May 19, 2010

Pop-up street furniture in Utrecht

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Orangemaster @ 9:22 pm
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Some street-wise, pop-up furniture designed by Carmela Bogman and Rogier Martens was installed in Utrecht on 17 May 2010. The residents can pump up the furniture themselves (se pic) and when then are finished using it, it lowers itself down again.

It looks nice, I want to try it too, but I have to admit, the comments I read on the French site I got this news from needs to be addressed. Yes, it screams unhygienic. I mean, people walk on this furniture with dog pooh and who knows what under their shoes and then the idea would be to sit down and, what, have a sandwich on the table surface? Ick.

I can’t really get an idea of how fast the furniture goes back down and I can imagine not wanting to get my foot stuck, never mind a small child getting any of their limbs stuck under it.

As my Dutch friends say, the idea is nice, but the execution, well, kinda sucks.

(Link fubiz.net, Photo Carmela Bogman, thanks Laurent!)

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May 18, 2010

Spotify music service now in the Netherlands

Filed under: Music,Online by Orangemaster @ 2:18 pm
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Online music service Spotify is now available as of today in the Netherlands. Instead of continuously having to go to YouTube and weed through bad mobile phone recordings of your favourites artists or be subjected to everything that sounds like the band you like but never the actual band from Last.fm, it could be time to try Spotify.

“With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you could listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it.” Even Blip.fm, and Zonga get their songs from YouTube, while Spotify is what everyone wanted and nobody was getting: that one song you needed, right away.

They claim to have eight million songs, including a specially recorded track by duo Guus Meeuwis and Marco Borsato, teaming up for a song called ‘Schouder aan Schouder’ (‘Shoulder to shoulder’) available exclusively on Spotify.

(Link: Spotify, Photo by Quistnix, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0)

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May 17, 2010

Rocking chair meets cradle

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 1:14 am

The Rockid is a combination of a rocking chair and cradle by Ontwerpduo (‘design duo’). This isn’t apparently a new idea, as it is based on the so-called nanny rocker.

According to Bright, one of Ontwerpduo’s happiest customers is the duo’s daughter, Jasmijn. The Rockid can be had with a separate sideboard, for when the cradle is no longer needed, and can be had for 850 euro.

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May 15, 2010

Angry citizens remove ‘illegal’ dam

Filed under: Architecture,Nature by Branko Collin @ 2:01 pm

Last week inhabitants of the Horstermeer polder just south of Amsterdam removed a 10 ton weir placed there by the AGV water board (Amstel, Gooi and Vecht regions). They claim the dam creates a dangerous situation.

The water board wants to let nature run its course in a part of the polder by letting water levels rise, effectively turning part of the polder into marshland. The inhabitants fear that since their houses are typically located at the lowest point of the polder, the centre, these higher water levels will damage their properties.

According to the polder dwellers, the water board never filed official plans for their dam, so that the inhabitants could not legally protest its placement. The water board has reported the theft of a weir to the police.

Water boards are a parallel government in the Netherlands for the management of water.

Video: Republiek Horstermeerpolder.

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May 14, 2010

Florentijn Hofman’s huge cuddly toys

Filed under: Animals,Art by Branko Collin @ 11:59 am

Writes Hofman:

A solo show inspired by the toys and cuddly sculptures of children, where the change of scale completely changes their function and feeling.

Hofman also took his exhibition on the (rail)road, where it works better in my opinion. A gallery is a canvas, a neutral background in front of which anything automatically becomes art. The railway station of Delfzijl (Hofman’s former home town) doesn’t have that stigma, and his plush animals look as out of place there as he intended.

See also:

(Photos: Trendbeheer / Florentijn Hofman.)

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May 13, 2010

Man mistakes urinal for sink

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 11:41 am

Bibi Telleman, reporter for 105 TV, was doing a behind the scenes bit about the cleanliness of the facilities at the Liberation Day festival in Haarlem last week, when a member of the North American intelligentsia decided it was time to teach the rest of the world a lesson about hygiene. (Either that, or he wanted to attention-whore.)

Orangemaster says to give a big shout out to all the poor drudges like her who have to DJ the Ascension festivals today. (“Shout-out?” She did not say “shout-out.” It was something not as 2003.)

To borrow words from Youtube: as seen on Boingboing and Milk and Cookies.

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May 12, 2010

Youth football club bans non-native children

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:21 am

Nijmegen youth football club Quick 1888 (in Dutch, under ‘Persbericht’) has adopted a discriminatory policy by “putting children of foreign descent who apply for membership on a waiting list, while accepting native Dutch youth members.” Apparently, parents of non-native children don’t help out with football, don’t have cars to drive the kids to games or have to work on Saturdays.

I played women’s football for a year in Rotterdam and I had no idea that I would spend so much time at the club outside of practices and games, so I do understand the problem. However, communicating to these parents what is needed is much better than telling them they are doing something wrong, expecting to help out of guilt and then turning around and banning their kids!

Not helping out is considered a sin at Dutch amateur football clubs. Currently, over 80 percent of Quick 1888’s juniors are of foreign descent, and it is suffering logistically as a result.”

Hmmm. I played against a Dutch club in Rotterdam that was entirely populated with girls whose parents obviously came from Surinam. Sure, we won 2-0, but it wasn’t easy and they had tons of people helping them out.

This discriminatory and dare I say racist blanket statement from the football club will not help the relations between the kids or the parents: it will shame the native Dutch, embarrass the non-natives who do help and if this article doesn’t help, show how intolerant some Dutch people have truly become.

(Link: rnw.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

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May 11, 2010

Journalist wins lawsuit over freedom of information request costs

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:00 am

Municipalities are not allowed to charge for complying with freedom of information requests, a court in The Hague found according to Trouw.

Reporter Brenno de Winter sought a judge’s legally binding opinion after several municipalities conspired early last year to sabotage his freedom of information requests by making him pay for them. The court reasoned that since freedom of information requests are for the good of everyone instead of the good of an individual, asking money for complying with them is illegal. However, government organisations can still charge money for the cost of photocopies.

Last week, De Winter started a lawsuit against the Minister of Transport, Camiel Eurlings, for keeping documents secret that could help explain the relative failure of the public transport chip card (the Dutch “Oyster card”).

See also: Supply the poor government with some much needed transparency

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May 10, 2010

A party with embroided handkerchiefs and grannies

Filed under: Art,Music by Orangemaster @ 9:57 am
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As a follow-up to the project Liefde in de Stad (Love in the City) and going online and letting grannies embroider your handkerchief, I went to the actual ‘Smartlapje’ (handkerchief) party with lots of grandmothers, children, bubbly, cakes, tea, coffee, an entire choir and a decor that turned Paradiso’s usual rock stage into a cozy living room, with couches, carpets and lamps.

The ‘smartlapjes’ were hanging everywhere, as decoration

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Yesterday’s Sunday matinee event was free and was indeed mostly populated by women, serious national media attention and bloggers like me. One grandmother got up and danced quite a bit once the choir (shown below) had finished singing and the DJ started (a woman whose niche market is retirement homes), while others sang the Dutch classics along with the choir, word for word. I did my best on ‘Geef me maar Amsterdam’ (roughly, ‘For me, it’s Amsterdam’) by Amsterdam accordion player and singing legend, Johnny Jordaan.

This charming, fun event proved two things: cultural subsidies are much more important than you’d think for community spirit building and that the horribly negative press about the bad effects of multiculturalism in our nation’s capital is complete and utter nonsense.

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May 9, 2010

First Giro stage in Amsterdam

Filed under: Bicycles,Sports by Branko Collin @ 12:01 pm

The first ever stage of one of the biggest bicycle racing events in the world, the Giro d’Italia, took place in Amsterdam yesterday. We already reported on the preliminaries.

The first stage was a time trial. According to one of the Dutch organisers in a television interview, the Italian organisers had first wanted to take the stage past all the sights of Amsterdam, including the Anne Frank house, but could be dissuaded (the stage would have completely locked down the city).

Observers thought this would be a good day for David Millar because other time trial specialists have their sights also set on winning the entire, three week-long race. The cobblestones and tram tracks especially would scare them off. Riders like Bradley Wiggins and Alexander Vinokourov weren’t too shy on the Amsterdam streets however, and managed to finish first and fourth respectively, with Millar only coming in at sixth place. The main favourite to win the race now that the real champions are all saving their energy for the Tour de France, Cadel Evans, finished second, BBC reports.

According to De Volkskrant, 150,000 people showed up to watch the race. There wasn’t a spot along the course though where you couldn’t watch, as the rows were only one person deep.


Photo: ‘Vino’ really wants it, but in the end was six seconds shy of the top spot.

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Photo: this is how the Amsterdam cyclist crossed the road. In several spots bridges had been erected across the course.


Photo: there were also chartered ferries to take you underneath bridges.


Photo: a family on the posh Apollolaan opened its windows to passers-by so that they could follow the results on TV.


Photo: after the race a wacky bicycle parade had been planned on the official course. Initially the few remaining onlookers were being drip-fed bicyclists.


Photo: at the end of the ride was a larger group though, led by ‘living art work’ Fabiola, and consisting of among others a marching band on bakfietsen and beauty queens on bikes.

I will post further photos to our Flickr account (see sidebar). For more photos see also this report in AD.

Today, another Giro stage will start in Amsterdam, and will take a 200+ kilometre detour to Utrecht. Amsterdam is also the starting point for this year’s third Giro stage, which will lead with atypical tailwind to Middelburg in Zeeland.

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