Ruigoord

Ruigoord (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrœyxoːrt]) is a village in the Houtrakpolder in the Dutch province of North Holland, situated within the municipality of Amsterdam. Until the 1880s, it was an island in the IJ bay, which was turned into a polder. In the 1960s, the municipality planned to extend the Port of Amsterdam. From 1972 onwards squatters occupied buildings and started a free zone. After resisting eviction in 1997, the area was legalized in 2000. The village is nowadays partially closed in by the port, and lies about 8 km east of Haarlem.

Quotes

• A leftover of hippie Amsterdam is Ruigoord, a tiny village lying in a remaining slice of greenery between a line of windmills (for energy generation, not the old pîcturesque ones) and the industries expanding from the harbour. Nobody really wants to live there anymore ever since it found itself in the flight path to the nearby airport. So the place was cheap and accessible for penniless entrepreneurs in the "alternative" sector. One or two decades ago, the Ruigoord crowd had tried to prevent the industries from coming too close, so they used witchcraft rituals to keep the spirit of modernity, exploitation and pollution at bay, but in vain. Nonetheless, once you're inside the village, you could still imagine being in the middle of the premodern Dutch countryside. But the decoration is not so Dutch. The old church now sports pictures of the Dalai Lama and paintings of Shiva. In the middle of the meadow is a huge totem pole. Gotta think global before you act local. Next to the gate is an inscription of the Vedic Gayatri Mantra, with a few spelling mistakes. No marihuana conspicuously in sight, not even in the herbal-teahouse, but some old T-shirts demanding its legalization. So, it was a good place to spend a sunny day and dig the old spirit. ...
  Don't tell any of my friends in academe that I went to Ruigoord.
  • Elst, K. in The Book of Changes in Ruigoord