DINOSAUR ROAR: first warm summer evening in Amsterdam

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Gay Pride Canal Parade 2012: who is next to come out?

Gay Pride 2012, who is next to come out?  The Dutch army and the National Bank (DNB) are only a few official institutions that participate with a boat of their own in the yearly Canal Parade of Gay Pride Amsterdam. The museum and cultural sector is presented with their own boat (Amsterdam Museum | Bijbels Museum | De Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam | EYE/Filmmuseum | FOAM | Hermitage Amsterdam | Het Concertgebouw | Het Nationale Ballet | Joods Historisch Museum | Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest | Museum Van Loon | Nationaal Historisch Museum | Nederlands Bureau voor Toerisme en Congressen | Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest | Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder | Rijksmuseum | Scheepvaartmuseum | Stedelijk Museum | Tassenmuseum Hendrikje | Tropenmuseum | Van Gogh Museum) a never ending list. Even the government has their own (contested) boat - though the prime minister – Rutte – choose to profile himself at a more straight mass party around the corner on the same day as the Canal Parade: ‘Dance Valley’ . A Dutch Hindu boat was a newcomer this year following the trend of Christian, Islam and Jewish gay representation, during an event that seems to aim at embracing ‘the whole’ of Dutch society. But certain key sectors of the Netherlands keep ‘missing the emancipation boat’, fail the institutionalised ‘coming out’: Dutch football business, the Dutch Royal House of Orange (and they have several nice boats ready to take part) and a boat of a section of this society that is thought to consist mainly of macho heteros, the Dutch Mafia. Here is an underworld that should be targeted, stimulated to ‘come out of their closets’. One can already enjoy the vision of a ‘parade of sails’ of hash and cocaine boats chaperoned by armoured speedboats, with the crew dressed in proper t-shirts and sunglassed criminals with their water-pistols doing ‘bang, bang, bang’.

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Musea zonder H van Historisch: toeristische trekpleisters op het zere verleden

Kop van Het Parool vandaag: “Amsterdam Museum, zonder Historisch.”

Dat beweer ik nu al weer geruime tijd: “die ‘H’ in de naam van het ‘Amsterdams Historisch Museum’ is een letter en een woord teveel. Een museum dat niet langer in staat is het verleden steeds weer kritisch te hereiken (*), mag zich geen ‘Historisch’ Museum noemen, maar verwordt tot een uitstalkast van oude voorwerpen die als enig doel hebben om genoeg pannenkoeken en prentbriefkaarten te verkopen middels de museumkantine en -winkel, om de ‘oudheidkamers’ tussen Kalverstraat en Nieuwe Zijds draaiende te houden.

Vanaf januari wordt het ‘AHM’ dus kortweg ‘AM’ en dat past perfect in de looproute van ‘de toeristische trekpleisters op het zere verleden’, van Anne Frankhuis en Madame Tussaud, tot Rembrandthuis en een ander museum – dat gezien haar tentoonstellingsbeleid van de afgelopen decennia – wellicht ook het recht op die letter ‘H’ dreigt te verliezen, Het Joods Historisch Museum aan het Jonas Daniel Meijerplein (**).  Als we de trekpleisterroute vervolgen en de brug bij de Weesperstraat oversteken en langs het voormalig ouden van dagen huis het Amstelhof lopen is er nog een museum dat de letter ‘H’ al bij haar openingstentoonstelling heeft moeten inleveren: de ‘Ermitage aan de Amstel’, met haar kritiekloos etaleren van de pronkstukken van het door lijfeigenen rijk geworden geslacht van de  Romanovs met vermijding van het historisch verband tussen het autocratisch tsarisme en het daaruit voortgekomen Sovjetbewind. Niet voor niets was zowel Koningin Beatrix als President Dmitry Medvedev bij de opening (met in het gevolg ook nog de toenmalige CEO van de Koninklijke Shell Jeroen van der Veer die de gelegenheid aangreep om een nieuwe deal over olievelden in Siberië aan te kaarten).

Ook het  bijna doodgeboren ‘Nationaal Historisch Museum’ dat zich  vanaf  januari 2011 – eveneens in Amsterdam – schuil gaat houden in een kerk aan de Sint Anthoniesbreestraat dreigt het zonder ‘H’ te moeten stellen, omdat het bij decreet vastgestelde aantal vensters op de nationale geschiedeniscanon, nauwelijks binnen de eerdere genoemde definitie  van het bijvoeglijke naamwoord ‘historisch’  te vatten is: ‘het verleden steeds weer kritisch hereiken’. ‘Nationaal Museum; is korter en dekt ook beter de door voormalig SP kamerlid Jan Marijnissen geformuleerde taakstelling van het bevorderen van een ‘neo-nationaalbewustzijn’ (***).

Duidt dit jongste gebeuren  op een ware trend van onthistorisering van musea, zeker nu er van regeringswege verklaard is dat musea met onvoldoende bezoekersaantallen niet langer op rijkssteun mogen rekenen? Hebben ‘de succesvolle managers’ het niet al lang overgenomen van ‘de studieuze wetenschappers’ in de directiekamers van onze lokale en nationale erfgoedinstellingen? Een tentoonstellingsbeleid gericht op ‘kassakrakers’ ligt in het verschiet, waarbij de ‘de historie’ zeker overleven zal, zij het uit het zicht, in goed verborgen ‘schuilmusea’.

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(*) …zoals met de éénzijdig royalistische Oranjetentoonstelling van scheidend directrice Pauline Kruseman (nu nog Vicevoorzitter Raad van Toezicht Nationaal Historisch Museum);  ’Theater na Tomaat’ een buitenshuis samengestelde, slordige tentoonstelling, waarbij zelfs het jongste verleden onvoldoende bestudeerd was en onbestaande verbanden als historische feiten gepresenteerd werden (zie een meer feitelijke beschrijving op mijn web site); de viering van “Vier eeuwen vriendschap” tussen Amsterdam en New York met totale verwaarlozing van zowel het weinig succesvolle en ook gewelddadige kortstondige Hollandse bewind aldaar en met een algeheel negeren van de revolutionaire ideeën van de 17e eeuwse Amsterdammer Franciscus van den Enden en zijn utopische visie voor een nieuwe volksplanting op de plek die later New York is gaan heten: “Kort Verhael van Nieuw-Nederlant” (1662). Dit laatste is wel de allergrootste gemiste kans van een museum in jaren, om zo’n hinderlijk ‘zoveel eeuwen’  jubileum niet aan te grijpen om een onderbelicht deel van de geschiedenis onder de aandacht te brengen. [n.b. Wim Klever heeft verschillende teksten van Francsicus van den Enden opnieuw bezorgd en van commentaar voorzien]

(**) …het Joods Historisch Museum ziet het niet als haar taak om de lokaal pijnlijke geschiedenis van de efficiënt georganiseerde deportatie van Joden vanuit Amsterdam pregnant in beeld te brengen (de beruchte Gemeentelijke planningskaart voor het Joodse Ghetto van Amsterdam hangt wonderlijk genoeg verderop in Het Verzetsmuseum). Museumprojecten die jonge generaties Amsterdammers kunnen helpen om een ander inzicht te geven in de geschiedenis van het Jodendom en hun vervolging worden node gemist. Wat steeds ontbreekt bij het vormen van een eigen inzicht is de onaangename geschiedenis van de medewerking – van zowel Nederlandse autoriteiten als vertegenwoordigers van de Amsterdamse Joodse gemeenschap – aan de deportaties. Zo’n  zelfkritische historische benadering is een voorwaarde om een beter debat over het huidige door oppervlakkige argumenten gestuurde anti-semitisme mogelijk te maken.

(***) Jan Marijnissen: “Een volk zonder geschiedenis bestaat niet. Elk volk, ook het Nederlandse volk, heeft dus een geschiedenis. De hedendaagse verwarring over onze morele, culturele en politieke identiteit vindt voor een deel haar verklaring in het ontbreken van historisch besef in brede lagen van de bevolking.” Voor eerder commentaar op het 19e eeuwse idee van een ‘Nationaal Historisch Museum’ aan het begin van de 21e eeuw zie mijn post “Good news: plan for new National Historical Museum of the Netherlands cancelled” op dit blog.

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Amsterdam shopping: courtesy slips away while turnover is on the rise.

Uitglijden = to slip and modern Dutch society always eager for making a big bug without showing any courtesy is at its merciless best these days with regular snowfall.

The main shopping arcade street, Kalverstraat – good for a turn over of many millions these holy consuming days – has a parade of hundred thousands of unstable tripping shoes as not a penny is invested in doing anything about the slippery mass on the pavement.

One may observe fragile older people making their unescorted foray for their daily milk and bread up the slippery stairs of the biggest luxurious supermarkets of Albert Heijn in the inner town (because often that are the only shops left in the area), with the multinational food chain not making any effort to help these customers, handicapped by the uncommon weather conditions…

This is turning a ‘happy white christmas’ into ‘a white terror’ for those who have come to an age where a slip will not be followed by getting up again for a long while… The Netherlands stronghold of discourtesy. The Netherlands paradise of eager egoists.

Whereby an extra stimulus for falling is offered by the polished expensive natural stone surfaces in these fashionable shops which have never been tested in such thousands of wet shoes entering conditions. My guess is that architects nowadays do not know anymore about the need of a good grip of a shoe sole on pavement and floors… and liability because of neglect of shopkeepers or municipality in such circumstances is hardly a known phenomenon in the Low Countries.

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Are we too childish to prevent child abuse?

Asphalt-Art in the Dutch dunes at Wassenaarseslag picture taken summer 2010: flames have burned this schablone of peaceful walking into the hot asphalt of the meandering road to the beach, to put everybody in their own protected trajectory: pedestrians and bicycles alike, both having joint access to this path.

As with all pictures there is a new reading of the image, not at all intended by its designers – say three or four decades ago. The new reading = pedophilia… this because yet another case came up of a man misusing his position in a children care center in Amsterdam. This time it is not the Catholic Church… so they must be a tiny bit happy in the Dutch bishops rooms and Rome…about the latest news  it is not only “us” misbehaving.

Yes indeed, effects of human desire can be as bad as that and as nice as if in heaven…. Little nude angels are haunting churches and museum walls alike all over Europe for centuries, but innocence has always been hard to protect here on earth. If the sensational news coverage of such criminal behaviour – as now in Amsterdam case – will have any positive effective can be doubted.

How do societies deal with deviance in general? How do they deal with sexual deviance? Children can be endangered both at home and in any institution. We should be so honest at least to recognise such a fact. Maybe we lack time and interest in studying and getting to know our own human behaviour in all its manifestations… Maybe we are too childish to prevent child abuse.

Tuesday December 14th. 2010

click picture to go to Volkskrant web page with this article....

‎”Men and child nurseries a charged combination” is a heading of the Dutch daily “De Volkskrant” today. A comment on a recent case of child abuse by a man working as a child care taker. Gender discrimination is unsubtle introduced by a journalism that tries to wip up an exception to such an extant that it seems to have become the rule.

Bygone are the days of gender emancipation, like the White Childrfen Plan (witte kinderenplan) born from the Amsterdam Provo movment in the mid sixties. I was one of the parents volunteering one or two mornings a week to care for our children in the creche in the Keizersstraat. Later this volunteer roulating system has been taken over by a man, Siem, who has been a fantastic child care taker for several decades (Siem died a few years ago at a too young age)…

The proposed solutions for controlling deviant behaviour now-a-days tend to be of the same order: screening, video cameras, databases. The absurd end of such a pedo-fear driven policy line would be ‘in vitro’ conception of children and gender and age apartheid.

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Visualisatie en Ljoedmila Chodynskaja: Laten we een wandeling maken door Amsterdam

laten we een wandeling maken door Amsterdam
het over marihuana hebben
de avond spreidt zachtjes de gesprekken uit
de avond omsnoert stevig de blikken

laten wij ons haasten om naar de jazz van de regen te luisteren
in het ‘Alto’ van nachtelijk Amsterdam
ouderwets met zijn tweeën bij de schoorsteen
zonder liefdesverklaring… dat voor

de noot regen
vloeide samen met de noot jazz
tot de compositie van nachtelijke extase
de noot regen
haalde de gril van de snaar er tot het uiterste uit
om de toonladder ‘wij’ te spelen

laatste versie van de visualisatie van het gedicht…klik beeld voor grotere weergave

Vanmorgen vond ik in mijn brievenbus het Tijdschrift voor Slavische Literatuur van oktober/november 2010, eenvoudig uitgeven, altijd met verfijnde inhoud en deze keer trof mij het werk van de in Amsterdam wonende Russische dichteres Ljoedmila Chodynskaja (Людмила Ходынская) met een inleiding van Denis Ioffe in een vertaling van Willem Weststeijn. De stad waar ik woon, gezien en gevoeld door onNederlandse ogen en andere zintuigen, heeft mij altijd aangetrokken, omdat ik vaak moeite heb deze stad nog met een blik zonder oordelend weten te kunnen zien. Als lezer van de ervaring van een ander, kan ik mij op deze wijze weer een eigen beeld van de stad Amsterdam maken. Tijdens het lezen kwam mij een recente – onbeduidende – foto die ik op een late avondwandeling maakte in gedachte, zo’n foto waarbij de sfeer van het moment je omarmt en tegelijk vervliegt als je dat met een camera probeert te vangen…

…en met een paar Google Image zoektochtjes en Photoshop-handelingen vloeiden enkele – wellicht al te letterlijke – beeldassociaties daar doorheen. Het eerste probeersel staat hieronder en kreeg direct al de zelf-dis-qualificatie ‘kitsch’ door de erotische suggesties van het gedicht middels het gezicht van een genietende dame en het teveel aan andere toegevoegde beeldelementen. Het bekende probleem van het dupliceren van wat in de tekst staat met beeld, alsook het onvermogen van beeld om de werking van poëzie te imiteren. Picturale bouwstenen laten zich niet volgens dezelfde principes als woorden stapelen: avondbeeld van de Amsterdamse grachten + silhouette van hand in hand wandelend stel + gesolariseerd beeld van een marihuanaplant + door ritmische muziek gestuurde lichtpatronen + vrouwengezicht tijdens het bedrijven van de liefde (eigenlijk een pornografisch beeldcliché). Dit alles bij elkaar leverde onderstaande soeppige prent op.

Hieronder de vereenvoudigde latere versie…. direct onder het gedicht staat steeds de laatste versie. Klik platen voor groeter beeld.

Bij al de mogelijkheden die de elektronische montage en collage te bieden heeft  is het zo dat – gelijk aan muziek en poëzie – de suggestieve ruimte tussen de klanken, tussen de door woorden opgeroepen beelden – het doelbewust weggelatene – even belangrijk is als dat wat aan beeld ingebracht wordt. De selectie gevolgd door de deselectie. Theoretisch gesproken weet ik het al lang, het gaat meer om de opgeroepen persoonlijk gemaakte (idiosyncratische) associaties met een tekst dan om de verdubbeling van het geschrevene en gelezene, zoals bij de toelichtende tekening, de illustratie, de al te letterlijke ‘ licht werpende verduidelijking’. Daar waar ik mij een associatief beeld wenste ben ik geëindigd met een illustratief beeld. Het resultaat van mijn oefening om dat wat met een mooi woord ‘psychogeografische  visualisering’ genoemd kan worden, toe te passen op een gedicht van Ljoedmila Chodynskaja blijft onbevredigend. In eerdere visualisatie-studies van teksten van anderen, gebruikte ik meestal niet een rechthoekig kader, maar een perspectivische bol, zoals in de studie van de ‘literaire pyschogeografie’ van Edo Tokyo. De vertekening van de (glazen) bol, geeft in zijn vorm al aan dat het om een ‘reflectie’ en niet om een ‘projectie’ gaat. Wellicht moet ik die methode ook voor dit gedicht proberen toe te passen. Jammer genoeg is mijn camera met een vissenoog lens kapot en zal ik het door middel van een meetkundige vervorming met gebruik van software moeten proberen. Dat is voor later. Eventuele resultaten zal ik toevoegen aan deze zelfde ‘posting’ op dit blog (via Comments RSS functie button – die enkel zichtbaar is  als er één enkele post bekeken wordt – kunt u toevoegingen laten signaleren). Degene die zich geroepen voelt het zelf anders en/of beter te doen…. aarzel niet, files kunnen naar info@imaginarymuseum.org.

Hieronder documenteer ik de visualisatie-oefening, iets wat ik eigenlijk nooit doe, dit om de redeneringen tijdens het maken van beeld – die anders in het hoofd blijven – nu eens met woorden proberen weer te geven:

[Zondagavond 7 november: Toch nog het element uit het gedicht van de snaar erbij gestopt... heel letterlijk iemand die jazz gitaar speelt "haalde de gril van de snaar er tot het uiterste uit".  Elegante handen die de snaren beroeren en vrouwelijke rondingen, ook weer zulke onontkoombare beeldassociaties.

[Maandag 8 november tijdens een koffiepauze: Het hand in hand wandelen silhouet blijft een irritant 'banaal' element, ondanks de lichte transparantie met de achtergrond. Wat maakt iets 'banaal' is dan de vraag, die beantwoord moet worden. Het tussendoor onderzoek gaat verder tj.]

[Maandag 8 november in de vroege avond: het silhouet zag er 'banaal' uit door de houterigheid van de vereenvoudigde uitsnede. De linker figuur meer uit het beeld geplaatst waardoor het afwijkend perspectief van deze ingeplakte figuren minder zichtbaar is; iets transparanter gemaakt en wat in kleur verschoven ten opzichte van de doorschijnende achtergrond. De golflijn van de gitaar komt er nu mooi doorheen en verbindt de hand in han d wandelaars met het gitaarspel; dat effect wat versterkt door het contrast van de beeldlaag met het bespelen van de gitaar wat te verhogen.]

Voorbeeld van een psycho-geografische visualisatie van een passage uit NATSUME Soseki (1867-1916) zijn roman "Sanshiro" (het meertje op de campus van Tokyo University is later naar de schrijver genoemd) Klik plaat voor grotere versie....

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Elektriese hoenkie boenk dreunkasten “bij ons in de Jordaan”

In het Parool van vandaag staat een stukje “Is één Jordaanfestival niet genoeg?” over de stammenstrijd der Jordanezen en hoe twee festivals  die het nooit zo bestaande verleden van deze roemrijke buurt in herinnering denken te roepen elkaar op leven en brood beconcurreren om wie het meest lawaai mag gaan maken.

De stekker eruit! Dat lost alles op…. gewoon autistisch en akoestisch blèren voor wie er lol in heeft en er  vlakbij omheen gaan staan. Vooruit een accordeon maakt genoeg geluid en “als je niet genoeg stem heb dan doe je het maar voor je eige onder de doesj” Het is de bulderboks, het is de ritmeboks en de elektriese dreunkasten die er een probleem van maken… Terug naar de wortel van de Jordaan en als je zonodig een podium nodig hebt neem dan een stijfselkissie om op te staan. Nog beter is er een werkelijk Jordaanfestival van te maken, voor de hele Jordaan, alle straatjes en grachtjes krijgen een beurt… niets is mooier als het aanzwellen en wegstervende van de klanken van een lopend orkestje in de stadsruimte. Dat is het enige werkelijke alternatief voor de door velen verafschuwde dronkenlappen aantrekkende  elektronische ‘hoenkie boenk terreur’.

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World Village Amsterdam: “This station is closed” decline of public services in a segregated city

Today the subway in Amsterdam opens again after being closed for six weeks because of an administrative mistake. This is NO joke, this is the infamous world village of Amsterdam. Working on a tramway or railway or whatever way in this muddy village most often results in closing off for what seems to be an unlimited time, whatever traffic passage may be concerned. The contract with the building firm that was at the basis of the decision to close down the metro for six weeks, was refuted because terms could not be met, but nevertheless the subway was closed down, because as a spokesman said the subway drivers all had been send already with holidays… This left me wondering about the sublime working conditions: 6 weeks in one go? As this is a segregated city – though in full denial of the fact – it is “only” the predominant ‘non-wester-allochtones’ suffered (sorry for the Dutch Apartheid vocabulary, you may need to check Wikpedia for this) that especially need to travel back & forward from the suburban Bijlmer-ghetto to the inner city.

It is (only) thanks to the upcoming SAIL tourist event – where eager  entrepreneurs hope to welcome a million extra clients – that the wind will blow some life into the subterranean public transport system. The photograph above shows a clumsy sign at one of the entrances of the subway system at the Central Station. At the most central Waterlooplein subway station that can be seen from my window there was NO sign whatsoever about why the doors were closed, till when and how to get to the Bijlmer-ghetto from here…

Also during six weeks we did not have early morning transport from the centre of town to the main railway station on saturdays and sundays. So I have seen bunches of desperate tourists wandering around in panic because they needed to be at the airport in time and were expecting regular public transport running around seven in the morning, but found the village of Amsterdam still sleeping… tram conductors still not on the road… HAPPY taxidrivers… that is the sunny side of it all. Also this planning mistake has meant some extra income for Polish bus drivers that are usually temporally employed to drive the busses that supply an alternative connection for the closed metro, but do take a completely different route.

I remember now calling the ‘public transport’ information number to find out where these alternative bus stops actually were – because the map on the internet had only big fat lines on a too small scale to discern actual bus stop indications) even the very friendly help desk person was not able to tell me where exactly this bus could be taken in the area around the Waterlooplein. One does not catch an airplane by wandering the streets in the hope to catch a bus and see it race by….

As can be seen on this time table photographed on the Waterlooplein on August 18. 2010 the first tram to the Central Station is planned for 7:41 in the morning. Later we discovered that there were socalled 'night busses' also at this stop that ran still around seven in the morning on sundays BUT surprise surprise the general electronic chip card - which is the only thing that can be used now in Amsterdam public transport - was not valid for the (early morning) 'night bus' as the nigh transport has its own special cards and tariffs. The bus driver being fed up with complaining passengers about this 'wonder of planning' gave my friend - who wanted to go to the railway station - a free drive. So in the end personal solutions are needed to overcome general planning stupidity. Click picture for full size view.

A “segregated city” I said, so let me try to show how this translates into a map for the case of the Bijlmermeer suburb build in the early sixties, conceived in the fifties as an ulimate pure example of the ideas of the CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne) with their separation of functions: living, working, recreation, traffic. Later in the eighties and nineties the urban concept has been remoulded into  amore classic integrated street model with rows of suburban houses. Maybe the red arrows in the map below should be just blue… as the inhabitants of the Bijlmermeer are commuting on a daily basis to the inner town. The inhabitants of the inner town on the other hand hardly ever will go to the Bijlmermeer.

click picture for bigger view

I have used the word ‘ghetto‘ in the opening paragraph on purpose and in the correct way, it’s common definition being: “an overcrowded urban area often associated with a specific ethnic or racial population; especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.” Historically speaking the word associates with inner-city areas, but with the expansion of cities and the higher levels of mobility and immigration, the same phenomenon can now-a-days also be found in suburban and satellite cities.

The word ghetto in Amsterdam points to dark pages of its history, the establishment of a Jewish ghetto in the inner city of Amsterdam in 1941 by the German occupying authorities with a surprising level of collaboration by the local authorities. The word ‘ghetto’ for certain inner town areas (Jodenhoek) in Amsterdam was locally used before without the connotation of  a waiting room for mass murder.

The Bijlmermeer was a satellite city build in ‘a polder’ (former lake) at some distance of Amsterdam proper. The planned inhabitants were  upcoming middle class families which would by there supposed climbing of the social ladder move out of their actual small dwellings in a previous generation suburban garden city area at the west side of the city (Westelijke tuinsteden) to the high rise grand surface apartments to enjoy “licht, lucht en ruimte” (light sky and space). This scheme utterly failed because of  too high rents and so many of new houses in the Bijlmer stayed empty untill the moment that an sudden influx of migrants from the former Dutch colony of Surinam took possession. At first by squatting, later through an adapted municipal housing distribution system. The standard definition of the word ‘ghetto’ speaks of  ”social, legal, or economic pressure”, but what should be added, especially in the case of the Bijlmer is the ‘cultural’ element. The recreation of a living atmosphere, protective feelings of togetherness and so on. Though some urban sociology researchers (“Amsterdam human capital” published in 2003 by Sako Musterd and W. G. M. Salet; page 181-)  deny that a real social segregation is developing in Amsterdam on the basis of complex statistical models, I from my side have my own daily life observations that make me conclude the opposite. When one takes a very early morning metro/subway of the Bijlmer to the centre of town (Oostlijn) 2/3 of the commuters are mainly black migrants of whatever generation on their way to the less magnificent jobs Dutch society is offering. The last subway crowd the other way also show a predominantly young and black population who after congregating and partying in the inner city go home, which is for many of them the Bijlmer. From my house window I have observed this development for decades which created another kind of statistics in my mind. These notes will lead me to a an exercise in teh future with more scrutiny to test my hypothesis.

Another  (yet) primitive attempt to show the segregated inner city of Amsterdam in relation to the suburb the Bijlmermeer, whereby the size of the arrows display quantity… this needs more study and statistic data to gets its form. For the time being here is sketch 2…

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LOKHOLLANDERS TEGEN PROVOCATIE & GEWELD ter verlokking van de Marokkaanse en andere jeugd

Lokjoden, lokhomo’s, als jood of als homo verklede politie-agent-provocateurs die hierdoor aangetrokken joden- en potenrammers in de kraag gaan grijpen. Recente  voorstellen (*) voor Amsterdam met positieve discriminatie als doel, maar in mijn visie zijn het middelen die het doel in de verkeerde richting voorbijstreven. Ook zwaardere straffen voor geweld tegen homo’s behoren mijns inziens tot de categorie van middelen die niet in overeenstemming zijn met het uiteindelijke doel: gelijkwaardigheid van alle mensen. Dat gaat ook op als er gestraft moet worden.

Marcouch wil dat de politie daadkrachtig optreedt tegen daders van antisemitisch geweld. "Ik vind dat je alles moet doen om die etters, die kwelgeesten, die criminelen te pakken." De PvdA'er reageert hiermee op berichten dat joden in sommige Amsterdamse stadsdelen zich niet meer veilig voelen op straat met een keppeltje op. Klik beeld voor link naar artikel op de web site van Amsterdamse lokale televisie AT5.

Ooit waren uiterlijke kenmerken van het tot een maatschappelijke groep behoren van overheidswege opgelegd. Het koloniale bewind van de Hollanders hield – bijvoorbeeld – middels strenge kledingvoorschriften controle over miljoenen onderdanen in Oost-Indië. Inlander, Chinees, Indo en raszuivere Hollanders konden zo keurig op geruime afstand onderscheiden worden door hun kleding en daarmee gemakkelijker in het gelid gehouden worden. Apartheid is niet voor niets een Hollands woord en ergens dringt dit  uiterlijk en ruimtelijk gescheiden houden van religies, rassen, klassen  en standen, voortdurend in de ‘vaderlandsche’ geschiedenis door: van half verborgen schuilkerken voor niet staats-protestante christenen, tot stegen en sloppen voor de armen net even apart van de grachtenhuizen voor de rijken, van bewaakte asociale dorpen in Amsterdam-Noord tot burgerwijken in oud-Zuid. Segregatie ook in het huidige Amsterdam van Buitenveldert tot Bijlmer, van Grachtegordel tot De Baarsjes.

De relatieve onzichtbaarheid – op straat - van het tot een gemeenschap behoren, in de moderne verstedelijkte samenleving wens ik als een emancipatie te zien. De tegenbeweging met haarbedekking voor vrouwen en geloofsduidende hoedjes en petjes voor mannen lijkt gelijke tred te houden met ander uniformgedrag van neo-punkers tot oranjefans. Als de lokale politie hier zich nu opzichtig als homoachtige homo of  joodachtige jood gaat verkleden om, met deze stereotypen een stereotype reactie uit te lokken, bij een doelgroep die door de vele bestraffend wijzende Hollandse vingers in hun ghetto gehouden worden (de Marokkaanse jongeren), dan vind ik dat een handelen dat van een onbeschrijfelijk gebrek aan inzicht getuigt. Uitlokking genereert en bevestigt geweld. Dat dit soort onbezonnen voorstellen ook nog eens een functie van populariteit bevorderende maatregelen voor bepaalde politici hebben maakt het nog eens te meer kwalijk.

Verbetering van hoe wij met elkaar omgaan is niet met dit soort ‘stereotype hypes’ gediend. We kennen de overgeleverde slogans: ‘ze moeten wel met hun poten van onze rot-joden afblijven’ en een enigszins positief bedoeld ‘onze rot-marokkanen’ bestaat ook al enige jaren (uitspraak toebedeeld aan Pim Fortuyn, die er – anders dan Wilders – bij zei dat het daarom ook “ons probleem” was); zo dient een ieder ook met zijn poten van onze ‘rot-poten’ af te blijven. Maar zulke op een gespleten karakter wijzende half-goedbedoelde-leuzen waren en zijn onvoldoende.

Het zijn ‘onze rot-Hollanders’ die maar niet in het reine wensen te komen met hun eigen ‘rot-geschiedenis’ die deel van het probleem zijn, maar het niet van zichzelf willen weten. Als nu eens in plaats van de oranje gekleurde ‘fata morgana’s’ van nationalistische geschiedenis interpretaties en het “Nederland kan het weer! Die VOC mentaliteit…” (Balkenende, 2006), een omslag in het begrijpen van het verleden van dit land zou plaats vinden, dan was daarmee tevens een basis gelegd voor een andere opvoeding en scholing van ‘onze jeugd’, ongeacht hun af- en herkomst. Als de ‘huichelhollander’ het onaangenaam verleden gemaakt door vorige generaties – waarvoor hij/zij zelf niet verantwoordelijk gehouden kan worden – gewoon onder ogen zou zien en dit onverbloemd voor zichzelf en aan de jeugd duidelijk zou weten te maken, dan komt er ruimte voor een mentaliteitsomslag. Leren, uitleggen, begrijpen, hoe joden en homo’s hier in de loop van de geschiedenis in de de verdrukking zijn gekomen, tot aan de onaangename details van registratie, concentratie en deportatie van de meeste Nederlandse joden met medewerking van Nederlandse autoriteiten en joodse notabelen die dachten het onheil te kunnen keren, tijdens de Duitse bezetting. Onder ogen zien hoe de eerste generatie na-oorlogse gastarbeiders hier binnengehaald werden op vrijwel gelijk wijze als de Chinese, Javaanse en Hindoestaanse ‘koelies’ in de nadagen van het Nederlands koloniaal stelsel naar Suriname werden gehaald. Arbeiders die hier decennialang bijgedragen hebben aan de groeiende welvaart en waarvan werkgevers en autoriteiten dachten dat ze even onopvallend als ze binnengehaald werden wel weer zouden verdwijnen. Ik zie nog voor mijn ogen de spandoeken van gastarbeiders-demonstraties op het einde van de zeventiger jaren toen de conjunctuur langzamerhand terug begon te lopen met leuzen als “Wij willen werken”, iets wat Geert Wilders (1963-) geweten had kunnen hebben als hij als tiener zijn ogen had opengehouden.

"Hoe het begon, de vele gezichten van Marokkaans Nederland", een reeks documentaires van de NOS waarin een onthullende oude Polygoon reportage uit 1969 over het ronselen van arbeiders op contract door de Nederlandse regering in Marokko is te zien... de hele serie zou vast onderdeel dienen te zijn van de geschiedenisles op Nederlandse middelbare scholen. Klik plaat om naar de on-line versie van deze videos te gaan.

Als ook de vensters van de ‘national geschiedenis canon‘ vermeerderd worden en de versluierende vitrages weggetrokken worden, opdat massamoord, slavenhandel en tal van vormen van koloniale exploitatie en lokale uitbuiting in zijn volle omvang begrepen kunnen worden, dan is dat de voedingsbodem waarop het zaad van een minder gewelddadige samenleving gezaaid kan worden, waarmee jonge generaties Marokkanen en wie er nog meer behoefte aan hebben tot andere gedachten gebracht kunnen worden. Daarmee en daardoor wordt een leraar – van lagere school tot MBO – in staat gesteld om de Holocaust in een begrijpelijk geheel van gebeurtenissen te plaatsen; dan kan ook de complexe geschiedenis van de Maghreb, de Arabische veroveringstochten, het Ottomaanse rijk, het Franse en Spaanse kolonialisme, de regionale tegenstellingen en het ontstaan van het conflict in het huidige Midden Oosten, begrijpbaar en bespreekbaar gemaakt worden. Ook hier is veel onverkwikkelijks te melden niet enkel ov er de vestiging van de staat Israel en onteigening en ontheemding van de Palestijnen, maar eveneens de tumulteuse Noord-Afrikaanse geschiedenis. Ook daar ligt er een verhullende sluier over het verleden.

Wie de tentoonstellingsagenda van de laatste vier decennia van het Amsterdamse Joods Historisch museum en het Amsterdams Historisch Museum (AHM) kent, weet dat deze door de gemeente gesteunde culturele en educatieve instellingen niet of nauwelijks bij machte geweest zijn om  bovengeschetste onderwerpen tot het centrum van een kritisch debat te maken (buiten de uitzondering die gemaakt kan worden voor het onderwerp van homoseksualiteit in het AHM). Met name het Joods Historisch Museum is de grote afwezige als het gaat om deelname aan een bestaand maatschappelijk debat bij de keuze van haar tentoonstellingen. Waarom niet het anti-joodse sentiment  bij (een deel van) de Marokkaanse jeugd tot een museum-presentatie of project gemaakt?  Waarom is de tragedie van Amsterdam, de constructie van het joodse ghetto, de bureaucratie van de Joodse Raad en het falen van het verzet ertegen niet ter lering en als waarschuwing, in een permanente opstelling in meerdere talen, te zien in dit museum, een verhaal dat dieper graaft en verder durft te gaan dan dat wat nu in het toeristisch lokkertje van het Anne Frankhuis aan verhullen verhaal te zien is?

Een tastbaar monument voor eigen historisch onvermogen zou deze stad sieren. Dat is pas dapper. Daarmee en daardoor valt uit het verleden te leren. Niet het sprookje over ‘Amsterdam die tolerante stad’ die nooit bestaan heeft. Zulk een zelfkritische presentatie zal iedereen zo ver uit de eigen tent weten te lokken dat we elkaar weer recht in de ogen kunnen kijken en op voet van gelijkheid met elkaar over heden en verleden kunnen spreken. Dat is geen politie en justitie taak, dat is een culturele taak, het wordt tijd voor  voor LOKHOLLANDERS TEGEN GEWELD met acties  ter verlokking van de Marokkaanse en alle andere jeugd.

Een reeks iconen met stereotypen, waarvan ik de precieze bron nog niet heb kunnen vinden, maar waarbij het vrijwel zeker gaat om 'teenagers stereotypen'. Het zou goed zijn als een jong talent eens in dergelijke reeks van stereo-typen voor Nederland/Amsterdam zou maken. Vereenvoudigde, schematische beelden zoals die nu bij teenagers bestaan. De benoeming van Marokkaanse jongeren en dan met name Marokkaanse jongens als 'straat-terroristen' (Wilders, 2009/210) is op zich net zo'n stereotype.

====
(*) Recente voorstellen lokhomo’s en lokjoden  info & links:

- http://www.parool.nl/parool/nl/5/POLITIEK/article/detail/300523/2010/06/21/Asscher-voelt-voor-inzet-lok-Joden.dhtml

- Omdat dit artikel in de Elsevier van 19 juni2010 enkel gedeeltelijk on-line staat, citeer ik hier in extenso de formulering van René van Rijckevorsel (plaatsvervangend hoofdredacteur van Elsevier) “Is geweld tegen joden en homo’s soms normaal?.”  Voor mij getuigt de hieronder gevoerde redeneertrant van een te nauwe focus op een deelprobleem, waarbij dan weer een deeloplossing aangedragen wordt, die meer problemen zal veroorzaken dan oplossen. Dit terwijl de onderliggende fundamentele vraag onbeantwoord blijft, wat dan wel de Nederlandse samenleving is, waaraan als buitenstaanders voelende en behandelde groepen, aangepast dienen te worden. Mij bekruipt een huiver ook door het geciteerde taalgebruik van de heer Marcouch: “Deze jongens hebben een speciale behandeling nodig. Ze moeten geknipt en geschoren worden, voordat ze weer op straat staan.”

"Moffenhoer" behandeling van een vrouw met een Duits liefje op 8 mei 1945 in Amsterdam: kaalgeknipt en geschoren en met pek ingesmeerd en gedwongen voor de foto de Hitlergroet te brengen. Een voorbeeld van hoe snel bij een machts- en rolomdraaiing de strafhandeling verwordt tot een spiegelbeeld van wat verafschuwd werd..

“Geknipt en geschoren”, voor mij zijn dat een hele reeks beelden: ‘bijltjesdag’ waarbij een niet geheel koshere menigte de liefjes van Duitse soldaten op straat kaalscheren; militair geleide heropvoedingsgestichten voor straatbengels zoals beschreven in de jeugdromans van  ’Pietje Bel’ tot ‘Willem Roorda’; dorpsgerichten op het Italiaanse platteland in de zestiger jaren waar hippies (cappelloni) de haren afgeknipt  werden… Zulke beelden vliegen zo snel door je hoofd en laten zich zo traag opschrijven en lezen, dat ik nu verder René van Rijckevorsel aan het woord laat:

“Verontwaardiging
Terwijl Geert Wilders door heel politiek correct Nederland wordt gekapitteld voor zijn generieke opvattingen en ongenuanceerde uitlatingen over moslims, is er relatief weinig publieke verontwaardiging over de wijze waarop jonge Marokkaanse Nederlanders in de publieke ruimte redelijk ongestoord hun antisemitisme kunnen botvieren.

Maar wat Marokkaanse Nederlanders denken en zeggen over joden, gaat nog een tandje verder dan wat Wilders beweert over moslims. Overigens heeft die nooit gezegd dat álle moslims Nederland uit moeten, zoals tegenstanders zijn woorden uitleggen, hij had het over criminele moslims en ‘straatterroristen’ met dubbele nationaliteit.

Vinexwijk
Niet alleen joodse Nederlanders hebben het steeds zwaarder te verduren. Het is met de dag onveiliger om ostentatief als homo over straat te gaan in wat ooit de ‘gay capital of the world’ was. Of om als homostel in vinexwijk de Leidsche Rijn in Utrecht te wonen. Twee mannen zijn er uit hun koophuis getreiterd door Marokkaanse jeugd. Er is nog niemand gearresteerd, omdat er niet genoeg bewijs is, aldus burgemeester Aleid Wolfsen (PvdA).

De onrust over het toenemende anti-homogeweld leidde afgelopen zondag tot een spontaan protest bij het homomonument in de schaduw van de Amsterdamse Westertoren. In aanwezigheid van het nieuwe PvdA-Kamerlid Ahmed Marcouch kwamen honderden demonstranten bijeen.

Behandeling
Marcouch wond er geen doekjes om: ‘Deze jongens hebben een speciale behandeling nodig. Ze moeten geknipt en geschoren worden, voordat ze weer op straat staan.’ Hij wees erop dat er geen hek om Nederland staat, daarbij degenen aansprekend die de vrijheid en tolerantie blijkbaar niet kunnen verdragen. Later in de week bepleitte hij zelfs het inzetten van ‘lokjoden’.”

bron = http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Opinie/Commentaren/268375/Is-geweld-tegen-joden-en-homos-soms-normaal.htm#

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Damschreeuwer = vrijgelaten maar (nog) niet vrijgesproken

37e dag voorarrest 10 juni 2010:

De Damschreeuwer = VRIJ maar nog niet vrijgesproken.

416 mensen ondertekenden de petities gestart door Hen Krol, talloze commentaren en veroordelingen van zijn gijzeling/voorarrest waren in de eerste twee weken te horen, later verminderde de belangstelling, zoals fraai te zien is op de petities.nl web site. Voor het digitale nageslacht hierbij de belangstellingscurve… van de petitie-site.

De conference van Freek de Jonge aan de vooravond van de verkiezingen zal zeker aan de overwegingen van de rechters om hem niet langer in voorarrest te houden hebben bijgedragen. Toch nog de macht van het woord? Wel versterkt door geconcentreerde media-aanschat (1.6 miljoen kijkers) denk ik mij als getal te herinneren. De zaak zelf is nog niet afgedaan. Het is van belang om ook de nu intredende vertragingstactiek van het rechtssysteem bij te houden. De zaak begint nu overeenkomsten te vertonen met die van de wegens majesteitsschennis op de Dam in Amsterdam opgepakte Uruguayse demonstrant tegen “De Domme Prins” en zijn ontkenning van enige betrokkenheid van zijn schoonvader bij de Argentijnse genocide tijdens de vuile oorlog (in het jaar 2002). Waarmee we tevens in de toekomst kijken en luisteren en een schreeuw over de Dam denken te horen “Nunca Mas!” tijdens de kroning van Willem Alexander met Pa Zorreguieta op het bordes van het paleis. De lieden die dat mogelijk gaan roepen zijn waarschijnlijk meer nuchter dan de Damschreeuwer op de vroege avond van 4 mei 2010.

[Deze tekst werd geschreven voor de Facebook campagnepagina: DE DAMSCHREEUWER MOET VRIJ!]

Kort videofragment met verklaring advocaat van de Damschreeuwer voor lokale televisie AT5

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Klompenmania: Amsterdam’s oversized tourism and the need to measure

Two KLM airway posters from the fifties combined (*) with a Google Earth view of Amsterdam and seven examples of cut-out, non montaged real street photographs of oversized Dutch wooden shoes (klompen) that can be found in all tourists areas of the town, outside the shops that sell tourist gadgets. Tourist like to pose standing in them for a picture - by their family or friends. An uncountable number of such photographs of people in disproportioned Dutch footwear must be around in personal collection all over the world as a reminder of a visit to the city of Amsterdam. It keeps me wondering, was it really fun? Did they have any association wearing these big clogs, like the word 'sabot' for wooden feetwear of workers in French, from which comes the word 'sabotage'? The Dutch wooden shoes, 'klompen', have mostly disappeared from daily life in the Low Countries, though some farmers and workers in the fields may still use them. The footwear was meant only for outside and would be left at the porch, so one was walking inside on 'socks-feet' (op kousenvoeten). 'Klompen' for the Dutch themselves associates strongly with no-fuss, sometimes even rough behavior, something fragile being trodden by a sabot. The most frequently used Dutch expression referring to 'klompen' is "dat kun je op je klompen aanvoelen" (you can sense that with your wooden-shoes on). Click picture for full size view of the collage.

Splendid weather yesterday,  a late September saturday afternoon, it made my friend and me decide to walk to the Lindengracht market at the other side of the town center. So, the Red Light district, the major shopping streets and one of  the soft-drug tourism arteries, the Haarlemmerstraat had to be crossed. These are areas which I always try to avoid when going by bicycle, but now we were on a social-geographic survey of these parts of town, which I had not seen for quite a while.The streets were bustling with tourists and their non-directional pace of walking: halting to study their maps without concern for the other pedestrians and cyclists – often in the middle of the road; whimsically crossing as if the streets were empty; framing their camera pictures while forgetting about the world outside their viewer – causing frequent near accidents; being absorbed in consuming their walk-about-lunch; trying to keep group cohesion despite the fragmented Amsterdam public sidewalks with their thresholds and anti-car parking poles. A mixed aroma of exhausting fumes, hashish and the smell of cheap pizza touches our nostrils as we manage to proceed slowly in the direction of our evening meal shopping market in the Jordaan neighborhood.

I montaged two modernistic tourist photographs in this illustration, photographs I found on Flickr, made by a man posting under the alias 'Urbandiscount'; a photographer with a talent for catching the atmosphere, better than most regular flat tourist photographs (**). Click picture for full size view.

Amsterdam, Warmoesstraat, at two different moments montaged in one view, showing the regular tourist crowds. Click picture to study the text and images on the sign posts.

As this walk was meant a survey as well, I scan the street fronts of the houses and shops for apparent changes, and there were many. The main trend is not typical for the inner town of Amsterdam, but maybe more outspoken and dramatic than elsewhere. Most of the surviving shops that had some direct function for the life of the locals are gone: grocery and green grocers, the traditional coffee-burning and grinding shops, tobacconists, hardware shops, dry cleaning and the like, with one exception, the bakery shops, the last ones seem to survive all modern massification and monopolization and are thriving with new tourist customers. Venues like the open front walk in ‘coffeeshops’ are examples of replacements. Coffeeshops (the Dutch way of spelling it) whose business is in fact selling hashish and offering smoking facilities for those who claim to smoke it pure… (so the anti-smoke law for public spaces does not apply). Waves of  loud music pour from these establishments and there seem to be no more local residents left at the floors above who could rightfully protest against the reproduced sound levels. Shops specializing in ‘recreational drugs’ paraphernalia pop up with regular intervals along our trajectory, also tattoo and piercing studios, male and female lingerie boutiques  and sex cinemas. The condom shop is still there (called ‘Condomerie’) it exists already for twenty years in the Warmoesstraat, once started as a fun idea in  one of the groundfloor shops of the then squatted housing block ‘Blauwlakenblok’, developing into a regular business enterprise soon after. A bit further on, in the direction of the train station, many gay bars, hotels and ‘darkrooms’ (mainly male) have settled in the last two decades. A historical function one may say, as the Warmoeststraat has done the sexual catering for both the sailors and local inhabitants for centuries. What is different though – compared to the past – is the density of such facilities now, and the fact that homosexual services are openly promoted. House after house in the Warmoesstraat and surroundings have been taken over by a ‘troika’ of the recreational sex and drug industry combined with what we Dutch call ‘horeca’ (snackbars, restaurants, cafés). The ‘horeca’ is there mainly to supply the armies of ‘lurkers’ – those who are just watching – with an alibi to have a drink and snack, wander around and stare. Step by step this troika has pushed out services providing for the daily needs of local residents. I still remember the area as a mixture of cafés, restaurants, sex business, small workshops and family living. I have not seen statistics yet on the dwindling number of normal resident houses or apartments in the Red Light district and adjacent areas, but that it is strongly diminishing is something anyone “can feel with their wooden-shoes on.”

"The pink margin of dark Amsterdam, rise of the homosexual bar-culture in Amsterdam 1930-1970" a 1992 publication by Gert Hekma (University of Amsterdam) and his wide circle of informants, with a map showing the location of bars over 60 years. Each dark triangle in the rosettes on the map represents a decade. At the left a facade drawing I found in the municipal archive of Warmoesstraat 20, where from 1955 to 1971 Hotel Tiemersma with its pre-darkroom facilities had its abode. I have slightly colored the facade drawing because it would otherwise hardly be visible. To be able to see the details you have to click the picture..

What was – only forty years ago – a very much needed sexual emancipation of suppressed gay people, has grown into an industry concentrating to such a level in certain areas of town, that other social and economical functions are marginalized by it, or cease to exist. In a very instructive little book “De roze rand van donker Amsterdam” (the pink margin of dark Amsterdam) delivered by Gert Hekma of the University of Amsterdam in 1992, one can read about the very slow rise of “a homosexual bar-culture” in the period 1930-1970 and the inventive ways of gay people  to congregate in times that homosexuality was a thing not even mentioned. It is only in the fifties that the worse forms of police prosecution are over and several membership clubs start to offer some sort of safe heaven for (mostly male) homosexuals to meet, like the drab DOK cellar at the Singel (in ‘gebouw Odeon’) seen – once forty years ago – as the biggest gay dancing in Europe. The Warmoesstraat and its surroundings do have over half a century of history  in supplying gay entertainment. A pioneering place was Hotel Tiemersma, once a tobacco shop at number 20 of the Warmoestraat, started by a sailor man Sako Jan Tiemersma. From the early fifties the hotel also had a tiny bar (without a permit at first) with a permissive barkeeper that allowed some forms of intimacy. The hotel rooms had no lock and the clientèle also behaved with little restrictions and a kind of ‘darkrooms’ avant-la-lettre existed there. The hotel was a meeting point for the early leather scene (‘leerwereld’ in Dutch, which is a funny word as it also means ‘world of learning’), a scene that heralded the shift from the feminine tot the macho-type of homosexual behavior. The Amsterdam homo community before WWII had its  division in active penetrating males (called ‘tules’) and passive receiving feminine males (called ‘nichten’). It was a community in which sexual partners from the twilight zone of heterosexuality also participated as ‘tules’. With the advent of the leather scene this attitude changed, as  Hekma puts it “The ‘homos’ now could fornicate each other and horniness, to be satisfied, needed the outside world much less.” [my free rendering of his sentence on page 73; tj.] Any nowadays sex tourist can find the new gay-meeting points by a quick search on the internet, zooming in at leisure to specialized areas like the Warmoesstraat and reads about: – Argos at number 95 “The oldest and possibly most famous leather bar in Amsterdam. Sexy, cruisey and heavy. S.O.S. (Sex on Sundays)”; – Dirty Dicks at number 86 “A late night leather bar. This place really lives up to it’s name”; – Stable Master at number 23 “Bar and Hotel famous for it’s jack off / wanking / masturbation parties in the downstairs bar held regularly.”

Indirect depiction of the dark room phenomenon without real action: a sling and smeared walls exposed by a flash light from a camera. In the middle a reflection in a puddle of a Warmoestraat gay bar by a talented photographer I found on Flickr using the long alias name "AmsterS@m - The Wicked Reflectah's photostream" (***)

When emancipation of homosexuals ends up in a commercialized segregation of leisure and pleasure with expanding specialized zones clustering around Amstel-Rembrandtplein-Utrechtsestraat-Reguliersdwarsstraat, Warmoestraat-Zeedijk, and Kerkstraat-Leidesplein,  I am tempted to ask what about “equality” as one of the important substances of my own idea of what emancipation is about? Why not have fun all together, beyond the tender and gender divide? Why this self-imposed social Apartheid? Also, what about the level of, say ‘homosexual’ emancipation and ‘tolerance’ of drugs in all the countries of origin of the hordes of sex and drugs tourists filling the Amsterdam inner town? Did they vote Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Merkel, Putin and thus can’t they smoke a joint at home or in a pub in peace? Is it the Pope, an imman, a rural evangelic fundamentalist that keeps them from doing or at least inquiring about unknown sensual territories at home? And … most important for us locals, is the blunt commercial exploitation through which the tourists are paraded in Amsterdam, – with some side-tripping to Anne Frank and Vincent van Gogh – something we should be proud of? Is that what we want to present to the world? Or is it this, what is most typical Dutch after all, only about making a good buck… on anybody using any opportunity?

Recent Indonesian history depiction of the arrival of the brothers Cornelis and Frederik de Houtman at the Bantam (west coast of Java) in 1596, the picture does not show the firing of ship canons at the native settlements as a result of animosity between the locals, the Portugese and the Dutch. The middle picture is a drawing of the pepper plant from the VOC archives, at the right Robert Jasper Grootveld (1977) while talking about the origin of Dutch drug-trade and the importance to keep everything 'droog' (dry), the origin of the word 'drugs'.

“DROOG, here in the Netherlands, is the most important word.” All the coffeeshop signs with cannabis leaves, in the streets we passed through – this saturday afternoon  September 2009-  made me think back at that sentence which starts a brilliant and humorous discourse by Amsterdam’s city shaman Robert Jasper Grootveld back in 1977.  Grootveld (1932 – 2009) spoke about Amsterdam’s historical role as a market for spices, dried plants and herbs – from far away places like the East Indies – in a documentary movie by filmmaker Louis van Gasteren: “Allemaal Rebellen” (all of them rebels) about Amsterdam radicals of the fifties and sixties. Droog in Dutch is ‘dry’ in English and most lexicographers point to the possible origin of the the word ‘drugs’ in English, ‘drogue’ in French, ‘droga’ in Italian, ‘Drogen’ in German and so on, from the Dutch word ‘droog’.  ”Dry,  here in the Netherlands, is the most important word, a land that had to be drained from a swamp (…) that did send its sailors to the other part of the world – whereby half the crew did not make it back- which was a human offering! … why all that? What you could find there, was something extra, to give some spicy jolt to life: pepper, mace, nutmeg and other plantlike products … and there was only one way to get that from there to here, namely by keeping it: dry (droog).” In this lively interview Grootveld reminds us of the staple-market economy of Amsterdam in the 17th century and the importance within that constellation of – what he properly calls – the “drug-trade” (drugshandel). Grootveld is not an academic, his associations and actions do have a strong persistency nevertheless. The Dutch involvement in opium trade from 1613 up to 1942, during the 19th century even a monopoly of the state from the beginning of the 19th century onward, is something Grootveld certainly knew, but does not mention during this interview. In 1928 the law curtailing the use of  opium and other narcotic drugs is proclaimed in the Netherlands, though at the same time keeping the opium trade in the colonies of the Dutch East Indies outside of these regulations. Ewald Vanvugt has written an extensive book on this matter “Wettig Opium” (Lawful opium) in 1985, no translations exists in English, but there is a short interesting online English reference by Dirk Teeuwen (2007), about Dutch state opium trade.

Natives smoking opium in Batavia (Djakarta) 1925 and a view of the Dutch Jl. Salemba opium factory in Batavia, 1925 with machines for mechanical filling of tubes with opium. The opium production and trade was a Dutch state monopoly starting in 1827 in the East Indies and lasting till 1942.

Back from sidestepping and continuing our trip.. As we walked the streets and struggled through the tourist crowd, I had a short fantasy of my own, being a telepathic guide, able to impress my views of the town and its history on each of the leisurely wandering tourists that catched my eye:

“What you see is the product of Double Dutch standards, moral sermons at home, covering up far away exploitive practices. Like our prime-minister Jan Peter Balkenende who does not get tired to preach about the Golden Age and the ‘spirit of enterprise’ of the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) which we should try to regain today, forgetting to mention the black pages of history of the trading and maltreatment of black slaves, let alone the life of the 17th century poor in the Low Countrries. The historical ‘freedom of trade’, which found once in the city of Amsterdam one of its important bases,  was nothing more than the freedoms one can allow oneself when making bad deals – for the natives – backed up by warships with canons. Half the number of poor souls that were crimped into VOC service as sailors died on their voyage to the east. Recruitment officers would round up bums in taverns and on the street, even imprison them, till the moment their ship sailed away. The Dutch that nowadays like to praise themselves for their development aid to poor countries, still fail to recognize that they were fighting colonial wars up to 1961, officially called – to this very day – pacifying ‘police actions’ (“politionele acties” in Indonesia 1945 – 1949 against the Indonesian War of Independence)… “

At the left a (not montaged) photograph of Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende opening the exhibition "Power and Glory: shipping in the Golden Age", March 2008 in the Maritime Museum of Rotterdam; overlayed at the right with an allegoric painting commemorating a century (1602 - 1702) of VOC (United East Indies Company) business in Amsterdam by the painter Nicolaas Verkolje (who made in the same period a painting depicting Ovidius's "The theft of Europe", the 'theft of Asia' was a theme far beyond the imagination of any European artist of that time). The painting is part of the Rijksmuseum collection. Click picture for a full size view. Note at the right hand side of the painting two cherubs with a cornucopia from which spices pour: cinnamon and nutmeg, the last is even a tiny bit hallucinatory when used in big quantities.

As it is just a fantasy, I do not get out of breath and my audience does not walk away from the historical hootch their guide is offering,  I even manage – for myself – to make a desperate link between things of the past and the present, between the historical void in the brains of the oversized tourist crowds and my own agitated feelings of having lost something, the town I knew, the town I liked… and I explain to my imaginary audience once more, before taking a side street out of the Red Light district:

“The 17th century Dutch trade mentality still lingers on in the veins of the city,  sips through the pavement,  leaks into the cellars, pollutes the drinking water, but its object has changed. It is is not any more wealth gathered in faraway countries brought back to the Netherlands, instead, there is a progressively developing reversal: tourists flying en masse to Amsterdam and trading the city  away. The wooden shoes, once the trademark of this country, its firmness, its endurance in the fight  against wind, rain and sea, have grown to an absurd size and – as in a fairy tale – they fit only the tourists, who have great fun banging around in them, not on purpose, just unconscious of the fragility of the city’s civil structures they encounter.”

Crossing the main streets to the Central Station, The Damrak and Nieuwe Zijds Voorburgwal, brings us out of the Red Light district and the number of sex facilities decreases, though the occurrence of coffeeshops only diminishes when we reach the more classy areas of what is called ‘de grachtengordel’ (the girdle of canals). This has a historical reason as the old city ordinances prohibited the construction of alleys and houses of the poor in this area. Also here something has fundamentally changed lately: terraces have sprang up at the most odd and unhandy places, leaving even less space to walk as in the traditional sidewalk layout of this part of town. Where from the fifties onward cars had invaded the inner city and lined all the canals to supply the needed parking space, a new and more profitable development can be noticed: tiny terraces scattered on the sidewalks, along the waterfront and at the sides of bridges. As it was a very warm and sunny September afternoon, all terraces were filled to the brink and so the glasses of the customers, making what was once a quiet zone into yet another bustling boulevard, a scenery even further enlivened by a parade of private pleasure boats in the canals with their ostensibly wealthy and joyful drinking passengers and the traditional big tourist boats maneuvering in between them…

Canal side frenzy with neo-colonial rickshaw services, rentable canalbikes and terraces filling each empty corner.

It can not be helped, describing the scenery of  the overcrowded inner town of Amsterdam, ends up in a discouraging and irritating litany  …  we did arrive in the end at the Lindengracht market and that was not a happy ending. I could have known it, the gentrification of the Jordaan neighborhood have downgraded the variety of foodstuff and upgraded the prices. It did not compete in any way with our regular trip to the Albert Cuyp Market in the 19th century neighborhood of  De Pijp. “It looks like a market, but it is only a visual suggestion of it” was my friend’s comment.

On our way back – this time evading the Red Light district – I pondered over the question whether there is any limit to which extend a town can be consumed? What it is that needs to be done to alert people about the negative effects of oversized tourism. A comparative study of mass tourism might be an idea. Paris, Rome and London certainly are not a model because they are much bigger in size and city layout than Amsterdam.  Venezia, Firenze  are smaller but have a much more cultural oriented clientèle. The Amsterdam city authorities are far from even envisaging such a studious exercise, they may try and shift away the focus from sex and drugs to culture (there are many reports about that), but whatever their fancy, growth of the number of tourists is their uncontested prime policy. Debating tourist policy is anyhow a very unpopular subject with many of my fellow citizens. There are those who do not care because they do not live in the city center or are fortunate enough to find themselves in some of the non-tourists corners. Next comes the economic argument, that it brings a lot of necessary income for the town.  As I do not sell beer or drugs and do not own a hotel or restaurant I can see very little direct profit coming my way and indirectly I only notice the rising of municipal taxes over the years as I am supposed to live on what is called a  A-locations and taxes are determined by real-estate market value. Nobody has seen it fit yet to study the nuisance of the tourist and party-industry in the inner town and translated that in a tax reduction equal to the level of suffering inflicted on the inhabitants. Is it unacceptable egoism that makes me wish to exclude all those suburbia prisoners that are craving for a real city experience and buy a temporal escape ticket to Amsterdam?

"Hands of my town" (blijf van mijn stad af) somewhere near the Jordaan during our walk I saw a poster with this slogan and I thought at first "Ah! these are people which are fed up also with the down side of the leisure industry." WRONG! At home I searched for their web site and soon discovered that this is a local pressure group that wants less limitations on terraces, red light district, and other rules regulating inner city life. They are the organizers of a recent 'drink inn' to protest against a new local rule that forbids people on terraces to gather and drink while standing (an odd rule that has some rationale in exceptional cases where a whole street will be filled with a drinking crowd). They plan to hold a city referendum turning back all kind of regulations they see as limiting their freedom. Little can be read in their manifesto about neighbors who need some sort of rest, some sort of subdued city silence and one wonders where all the signatories of their petition are living. Certainly not straight above a popular terrace frequented by a "freedom loving" crowd, is my guess. When you read Dutch you may enjoy their argumentation that sounds similar to the good old VOC time rethoric of our prime-minister: "Amsterdam, once the center of the world. Where Rembrandt harvested his fame, Michiel de Ruyter (a Dutch admiral) began his voyages, the great philosophers Descartes and Spinoza wrote their most important works..." Well let me stop here, enough nonsense as De Ruyter was mainly fighting wars and was not a discoverer, which is suggested, Descartes was traveling a lot and only spent two years in Amsterdam, and Spinoza had to flee Amsterdam after conflict with religious and city authorities, doing his writing in Rijnsburg, Voorburg and The Hague. What to think about the concluding paragraph on the city of Amsterdam: "A fantastic place where especially freedom of the way of life and enterprise is signed on its banner for centuries" (Een fantastische plek waar juist vrijheid in leven en ondernemen al eeuwen lang hoog in het vaandel staat). The relativity of the notion of freedom must have escaped this bunch of happy hour drinkers, who direct most of their person oriented anger at the head of the inner city council. Click the picture to have a look at their web site.

Is there some hope in recent developments of  Dutch cities next to the Belgian border, that have closed all coffeeshops and organized even a kind of razzias against cross-border drug tourism? No, in spite of all my observations and negative appreciation of the Amsterdam drug tourist scene, I dislike this abrupt and oppressive option. Like the homosexual emancipation there has also been an emancipation of the drug user, from a persecuted criminal to a tolerated recreational consumer. The liberating mind expanding aspects of soft drugs as formulated by idealists of the sixties may have long faded away and turned into hard core business, but the basic assumptions remains valid: to be master of one’s own mind and body and decide by one’s own reasoning instead of external coercion.

There are many options and levels of steering, controlling, and arguing which could bring the transborder soft drug users and the international leisure industry back to acceptable proportions and some sort of balance with the social environment they share with others. When only those who are profiting have a say, when authorities are deaf for the complaints of their citizens and turn a blind eye on the degrading effects of mass tourism, one has to wait for the occurence of some sort of tragic incident before the extravaganza of oversized tourism, of Klompenmania, will be countered.

Maybe we should replicate Amsterdam a few times and post it on each continent in an appropriate theme park. A pioneering exercise has already be done in Japan, Nagasaki with the Dutch Theme Park Huis ten Bosch, which has its canals, cosy European alleys and a detailed replica of the Central Station in Amsterdam (*****)

Maybe it is time for the ‘emancipation’ of  city dwellers, recognizing their  ”equal rights” on the use of the city, not treating them anymore as Disney actors in their own town, appreciating them for their living knowledge of their house, their street, their neighborhood, their city. The first step toward a city dwellers emancipation is the recognition that injustice has been done, that it is time for measuring tourism, to fit it to the existing scale of a city and not the other way around.

Epilogue

The association in the article with Robert Jasper Grootveld and his discourse on ‘droog’ and ‘drugs’ may seem somehow beside the point  for those who have not witnessed the rise of  the recreational drug tourism in Amsterdam from the early sixties onward. So I feel a need to explain why it is essential for me. Grootveld has played an important dual role in the history of Amsterdam as a soft drug tourist center, both as one of the first street campaigner against the smoking of tobacco and the dangers of cancer, and as a propagator of the smoking of marihuana, instead. Tobacco was for him not only a health danger, but also an example of of consumer manipulation. He aimed his playful actions at first against the big tobacco industries and their psychological tricks – their “hidden persuaders” – that lured people into satisfying needs constructed by the advertisement industry. His utmost primitive duplicated magazine “De Hippe Zweter” was pointing to the book “Hidden persuaders” By Vance Packard (1957). His actions – an odd mix of dadaism and ‘urban shamanism’ – were aimed at “the liberation of the addicted consumer of tomorrow.”  Grootveld’s actions fell in fertile ground. The Amsterdam scene of the sixties was a constant turmoil in which dissidents from the artistic, political and esoteric realms mixed. The people involved came from different backgrounds but still had something strongly in common: egalitarian and communal principles. This  has laid the basis for all kinds of social movements that – over the years – freed Dutch society from its authoritarian straightjacket.  It is unfortunate  that by now this heritage  has been spoiled and the  former liberating principles only remain as an “imago”. Grootveld’s vision of  1962, a “Magic Amsterdam” as a center of the “Western asphalt jungle”, was already taken over by KLM and the Dutch Tourist Agency (VVV) in the mid sixties and started the influx of beatniks and hippies and  other ‘sleeping-bag-tourists’. Only an echo of it rings in the 21st century advertisement agency slogan “I Am Amsterdam” commissioned by the municipality, a faked tourist industry imago that is eagerly consumed by a new generation of  ’addicted city hopping  consumers’.

This photograph by Cor Jaring (****) is from 1971 and shows the boat 'De Witte Raaf' (the White Raven) moored straight opposite the local Amsterdam police station of Kattenburg, selling marihuana plants, for one guilder each. We see Kees Hoekert at the left and on the right (with a spade and 'klompen') Robert Jasper Grootveld. It is a playful subversive enterprise under the name "Lowland Weed Company." At that time someone had studied the Dutch anti-opium law and had discovered that it banned only explicitly the dried leaves of this plant. Growing plants were not subject to this law and it is through this loophole in the jurisdiction that the wide use of this soft-drug and the soft drug tolerance policy of Dutch authorities came into existence. Grootveld who had been active as an anti-smoke-magician fighting the big Tobacco industry in his own unique ways (because of cancer danger of regular cigarets) had been using and propagating marihuana (instead) from early on. It is at the end of the sixties and the very beginning of the seventies, with the influx of hippies and other young people traveling around cheaply by hitchhiking, that a new form of tourism started to develop in Amsterdam. At first the young people often slept outdoors on the steps of the National Monument at the Dam Square and in the Vondelpark. Outdoor sleeping was soon regulated by limiting the permitted areas and providing cheap accommodation called 'sleep-inns', a kind of hip youth hostels, that often provide some cultural program at the side. Youth clubs came into existence, some of them squatted at first but soon legalized, others initiated by the city government who tried to get the youngsters of the street by offering them music and dancing halls. Local cannabis production (nederwiet) was sold in small quantities in these venues. The whole multi-million recreational drug industry originates in this chain of sub-cultural events.

Almost four decades lay between the “Lowland Weed Comapny” of Kees Hoekert, Robert Jasper Grootveld and others, run from a crummy houseboat, a little bit offside the town center,  and new cannabis businessmen like Arjan Roskam and Olaf van Tulder. The businessmen own  a chain of  enterprises with different outlets: coffeeshops, a clothing and accessory line and luxurious rental apartments in the town center (several coffeeshop owners have started to diversify their businesses, in case the tolerance policy will change). There is a Youtube movie of the opening ceremony of their sumptuous coffeeshop at the Haarlemmerstraat (opposite the historical building of the Dutch West Indian Company). First speaker is August  de Loor, a former street-corner worker helping hard-drug-addicts for decades, now presented in the movie as a “Drugsexpert”, his speech is about the legal front door for the customers, the half legal shady back door where the drugs come in and the threat of a possible change in the liberal soft drug policy of the government. The proud owners explain the decorations in the different rooms of their new establishment, including their own depiction in Delft Blue tiles, dressed up  as “King of Cannabis” and “Lieutenant Admiral of  Greenhouse.”

In january this year a new coffeeshop (from the Greenhouse chain) has opened in the Haarlemmerstraat, where the owners have chosen to display themselves on the walls in colonial settings in newly made ’Delft Blue’ tile tableaus. The shop owners and managers can be seen on deck of a 17th century sailing ships. A banner text is partly visible and seems to read: “…those who have the history … will shape … the future.” In a Youtube video owner Arjan Gorter speaks about "the inspirational history of Amsterdam in the Golden Age" which has been brought back in the interior. It is as if I hear Prime Minister Balkenende speak similar words, about a national past that never existed.

———–

(*) The two KLM posters that have been fused in the left hand part of the Klompenmania collage can be found on the web site of  the “Urban Nebula” study group. The site has some flash animation installed which does not allow me to make a precise link, you have to search the checkerboard of poster details to find your way.
(**) Warmoesstraat pictures by “urbandiscount” posted on Flickr.
(***) “Some guys and a Sexshop on the Warmoesstraat, reflected in a puddle in Amsterdam”, artistic photographs of Amsterdam reflexions in rain puddles  by “AmsterS@m – The Wicked Reflectah’s photostream” posted on Flickr
(****) Web site of photographer of Cor Jaring, a must for anyone interested in Amsterdam history  as seen form the margin.
(*****) The website of Huis ten Bosch Nagasaki can be found here.
This by the way is the second time that this building (Amsterdam central Station) has been replicated in Japan, Tokyo Central Station, dating from 1914 is somewhat freely modeled by the Japanese architect Tatsuno Kingo after the creation of P.J.H. Cuypers from 1889, though ther are archiecture historians who deny it; I personally know both station well and must say that I was struck by their ananlogies from the first moment I entered the Tokyo version.

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Animals & Humans in city parks: whose terrain?

How to do a poll on the level of appreciation of animals of human loud music festivals in public parks and if needed to take appropriate measures? As policy change can be slow, I just designed a set of earmuffs for the rabbits of the Amsterdam Oosterpark (as they have an extreme sensitive hearing apparatus)

When human city culture gets in the red decibel-zone the park rabbits will be handed out specially adapted earmuffs.

The ‘partying nation’ Holland will not fail to use any occasion to throw a public manifestation of leisurely fun which, since  ubiquitous cheap electronic sound amplifying devices have become available, means lots of noise enhanced by  lots of drinks. One of the favorite venues for these undertakings is the Amsterdam Oosterpark which recently hosted a festival called ‘Appelsap‘ (apple juice) organized by a bunch of  friends, all hip hop aficionados, which was certainly not non-alcoholic, with Heineken as one of the main sponsors. “THE best) Dutch hiphop-events. In the beautiful Oosterpark we take hiphop back to its roots”, reads their web site. Lots of fun for sure: out, proud & loud … but what about  … the roots of the park and what makes up its  innate beauty?

This a one of the many Youtube renderings of the recent Appelsap hiphop event in the Oosterpark, the sound must have been so loud and/or the recording equipment may have had no special dimming switch, because the sound track  is totally overmodulated, so rejoice the noise….

Change of original design intend and actual usage of the musique kiosk/dome at the Amsterdam Oosterpark; both options could coexist but when one takes in account the frequency of such loud events the question can be raised if animals and vegetation of our city parks can cope with the crowd and its noise. I also found some web-traces of a Christian evangelic organization that used the same music temple for their 2009 Pentecost praise-the-lord meeting... so who knows what paradisal scenes could have been observed at that other instant of park life.

This spring a local city councilman Martin Verbeet (of the social-democrat party/PvdA) made an attempt at restoring the park to its “historic function” by banning all alcohol usage within the park confines. This measure was aimed primary at full-time  alcoholics, a species that traditionally congregrates in public parks (can be seen all over the world). In fact the alcohol-habit people disturb not too much and even give a certain security by their daylong presence on the park benches  withholding  more badly inclined park visitors from trespassing upon non-assertive park dwellers. Side effect of this zealous municipal policy was that local inhabitants who like to have a nice drink with their picnic  would also fall under the new alcohol ban. Apart from the feared diaspora of debased alcoholics onto the doorsteps of the neighboring streets, the new regulation had a surprising exception paragraph for major events like Queens-day (the 30th of April, a Dionysian national bacchanal in the Netherlands). Who knows if  beer-multinational Heineken has been lobbying, or it could have been the feared loss of votes from the partying minded masses,  within a few weeks the zero-alcohol-in-the-park campaign was withdrawn by the local council. Some park visitors regret this sudden retreat and signal that the group of drinkers can get so big that certain people feel menaced and do not dare to pass the drinkers benches….

The official Amsterdam city sign that makes many people, not just tourists, wonder what this could mean and next to it a make shift bar during the Appelsap (apple juice) festival which had more than just soft drinks.

Fellow councillors of other parties have been mocking the zero-alcohol measures of their colleague Verbeet (chairman of the local council), some (D66 party members) even have held an illegal demonstrative drinking party, the local daily newspaper Het Parool wrote negatively about the alcohol ban, and members of  Verbeet his own party choose  not to support him on this topic. A personal démasqué for Martin Verbeet, but maybe some of the good intentions of the councillor may have been overlooked.  In november last year the local party fraction of the social democrats made a research on the functioning of the Oosterpark (102 respondents, 81 on-line inquiry, 21 written reactions/ street interviews) and it must have been upon the outcome of this small research that the zero-alcohol measures have been decided.

-Alcoholics -Drug addicts -Children -Adolescents -Sporters -Picnickers -Other issues

There is a lot of moaning in the bare 13 pages of this report from gays that frequent the bushes for back to nature outdoor sex, to the obligatory complaints about dog shit, befouling humans, public toilets, unleashed dogs and dog fights, mopeds and bicycles on pedestrian ways … Surprising is that – apart from dogs – animals are hardly mentioned in the report, or it must be the escaped or freed green parakeets that some  people hold to be a nuisance and of course the arch enemies of any human: the rats who criss cross the park at will. Geese, moor-hens, swans and herons are taken for granted, rabbits remain unnoticed and I am sure that a tiny corner of the arch of Noah should be reserved for other more discrete park inhabitants that have managed to escape our attention.

Noise nuisance, sound pollution if you want, is mentioned by several interviewees, especially late night drumming, screaming and  other forms of  rambunctious behavior. There is also a positive approach to the park, an attempt to formulate what it can or should be, as shown in the following statistic.

-Green lung for the town -Play area for children -Sporting area - Oasis of tranquility -Hang-out spot for youngsters -Art stage -Other functions: tai chi spot; picnic and party; garden architecture; café, terrace environment (...)

Again animals are only implicitly represented in the report as part of the “green lung of the town” or the “oasis of tranquility”, though tranquility may for some people exclude even the communication of birds. There are known instances of deportations – organized by a team of city-biologists – of whole troops of geese whose claxoning was found to be unbearable by human city dwellers. Which tempts me to deviate to the somewhat reversed subject of birds dialoguing with the city sounds of ambulances and car alarms (I do have at times whistling conversations with birds that reside in the tree across my kitchen window). This to emphasis that an insight in the animal experience of human sound production and its cornucopia of amplifying devices is very much needed. What are they doing when there is an influx of a rock, hiphop or jembee drums? Are they fleeing? Hiding? Creeping deep in a hole safely below the roots of a tree? Do they leave the park forever after yet another blast-out?  Just play the Appelsap Youtube video once again and let your imagination work. When the hiphoppers speak about roots, let me do so so as well:

What then,was the idea of having a city park? Bringing nature -in an organized human format – into the city? Giving the experience of a garden to those who did not have one? Breathing fresh air? A practicing ground for civic behavior? A place to show yourself and  your family if you were wealthy enough? A way to get some understanding of nature – for alienated city dwellers? Or is all that totally out of fashion and should we better think about  a dropping-ground for children, a jogging parcours,  a skaters circuit, a music esplanade, a juvenile hang-out, a cruising area,  a chill-out spot? Is there any possibility to fuse modern city culture with its apparent need for loud sounds and mass audiences with an ecological attitude that can be branded ‘modern’ as well?  Can these two practices  be reconciled at all? Might it be an idea to get as aware of people’s “noise habits” as we are of  people’s “drinking habits?”

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Cycling Cafes down the hill in Amsterdam

See also first post about this subject on May 25 on this blog...

On May 23 a bicycle bar serving eleven ladies  went down a slope in the northern part of town miscalculating the height of the mobile bar and an underpass that laid ahead. The impact of the cycle bar (bierfiets) on the roof of the traffic tunnel was such that three ladies landed in the hospital, two with neck fractures one lady lost a finger bone. This kind of absurd incident put the phenomenon of the combined sport of cycling, beer drinking and shouting once again in in unfavorable light. Today I had the pleasure of getting an answer of one of the members of the local city council for the Green Left party, on my request to stop the bicycle beer bars in Amsterdam. The city councillor had asked the alderman (local minister) for traffic affairs if this accident combined with a ban in several areas of the inner town on the bicycle bar because of of complaints about shouting, would not necessitate more stringent measures against this display of public drunkenness. The city authorities may want to wait  till a foreseeable future accident with a whole cycle café plunging in a canal after attempting to take one of the sharp and steep corners typical of the Amsterdam inner city bridges and I can assure you our ‘grachten’ are not yet filled with beer . It could be the cycle café will survive after all, with swimming vests and safety helmets…

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Cycling Cafes and Drunken Skippers in Party City Amsterdam

A recent municipal flyer with the text: “prevent nuisance on the water” introducing more strict rules for pleasure boats on the Amsterdam canals, with a second text line added by me: “Prevent nuisance on the land”, as lately a new vehicle appeared in the streets of Amsterdam, the fietscafé (bicycle café) a contraption on four or more wheels with a beer bar with ten or more seats  fitted with a set of pedals connected to a central conveyer system that makes the thing move with all its noisy clients peddling, drinking, sweating and shouting!

Maybe Amsterdam has always been “A-Party-City” even in the old days for the sailors who managed to get back alive after a trip to the East or West Indies (under the most appalling conditions), having their jenever (Dutch kind of gin) in quantities beyond our imagination and roaming the streets in a drunken state;  also the merry-making during special markets, the ‘kermesse’ (originally a fair to celebrate the church patron of a town) with intoxicated and bawdy public behavior, transposed to the football fan celebrations, the Queens-Day and Gay Parade extravaganza of now-a-days. With its Red Light district and ‘coffeeshops’, ‘paddoshops’ and other places and opportunities to consume recreational drugs, a major part of the tourists choosing this town, choose it to go partying, to get stoned and drunk, whereby  sex – if  it can be performed at all in such a state  - will often be more in the tourist’s imagination than for real.

One man’s pleasure easily turns into the other man’s burden and in certain tourist hot spots of town the negative effects of this kind of tourism are felt on a daily basis by the inhabitants. The cheap package deals of Easy Jet and the like have introduced plain-loads of partying-tourists who congregate in the Red Light District, around the Nieuwmarkt, Rembrandtplein and Leidseplein. The Britons have carved out their niche in the area with the highest number of whores, bars and pot-sellers and are known for roaming around in flocks and – as herd animals – tend to be more noisy, than the more individual Latin and Teutonic city roamers. This may all sound like some form of calvinist abhorrence of  (public) pleasure display, coupled with a tourist-phobia, but, as can be expected, it is the Dutch themselves who tend to make most of the noise and nuisance. Forgone are the days that popular outbursts of gaiety and pleasure where happening only on the aforementioned ‘patrons days’, as a kind of social safety valve in the tradition of the Roman maxim “give the people bread and games.” Partying has become the central core of Dutch society as has been recently researched and visualized in a splendid way by the Algerian/Belgian photographer Morad Bouchakour in his book “PARTY! in the Netherlands”, published in 2002.

Click image for a link to a library description of this book by worldcat.org

Let me quote just a few lines from the introduction of this book by Bas Heijne: “if there is so much concern in the Netherlands about how traditions are allegedly no longer being honored, then why are the Dutch throwing so many parties? If there’s one thing this country has, it’s a party culture. No occasion escapes unnoticed. There is isn’t a day without an excuse to celebrate.” The book depicts “almost every conceivable type of party, at every level of society” in the Netherlands and, however amazing the book maybe in its visuals, we are spared the noise on which most of the parties shown are thriving.

Noise – loud and unappreciated sound if you wish – is a spatial thing. It invades, often far beyond what can directly be seen, it may bounce on water, from walls, come back under unexpected angles, it may creep in through resonating floors or ceilings, it may be high pitched or subsonic, it may be continuous or bursting in with a sudden shock. A loud party of the neighbors is something one may need to tolerate once in a while, but it always is an intrusive act upon one’s personal living environment, lest one chooses to join the neighbors party or flee one’s house.

The inner city of Amsterdam is a network of canals, a product of  its original watery and muddy environment and the needs for local transport and its initial function as a European staple market with traders houses and warehouses along what the Dutch call ‘grachten’. Most of the inner city is situated on, or nearby these waterways. As the original transport functions were lost, modern forms of tourism took over the canals with rather big motor boats equipped with panoramic windows and sound systems used by a guide explaining all the views. This last thing has – over the years – been modernized and most tourist boats are now fitted with localized small speakers at the individual seats, so the people living or working along the canals have been freed from the echoing simplistic explanations with each passing of yet another tourist boat. Another considerate measure toward people living in the museum-like inner town, have been a municipal policy to supplant the polluting diesel motors of the tourists boats with electrical motors, a slow process of enforcing that has taken many years, but has really improved the ‘soundscape’ of the city.

Nothing but good news one would say, till the moment that the growing affluence of certain layers of Dutch society – who have a liking of showing off their wealth - combined with the miniaturization of electrical equipment, especially amplifiers and loudspeakers. The phenomenon of the party-boat parade was born. Luxury boats with drinks, loud chatter to cross over even louder amplified music. The nuisance of a party at your neighbors was exported to the canals of the inner city of Amsterdam. So ghetto-blasters changed their function and became yuppie-blasters, the crumbling walls of the ghetto were supplanted by the facades of  lordly houses and the acoustic properties of  the water surface combined with the bricks of the historic buildings worked together to give an optimum impact.

Some sample pictures taken by tourists visiting Amsterdam of local party-boats of the better situated classes parading during summer through the canals of Amsterdam. Beer and wine coolers, sound systems and comfortable deck seats characterize these boats. It is a phenomenon that only developed in the last two decades with the new rich enjoying the parade of their success. Click the picture for a full size view.

People living on house boats in the same canals, and also the inhabitants of some of the smaller canals or next to a lock and the like have been complaining for many years now about these pleasure outtings with no consideration at all of the discomfort for the inhabitants on or next to the water ways of the inner city of Amsterdam. Click the picture for a full size view of this happy crowd.

It is also in this period that smaller and smaller, and cheaper and cheaper sound-systems, were capable of producing more and more volume and so next to poor man’s ghetto-blaster, came the low class car sound system, that can turn a tiny car into a mobile discotheque. Once this mobility had been discovered, the separation of the private and the public came to a sudden end. Any fool may nowadays becomes a broadcaster of their own favorite music without any need for a radio license. One takes one’s car drives into the city, pushes up the volume knob and the capacity of the newest equipment is such that the car owner does not even need to open the window to let the passerby and even the inhabitant of adjacent buildings join into someone’s car-casts. At first something derived at by using bigger and bigger speaker boxes, and recently a even more bodily experience of loudness has been made possible whereby any part of the car’s body can be vibrated and becomes a sounding device. It was but a tiny step to transfer these systems to any kind of boat and go on a pleasure water tour.

The municipal flyer has this arguing texts to convince the party-boat people that they should behave in a more considerate way: “Sound over water reaches much further than over land. It is a nuisance for the inhabitant. We are not speaking about ‘cozy’ chatting on little boats. But purposeless shouting and much too loud music. Think about the children that try to sleep.”

The somewhat less fortunate classes enjoying their boat party during Queens-Day in the canals of Amsterdam; notice the big sound system packed in the small boat in the left hand picture element; the wooden shoe boat has once be made as an advertisement boat for Heineken beer, probably recycled later as a pleasure boat, I remember seeing it for years parked in the Prinsengracht near the bridge of the Vijzelstraat. Click the picture for a full size view.

These sound systems have become also an integrated party of partying on the water in Amsterdam, especially during the two yearly grand parades of Queens Day in April and the Gay Parade through the canals of Amsterdam in August. No environmental and lest health rules seemed to apply to these pleasure boating events, which on the other hand do force many inhabitants out of the city during these days, especially people living on one of the hundreds of housing boats along the cities canals.

After many complaints and petitions the local authorities have started to limit some of the loudness excesses, but the tolerated massive sound pollution on Queens Day and the Gay Parade, have made public loudness somehow socially acceptable. A person – like me – complaining about it would get a standard reaction from police and other authorities, like “well then you should not live in the inner town” and I remember some organizers of the Gay Parade responding on my complaint posted at their web site with “what is your age? maybe you better move to the countryside” (so much for the gay emancipation movement  recursing to age-discrimination). 

It was a most happy moment when last week I spotted several big size A0 posters on public billboards next to the river close to my house with the new municipal campaign: “prevent nuisance on the water.”  The graphic language in rebus format did catch the eye immediately . Finally some officials caring about ‘ the sound of the city’, also attempting to argue instead of  menacing with punishments or fines.

The municpal flyer reads: “Too much alcohol by a helmsman is as bad as behind a steering wheel of a car.“

It must have been the same day, that a sudden  moving sound of a whole group of drunks cut through the relative tranquility of our double glassed home… it could not be the usual football fans that load themselves with beer across the river at the Rembrandtplein before diving en masse into the subway that brings them to the big Ajax football stadium in the outskirts… the sound differed from this dispersed unstable crowds crossing the bridge … so I looked out of the window and saw and heard a vehicle – a Beer-Bar-Cycle passing (as depicted and described below). “What a shame”, these were my first words and of course I knew this kind of vehicle that until that day hardly choose to move through my part of town. 

An example of a what is called a Fietscafé (Bicycle Cafe) in the inner town of Amsterdam; one can hear them coming, passing and disappearing from a long distance as bouts of drunken shouts accompany the pedalling exercise. On the one hand professional alcoholics are constantly moved from the streets, especially in the inner town, while this display of public drunkenness is allowed as long as the main “driver” has signed a contract that she/he will stay sober during the rental trip.

The municipal slogan was still fresh in my mind: “Prevent nuisance on the water” and so I thought “but what about nuisance on the land?”  Which drove me to produce another rebus-banner to be posted soon on the streets of Amsterdam. 

My rendering of a new rebus to stop the Bicycle-Beer-Bar or Fietscafé pestering the inner town neighborhoods with public display of noisy drunkenness.

 

Three impressions taken of the Bike-O-Beer, Fietscafé, Party Bike, or whatever other name this device has been given, taken from Flickr.

“Fietscafe, aka bike-bar -only in Amsterdam says lludovic’s photostream; “weekend in amsterdam (yes, it’s a mobile bar powered by pedals under their feet and a barman in the middle keeping them hydrated)” says M Baskett;  ”Ubriacarsi pedalando. Si sale, si ordina una birra, si pedala in libertà, tra schiamazzi e risate… una cosa così la trovi solo ad Amsterdam” (Getting drunk while peddling. You go out, you order a beer, you pedal in liberty, from shrieks to bouts of (hysterical) laughter… such a thing one only finds in Amsterdam”  says Tioma. 

The official municipal folder nuisance on the water can be found at the web site of the department of inner waters of the town: BBA.

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