COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The inhabitants of Copenhagen’s freewheeling Christiania neighborhood plan to dig up the aptly named Pusher Street, in their latest attempt to stop illegal hashish sales which have led to deadly gang turf wars and sometimes violent confrontations with the police.
Residents of the hippie enclave are calling for volunteers to help dig up the street on April 6, the Berlingske newspaper wrote Thursday. All are welcome, and participants can take home one of its cobblestones as a souvenir.
It is yet unclear what will replace the street.
The residents are fighting to preserve Christiania’s reputation as a “free-wheeling society” made up of political idealists and aging hippies. For years, hash has been sold openly in Christiania from roadside stalls, among buildings painted in psychedelic colors. But inhabitants say that feuding gangs, not them, control the trade and the survival of their community hinges on ending it.
The neighborhood has been a world apart from the rest of Copenhagen since 1973, when hippies squatted at a derelict naval base and set up a community dedicated to the flower-power ideals popular at the time: free cannabis, limited government influence, no cars and no police.
