The location (Elandsgracht) grounds Fietsstraat Amsterdam ethnographically. Once a canal where tanners processed hides, later filled to become a market street that sparked food riots in 1917, now a corridor marked by a strong sense of community that is threatened by gentrification, Elandsgracht embodies Amsterdam’s working-class and cultural history. To linger here is to sense those histories: the disheveled folks drinking beer; the neighbors who pick up trash and water plants in the median; the cyclists intentionally slowing down big luxury cars. These overlapping uses—captured in long, static shots—reveal how public space accommodates multiple forms of life simultaneously.

The Elandsgracht canal was dug in 1612–1613 during Amsterdam’s Third Expansion, part of the new Jordaan district constructed for craftsmen, migrants, and small traders. Unlike nearby canals named after flowers, its name recalls the leather trade: tanneries along Elandsgracht and neighboring Looiersgracht processed hides — reportedly including elk and moose from Russia— producing the noxious effluent that gave Jordaan waterways their stench. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the canal was lined with narrow workers’ houses and small workshops, crowded with artisans and immigrant families.

As Amsterdam modernized, many Jordaan canals were filled in for sanitary and public health reasons. In 1891, Elandsgracht was covered over, creating a broad street that served as a hub for greengrocers and potato traders. This market economy shaped local life, but hardship was never far away. In 1917, food shortages sparked the “Potato Riot” just off Elandsgracht, when women and workers clashed with troops over access to food.

The street also carried the Jordaan’s cultural vibrancy. Folklore places the bandit Jacob “Sjako” Muller at nos. 71–77, remembered as a local Robin Hood. The early twentieth century brought neighborhood theaters, such as the Edison Theater, and later the music of Johnny Jordaan, whose statue stands on the corner with Prinsengracht.

By the postwar years, the Jordaan had fallen into decline, and sweeping demolition plans loomed. Activist and preservationist pushback in the 1970s shifted policy toward rehabilitation, sparing Elandsgracht from wholesale clearance. The street instead became home to new institutions, including the Amsterdam Police Headquarters and a bus station at Marnixstraat. More recent redesigns have added greenery, benches, and pedestrian space to the wide median.

Today Elandsgracht is a broad, mixed-use street of cafés, shops, and community institutions such as the Claverhuis community center. Yet its layered past remains visible: gentrified yet still carrying the memory of working-class life and neighborhood solidarity.