On November 25, 2023, the Initiative Jordanstraße 3 occupied the vacant premises on the ground floor and upper floor of Jordanstraße 3. Café Rabe was opened on the ground floor as a neighborhood café, while project and association premises are to be created on the upper floor. However, there is still a lot of renovation and refurbishment work to be done before Café Rabe can fully launch its planned concept.
Current opening hours and regular dates:
| Mo. |
16.30 – 18.30
- 16.30 – 18.30 Reading for kids (multilingual)
- 18.30 – 22.00 Open Café
|
| Di. |
17.00 – 20.00 |
| Mi. |
18.00 – 21.00
- 10-11 Uhr reading circle (Jugendkommune)
- 11-16 Uhr study and extra lessons
- 16-20 Uhr Jugendkommune Café (get together, exchange, making music, games, etc.)
|
| Do. |
tba |
| Fr. |
tba |
| Sa. |
11.00 – 14.00 Bring-along-Brunch |
| So. |
tba (usually 13.00 – 18.00) |
As of 24.01.2024. Café Rabe is also often open outside the above-mentioned core opening hours, just drop by. The opening hours are still being finalized and will be extended gradually.
Dear neighbors, friends and companions,
We are the Jordanstraße 3 initiative and have been doing political and critical neighborhood work in Bockenheim under various names for several years, mostly in cooperation with other initiatives. The building you are standing in front of has been our concern since 2019; many of you probably knew the rooms as the Pielok restaurant, which served as a second living room for many people until December 2016. Until it was then sold to the city in January 2017 and, under the responsibility of the CDU, ruthlessly stood empty for a whole 7 years until our occupation.
Together with other initiatives, we repeatedly drew attention to these grievances, held talks, gathered ideas, dreams and wishes from the district at street and district festivals, organized critical district tours and even tried to rent the rooms. All to no avail. The vacancy was seemed to never end. Talks and protests went unanswered and we as a neighbourhood and the initiatives in it had to watch for years as the rooms continued to fall into disrepair. We had to accept the pain of feeling the great need for non-commercial spaces on a daily basis and at the same time seeing a potential space for our dreams in our immediate neighborhood standing empty and falling into disrepair.
The city’s more recent plans to sell the building again in 2024 meant that not only would our work of recent years be without prospects, but the remaining residents of the building would once again be threatened with displacement through luxury refurbishment. We could not and would not accept this and therefore resorted to the last means of protest available to us and occupied the vacant space in the building on November 25, 2023.
A lot has happened since then. On the very first day we received overwhelming support from many of you. The moment shortly after we reopened the space to the neighborhood, ringing the doorbells of some familiar faces among you, the shared joy in the neighborhood about finally and actually being in here after such a long time. That was a really great moment, thank you so much!
We want to build on this mood, on the joy of creating beautiful things together. We want to take steps with you towards a more beautiful, communal and solidaric world, towards a district worth living in for us and future generations. There is still a lot to do to achieve this. But together, if we organize ourselves, take each other seriously and value each other, see our wishes and dreams – we can do it! Café Rabe was opened on the first floor as a neighborhood café, and project and club rooms are to be created on the first floor, which you can also use. Café Rabe is to become a place for all of this. A place to communicate, to come together, a place to improve and enjoy our lives together. We want to live well and we want everyone to be able to lead a good, beautiful and fulfilling life.
Unfortunately, many people feel unwelcome or even excluded in spaces that (supposedly) have similar aspirations. Many have experienced how closed off they are in the end and only serve a small feel-good bubble. That’s not what we want here. We want to be an open space in which we can all feel comfortable without having to follow certain scene codes through our clothes and appearance. We also don’t want to overlook the fact that some of us are treated badly and fall behind. We don’t want to leave each other alone. Feel welcome here, come in whenever it’s open and you feel like it. Café Rabe is your space too!
