panic or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, yeah, And they were saying that that usually
Speaker 2: indicates that it's a police raid, and so other people
Speaker 2: are going to start running too, So don't run, just walk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, lifeguard rules exactly.
Speaker 2: So the current state of Christiani is exactly the same.
Speaker 2: They managed to get Pusher Street closed down, or at
Speaker 2: least they got the pushers out of Pusher Street. That
Speaker 2: public housing is still on the offing. I think it's
Speaker 2: supposed to start in twenty twenty nine, and the neighborhood's
Speaker 2: very divided about it. Some people are like, no, we
Speaker 2: want to know who's moving in here. We want to
Speaker 2: vet who moves in here. Yeah, and we don't want,
Speaker 2: you know, three hundred public houses built in the middle.
Speaker 2: I think they were going to build it in the middle,
Speaker 2: like right down Pusher Street to kind of make it
Speaker 2: so Pusher Street never comes back. The other faction, I guess,
Speaker 2: is like, no, this is actually great because we need
Speaker 2: affordable housing. Copenhangen is very very expensive still, so this
Speaker 2: is going to bring like younger people and artists and
Speaker 2: allow people to kind of move in and we need
Speaker 2: that kind of.
Speaker 1: New blood too, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So I talked about different factions. Right, There's this author
Speaker 2: who I think back in nineteen eighty one, he was
Speaker 2: a Christiania resident but also a scholar, and he wrote
Speaker 2: a book Burgs Madsen is how I'm going to say
Speaker 2: his name, and he essentially divided the population of Christiania
Speaker 2: into three socioeconomic or essentially three cultural strata. One was
Speaker 2: the top were the activists, who he calls the holy ones.
Speaker 2: The bottom stratum was the he called them trash, and
Speaker 2: then the middle stratum was the liberalists. And he essentially
Speaker 2: said that the liberalists came from the middle class outside
Speaker 2: of christian moved to Christiania. And I get the impression
Speaker 2: where like the least radical, the least anarchistic, and he
Speaker 2: essentially asserts all the way back in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: he points to the liberalists as the ones who led
Speaker 2: to this kind of normalizing, compromising of Christiania that makes
Speaker 2: it a little less radical than it originally was.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say hash users, hash makers,
Speaker 1: hash dealers, than hash haters.
Speaker 2: And the hash itself it has rights in Christiania.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right. That's a group into itself.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's the future of Christiania. You got anything else, I.
Speaker 1: Got nothing else. It's on my list to visit if
Speaker 1: I ever get over that way.
Speaker 2: Oh. I can't wait to go to Copenhagen someday. I
Speaker 2: want to just go to all of Scandinavia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oslo, Oslo, Stockholm. Everything I've heard is just great.
Speaker 1: It's just like if like nice people to just riding
Speaker 1: their bikes everywhere, then it's for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I think monical magazine called Copenhagen the
Speaker 2: World's most livable city.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll go there someday, Chuck. All right, and
Speaker 2: I need to go figure out some other Scandinavian cities
Speaker 2: to visit too, so I can rattle them off. That's right,
Speaker 2: Chuck said, that's right. So it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: This is from Troy. Hey, guys, been enjoying the show
Speaker 1: for a few years, and I saw the Camp David
Speaker 1: episode and I had to listen right away because my
Speaker 1: dad was a captain in the Marines and stationed at
Speaker 1: Camp David from nineteen seventy one to nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: We lived down the hill from the camp in military housing,
Speaker 1: and when the President Nixon at the time was not there,
Speaker 1: we were generally able to use the facilities on the camp.
Speaker 1: Everyone that was allowed on the camp or in the
Speaker 1: camp had their profile with picture in the guard post
Speaker 1: and you could drive right up to the gate. At
Speaker 1: the time, I was fied to seven years old and
Speaker 1: actually learned to swim in that figure eight pool. There's
Speaker 1: a picture out there of Gerald Ford and his dog
Speaker 1: by the pool at the exact spot I remember just
Speaker 1: going for it and jumping in. My dad passed away
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, and while going through his stuff I
Speaker 1: found his short autobiography. I was really surprised at how
Speaker 1: candidly he described some of this, because he never really
Speaker 1: talked about it that much. Below is an excerpt of
Speaker 1: his memories there, and he included a really nice page
Speaker 1: from his dad that I read and it was awesome.
Speaker 1: I still have some memorabilia from the time there as well,
Speaker 1: including Camp David playing cards and a Russian clock given
Speaker 1: by some dignitaries that visited.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 1: Keep up the great work, and that is from Troy Buscher.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks a lot, Troy. That's a great story. And
Speaker 2: if you want to be like Troy and tell us
Speaker 2: a personal story, especially a sweet one about your dad
Speaker 2: that has to do with one of our episodes we
Speaker 2: want to hear from you, send it off to Stuff
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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