Yes, there’s a crisis going on and some of the grass roots entertainment is taking a mighty beating, cash-wise.

The outdoor movie theatre Pleinbioscoop (pic) in Rotterdam, located at the Lloyd Multiplein, Schiehaven, near the pittoresque Delftshaven, the old harbour, is trying to stay afloat by disallowing that people bring their own drinks. Do look at the pic, they have couches and lamps to make it look like a big living room.

The organisation claims that they will be selling drinks at a reasonable price. They have also decided to set up a ‘coat check’ for anyone who brings glass bottles by mistake. Many a venue around the world would just force you to chuck out your booze in a bin, but these people are just plain nice. You can get a ticket for your ‘bottle check’, so you can pick up your wares at the end of the movie.

They also serve all kinds of food and the movies are free.

(Link: pleinbioscooprotterdam)

On Sunday 22 August retired entrepreneur Frits Langeveld from the Dutch island of Texel where many a good beer comes from will be presenting a new beer called ‘Tessels Wrakhout’ (not the one shown here) with a real smoky taste. So smoky according to some smokers that they don’t feel like reaching for a cigarette. The key ingredient is smoked malt that is apparently not used by breweries much, although German ‘rauchbier’ has been around for ages.

The idea was that smokers now have to go outside the bar to have a smoke and that maybe smoked beer is the answer to keeping them indoors and not interrupting the fun. It’s surprising nobody in the Netherlands thought of it this way before.

I think it’s exaggerated to call it innovative, in fact doing so is symptomatic of the rampant short-sightedness in the business community. I’d call it resourceful: finally looking outside Dutch borders for answers.

(Links: bizz.nl, bier.blog.nl, Photo of Bamberg Rauchbier by David Fischer, some rights reserved)

Someone was telling me at a dinner party about this beer (not the one in the picture) and the (pardon the pun) pissing contest it became to brew the world’s strongest beer. Back in February Scottish brewery BrewDog could still claimed it brewed the world’s strongest beer called Sink the Bismarck! at 41 per cent. It has now been surpassed by Almere’s Jan Nijboer of brewery ‘t Koelschip with a beer called Start the Future that comes in at a whopping 60 per cent.

Game on.

(Link: spitsnieuws.nl)

Although Royal Horeca Netherlands has no hard data available, anecdotal evidence leads daily De Pers to conclude that Chinese families are moving more and more into the hotel business.

Vincent van Dijk, a ‘trend watcher’ who has taken it upon him to spend a night at a different Amsterdam hotel each night for a whole year, estimates that one in six hotels he stayed in were operated by Chinese people.

Alex Chang of Royal Horeca Netherlands sees a strong growth in hotels operated by second or third generation Chinese Dutch. He also notices investors from China are interested in buying or starting hotels in the Netherlands.

Is this the end of the archetypical Chin. Ind. Restaurant, establishments run by Chinese immigrants but serving mostly a sweet and greasy parody of Indonesian food, a cuisine the Dutch know from their colonial past? It took me a while to find such a restaurant for the photo illustrating this article (Ah Sang on the Overtoom in Amsterdam).

There is a lot of cheese adverts in the Netherlands, but this cheese brand usually has beautiful Caucasian/Dutch people frolicking in the fields, with glimpses of breasts.

Here’s how this advert goes:

“In an ideal world, the Netherlands would be one big village.”
- ‘Morning!
- ‘Morning!
Then it goes on to say what farmers and farm girls would look like, emphasising they’d of course be young and have hair, not be old and balding. And eat said cheese brand.

Then we see farm girls, then we name the girls (typical farm region names), then Fatima. The narrator says “Fatima? Ooh, that’s good too!” implying that because she’s pretty, it’s OK. A giggle ensues.

In a time of political backlash against anything not perceived as being traditionally Dutch or Frisian with blond hair and blue eyes, this brand does a good job of throwing in ‘Fatima’ for good measure. The problem is, since the Dutch stereotype is highly exaggerated, throwing in a normal looking, non-exaggerated Fatima just doesn’t work and makes her an anomaly.

In many other Western countries, it’s downright normal for people of different cultures to be lumped in to the identity of a country. I’ve seen Spanish adverts with blonds, Italian ads with redheads and Asian-looking people in adverts of all kinds . They all belong there, but in this case, Fatima just doesn’t.

The message here is that Fatima was put there ‘as a joke’ and doesn’t belong there. Had they exaggerated her, it might have worked. Fatima is an oddball that unfortunately reinforces the Dutch stereotype of what is Dutch and what is not. Remember: 20% of the 16.5 million people in this country just voted for a right-wing, racist and anti-Muslim party in the last national elections.

In my ideal Netherlands, everybody counts, young or old, cheese or not, Fatima or not.

Queen’s Day in Amsterdam’s West and Old South districts was not too crowded and full of excellent finds on the outdoor market. I thought people were a tad friendlier than usually, it could be this crisis is bringing us a bit closer, who knows. It was also nice to run into friends as well, some selling, some buying and some joining us for food and drinks.

Although it was a bit rainy during the day and cold (10 degrees when the day before was 20), the sun finally popped out and 24oranges went out to enjoy the day and prepare our annual Queen’s Day photo report. First, the lady at the bakery pointed out that the Dutch eclair-like cakes as well as her ‘tompouces’ here above were made by hand.

The city’s major park, Vondelpark, is traditionally overrun by children selling and buying as well as playing music for coins and doing tricks and the likes. And after years of watching hordes wear those inflatable crowns, I finally walked by the people on the street of the lottery company who hands these things out and scored me one too.

Although quickly pointed out as a traditional Dutch game, sjoelbak is apparently of British origin, but the Dutch have their own take on it.

There were people selling all kinds of stuff: the usual houselhold knickknacks, darkroom equipment, clothes, records, books, you name it. And that’s still not the best part. At the end of the day, people place a lot of unsold items on the kerb for rubbish and then it’s free digging time, which can even be better than the stuff you bought during the day.

We saved some LPs and books from destruction this year and we noticed that so much was properly cleaned up, due to the city’s street cleaners’ strike. Maybe that has do to the classier neighbourhoods we were in as well.

In this last picture of women checking out handbags, you can play spot the 24oranges blogger.

Spice trader Van Eeghen, founded in 1662, has put its Amsterdam office up for rent. According to Parool, the oldest family-owned company of Amsterdam is even considering leaving the city.

Van Eeghen is housed in the Sweedenrijk building on Herengracht 462, smack in the middle of the Golden Bend, an extension of the Herengracht created in 1663. Prospective owners were encouraged to buy double lots, with the result that the city’s most affluent would build their little palaces there.

“Nothing lasts for ever,” Willem van Eeghen (14th generation) told the paper. Most of the company’s activities take place in Canada these days, and only 20 people work at the Amsterdam office. The first two floors are now for rent for 250 euro per square metre, per year, which I am guessing is a steal for that location. If the right offer comes along, the company will even consider moving out altogether.

Perhaps the neighbourhood isn’t what it used to be. To the right of Van Eeghen is lawyer Bram Moscowicz, whose nickname is ‘maffiamaatje’ (mob buddy), and two doors to the left is a subsidiary of internet mogul Yahoo, supplier of dissidents to torture chambers since 2005.

According to Wikipedia, the oldest still existing company in the Netherlands is Brand (beer, 1340), although that example neatly displays the major flaw of that list: these days Brand is merely—nomen est omen—a brand of Heineken’s.

The image is a detail of Berckheyde‘s famous De Bocht van de Herengracht, painted in 1671. Sweedenrijk is in the middle of the frame, with Moscowicz’ slither attached to it. As you can see, the lot to the left was still unoccupied that year.

An extremely rare 17th century Dutch cookbook, entitled ‘Het Koock-boeck oft Familieren Keuken-boeck’ (Cook Book or Family Kitchen Book) is now part of the Special Collections institute of the University of Amsterdam Library. According to Radio Netherlands, it is the oldest known cookery book in the Dutch language. “Prominent Dutchmen like Jacob Cats and Constantijn Huygens owned this book, but it was missing from our extensive gastronomic collection until now.”

For those of you ready to poke fun at Dutch cooking, allow me: this book was apparently aimed at upper class ladies and tried to counter the blandness of Dutch food by introducing Italian produce and herbs.

About half a year ago I remember a friend telling me how they make pizzas in their mobile food stand and having more than 20 people in South Holland asking them ‘what’s that green thing?’ and pointing at the basil leaves on their pizzas.

(Link: rnw.nl)

It would seem corn and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night are indelibly connected in the American imagination. First Don McLean wrote a popular song about the painting, and now pupils of Sky View high school in Smithfield, USA, have recreated the work in breakfast cereal.

Using the school’s gymnasium as a canvas, 150 pupils poured two tons of colourful Malt-O-Meal on the floor to create a 22 x 27 metre masterpiece. The school hopes that this will get students to appreciate art. The project was finished on Saturday and was removed afterwards and fed to pigs.

Fox has photos.

It all started with a Dutch beer advert featuring a walk-in fridge, which then got a ‘Dunglish’ sequel featuring a miscommunication between an Eastern European building contractor and a Dutch guy who ends up getting a walking fridge. The story continues with a parody on the first advert from another Dutch beer company and now we have four final year students in Breda from Avans Hogeschool who invented the RoboFridge. Watch it dispense soft drinks this time around, but I’m sure beer cans fit in there, too.

(Link tip: dutchnews.nl)