Frankfurt
Article
Frankfurt is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between August 23, 2021 and September 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “FRANKFURT, GERMANY ( RSVP )”; “Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets”; “FRANKFURT, GERMANY”. It most often appears alongside Portland, Vienna, Amsterdam.
Metadata
- Category: Places
- Mention count: 6
- Issue count: 6
- First seen: August 23, 2021
- Last seen: September 15, 2025
Appears In
- Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
- Book Review: San Fransicko
- Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
- Open Thread 292
- Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
- Open Thread 399
Related Pages
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- Portland (5 shared issues)
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- Vienna (5 shared issues)
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- Amsterdam (4 shared issues)
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- Berkeley (4 shared issues)
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- Boston (4 shared issues)
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- Budapest (4 shared issues)
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- Cologne (4 shared issues)
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- Israel (4 shared issues)
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- JAKARTA (4 shared issues)
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- Lisbon (4 shared issues)
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- Madrid (4 shared issues)
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- Netherlands (4 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
FRANKFURT, GERMANY (RSVP) Contact: Jan, kirchner[dot]jan[at]icloud[dot]com Time: 7:00 PM, Wednesday, August 25 Location: Grüneburgpark (4MF6+R4 Frankfurt), southwest part Coordinates: https://w3w.co/staple.buzzer.lance Notes: This will overlap with the first iteration of a EA Frankfurt meetup, so lots of potentially positive synergies!
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/staple.buzzer.lance
Claim 9: European Cities Like Amsterdam Successfully Solved Their Own Drug And Homelessness Problems By Doing The Opposite Of SF Shellenberger bases his plan to solve these problems on ideas that he says were pioneered in Amsterdam and spread to other European cities. In the 1980s, Amsterdam had the kinds of problems San Francisco deals with now: open-air drug markets, overdose deaths, homelessness, and crime. But in the 90s, they admitted they had a problem and took decisive action: What’s the secret?” I asked him. “Amsterdam has decriminalized marijuana and many other drugs but I haven’t seen any homeless. What is San Francisco doing wrong?” Rene said that in the 1980s, the Zeedijk neighborhood in Amsterdam was a lot like the Tenderloin [the worst part of San Francisco] today. There was open-air drug use, particularly of heroin, and needles strewn about, as well as crime. People started to flee the neighborhood, worsening its slum conditions. Homeless people squatted in abandoned buildings. “We had ghettos where it was not safe to go,” said Rene, who started working in the neighborhood as a nurse in 1985. It was considered a “no go” zone. “We had a lot of people from abroad who came to Amsterdam because our heroin was so good. But our heroin was so good that they died from it.” At first the city tried a “helping approach” exclusively, offering addicts clean needles, methadone, and other forms of help without any law enforcement, but it didn’t work. “In the eighties we just wanted to help people,” said Rene. “We started with methadone programs and medical treatment. We did a lot of work without much of a carrot and a stick. It was really a disappointment. They just used the methadone to stay addicted. They dealt drugs and committed other crimes. They lied and cheated about it. We were just supporting a different kind of market. We had to learn the hard way [...] The Amsterdam City Council asked the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service to develop a strategy to deal with “unmotivated drug users”...The police broke up the open-air drug scene and health workers were on hand to offer methadone, treatment, and shelter. The police broke up gatherings of more than four or five users, but did not treat personal and private use as a crime. Officers ticketed violators, and if users did not pay their fines, which was frequent, the courts ordered arrests, and sentenced individuals to follow a treatment plan or face incarceration. “For every individual homeless person, we make a plan,” said Rene. “We made tens of thousands of those plans.” Plans are overseen by a caseworker and a team that may include a psychiatrist, shelter provider, service provider, judge, employer, parole officer, and police officer. “You need people in the police and health department working together,” he said. What Amsterdam did was the same as other major European cities. Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets, using a combination of law enforcement and social services. Crucially, Amsterdam and other European cities prevented services from being concentrated in a single neighborhood, since their concentration often enables an open-air drug scene to thrive [...] The efforts worked. “We had several thousand people who were addicted to heroin in the eighties and nineties,” said Rene. “Many died. Today we have four or five hundred people addicted to methadone. And we have about 120 in Amsterdam who we supply heroin to on a medical basis because methadone doesn’t work for them. They have to use heroin.” The Amsterdam strategy goes something like: Break up open-air drug markets and anywhere that more than 4-5 drug users are congregating. Yes, people can just use their drugs in private, but this is legitimately better. Open-air markets normalize drugs with their blatantness, and make it hard to quit for the same reason it’s hard to diet if your partner leaves boxes of donuts out in the house every day.
FRANKFURT, GERMANY Contact: Birce Sultan Karabey Contact Info: bircesultan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Tuesday, September 19th, 7:30 PM Location: Amp Bar, Gallusanlage 2, 60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F2C4M5C+JJ Notes: RSVP so I can inform the venue
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F2C4M5C+JJ
3: New additions to Meetups Everywhere: Bratislava, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Vienna, Curitiba - check the post for details. Meetups this week in Munich, Vienna, Cologne, Grass Valley, DC, New Orleans, St. Louis, Portland, Seattle, Buenos Aires, Columbus, Jakarta, Budapest, Toronto - along with many smaller cities that won’t fit here - so again, check the post if you’re interested.
Inline links: Meetups Everywhere
Meetup Czar note: The organizer asked for the date to be changed from the 6th of September to the 7th. FRANKFURT Contact: Alex Contact Info: acx[period]concert024[a t]passfwd[period]com Time: Sunday, September 21st, 5:00 PM Location: It is a restaurant called Big Chefs on the top floor of the Zeil shopping centre in Frankfurt. There will be a card on the table with "ACX Meetup" written on it Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F2C4M7J+VH Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Hqd [remove this bit] lP58zqwj51GSe6FkJ1M
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F2C4M7J+VH
Contact: Alex Contact Info: acx[period]concert024[a t]passfwd[period]com Time: Sunday, September 21st, 5:00 PM Location: It is a restaurant called Big Chefs on the top floor of the Zeil shopping centre in Frankfurt. There will be a card on the table with "ACX Meetup" written on it Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F2C4M7J+VH Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Hqd [remove this bit] lP58zqwj51GSe6FkJ1M
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F2C4M7J+VH
1: Meetups this week include Ann Arbor, Bangkok, Brussels, Cape Town, Charlotte, Frankfurt, Kyiv, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Portland, Philadelphia, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Sydney, Waterloo, and others; see the meetup post for more information. And Prague and St. Louis have been added to the list for October.
Inline links: the meetup post