December 8, 2008

Peep shows are cultural events claims tax office

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:11 pm

Peep shows where men and couples pay by the minute to sit and watch women (no men or couples?) perform sex acts behind a glass are taxed with the lower VAT rate (Value Added Tax) of 6% instead of the higher rate of 19%, being considered ‘cultural’.

The original case was brought by a sex club owner who argued the shows were similar to theatre because they were attended by paying customers. If you follow the link below, you can see two men getting ready to go at instead of women behind a glass. Casa Rosso is also the place to be in the red light district if you’re going to see something like this apparently. I just happened to like this picture of the Moulin Rouge – not the French version.

Going off on a tangent: a female acquaintance of mine back in Montreal, Canada, working on a university paper about prostitution was thrown out of a peep show place because she was female. Any woman entering the place was a possible prostitute and so even though it is against the law to refuse entry to women, they did so. I wonder if it’s still like that today.

(Link: nrc.nl, Photo of Red Light District in The Hague)

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December 7, 2008

Lost Amsterdam Bed-In photos found

Filed under: Dutch first,History,Music,Photography by Orangemaster @ 1:03 pm
Bed-in, Hilton, Amsterdam

The daughter of photojournalist Nico Koster found a series of unique pictures in some box with old baby pictures of the world-famous ‘Bed-In’ that John Lennon and Yoko Ono held in March 1969 at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam. Koster, who works for the Dutch paper De Telegraaf, had lost the precious negatives of an exclusive photoshoot he had in Room 902 (some sources say 702) of the Hilton Hotel.

And when you’re Canadian like me you know more about the Montreal Bed-In, which took place in May 1969 because of the song that was spontaneously recorded there, Give Peace a Chance.

(Link and photo: parool.nl)

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December 6, 2008

Delayed construction killing unique bookstore’s business

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

There’s a lot of ways to kill walk-by business and one of them is having heavy duty construction right in front of your shop for as long as The Bookstore Exchange has had—13 months and counting. This second hand, English-language bookstore (photo), apparently the largest on the European continent with over 80,000 books, located near the Faculty of Sociology of the Universiteit van Amsterdam has been around since 1978 and is going bankrupt due to this construction.

Run by Jeff, a perfectly integrated American—a real ‘Amsterdammer’—who has been living in the capital for 30 years, said in November already to different media that he was as good as bankrupt. The construction blocks the view of his shop window and so passers-by don’t just pop in anymore, never mind the sand from the construction outside that gets into books, the noise and what have you. In a city with 1.5 million tourists a year, being invisible is deadly. The City of Amsterdam has no intention of compensating the mess they are still making for something that was scheduled to be finished by end of 2007.

Sources tell us that Jeff has neither the time nor money nor energy to fight against the bureaucrats and we get that. The closing of his shop is not just his loss, but a loss for anyone who enjoys hard to find English-language books. Apparently, the source of pride from being able to say that the continent’s biggest second-hand English-language bookshop is in Amsterdam and the labour of love built by Jeff himself means nothing to bureaucrats who can’t even finished projects on time or within budgets anymore. We won’t get into the hugely delayed North-South metro line, which literally put people out of their sinking homes and ruining other businesses.

Christmas is around the corner and so I invite you to check out The Book Exchange in Amsterdam (click on the link for directions). It’s short walk from Central Station. We plan to do so as well.

More info: bookexchange.nl. Thanks to my friend Nathalie for pointing this out!

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December 5, 2008

How to celebrate Sinterklaas

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 3:07 pm

If you were uncertain on whether to put the carrot for the horse in the left or the right shoe, whether to start singing Zie ginds komt de stoomboot or Sinterklaasje Bonne Bonne Bonne first, or whether it is allowed to make veiled references to the thing you had with your best friend’s wife in the poem you wrote for his surprise, fear not, NEN to the rescue! Last year, the Dutch Standards Institute (NEN) published its standards for the celebration of Sinterklaas (PDF, mostly Dutch) so that now we know how all participants should behave during the celebration.

Oh, that poem thing? The rules are defined in a separate document, NTA 0712.

Link: Sargasso. Photo by Aloxe, some rights reserved.

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Screw nannyism, smoke the best weed and be merry

Filed under: General,Nature by Orangemaster @ 11:11 am
Cannabis Cup

I read on Twitter this morning that someone could not buy any chocolate cigarettes at the sweets shop as a Sinterklaas gift for their kids. Apparently, the shop doesn’t carry them anymore because that would encourage kids to start smoking at an earlier age. I can think of a multitude of things you shouldn’t buy your children, full stop. Will ordinary mushrooms be next? What about ice lollies?

All this nannyism (in Dutch, betutteling) is putting a damper on some people’s holiday spirit much more than any financial crisis could, it seems. Besides small cafés ignoring the smoking ban and the waves of protests and enforcement problems, many Dutch cities like Rotterdam and Amsterdam will be closing down coffeeshops (where you buy weed and hasch) that are located too close to schools. Not a bad idea per se, but why let them set up shop there in the first place? Back then, I guess the government was liberal enough to let parents explain right and wrong to their kids. Then, there’s Maastricht being pressured by neighbouring Belgium and Germany to shut shops to cut down on cross-border smoking.

Blaming the Netherlands has been going on for ages. During a speech held in Amsterdam a few years back, French President Jacques Chirac blamed the Netherlands for their cross-border dope-smoking problems, failing to notice that the Netherlands doesn’t share a border with France. That border is called Belgium. Belgium was not amused.

But, in order to show you that things are still smokin’, coffeshop De Greehouse in Amsterdam, which I had heard of even before living in the Netherlands, has just won the prestigious Cannabis Cup, well known by readers of High Times magazine, the magazine for pot smokers and growers, for some weed that sounds more like a kind of lady’s tea: Super Lemon Haze. Follow the link below for a good, educational video with much English in it.

(Link: parool.nl)

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December 4, 2008

Cruelty to animals used as music video effect

Filed under: Animals,Art,Music by Branko Collin @ 8:51 am

The music video for Amsterdam based rockband zZz’s track Running with the Beast has been pulled by Youtube, according to Omroep Brabant (Dutch). The video apparently shows two roosters fighting. The cocks were smeared with paint before being put into a tiny arena, and were made to fight on top of paper sheets which were later used to produced the artwork for the CD and for posters and so on.

In an elaborate statement (PDF), the band managed to claim that “no animals were injured.” Indeed, “for legal reasons the video was shot in Bangkok, Thailand.”

See also Dozens of hamsters freed from plastic balls for another tale of artists abusing animals for their own personal gain showing the inherent hypocrisy of people who don’t want to be confronted with the maltreatment of animals, but who will for instance gladly enjoy the fruits of factory farming.

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December 3, 2008

Speak English with Poles, don’t bother with Polish

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 11:32 am
Polish sausage

Yesterday on telly (Nova) I saw a report about how Poles were getting on in Rotterdam. Once they showed the Polish food store (ethnic groups are often automatically associated with their food), I watched the rest. What I heard was well educated, normal looking Europeans who just happen to have crappy jobs that apparently pay less than minimum wage in 40% of cases and homes that are overpriced and crowded. As well, some 50% want to stay in the Netherlands because their chances are simply better. Some politicians says this will prepare them for the next wave of Eastern Europeans (Bulgarians and Romanians) who are due to arrive soon. These people are more often than not highly educated, speak several languages and do jobs the Dutch apparently have the luxury to refuse to do. They are not illiterate housewives or too old to integrate.

Then I found this recent article that reads “Poles speak English too well”, which is some weird complaint. On telly, they said that many Poles came to the Netherlands from England and Ireland, so it is logical that they speak some English. The article, however, basically points out that setting up Polish lessons for employers (known as reverse integration and highly criticised) is a waste of time if the Poles speak English. The people setting up these courses could have known this if they 1) bothered to get information from the Polish community like the telly did and 2) looked further in Europe than their own miniscule backyard.

And remember, when the Poles do stay they are obliged to learn Dutch anyways, so communication will be even easier! It seems the municipalities and the people setting up courses could use some serious cultural communication lessons themselves. Poles often speak Polish, some Russian and/or German, English and even other languages like French. Ah but learning Polish was a way to make money which backfired big time hence the complaint.

(Link: leeuwardercourant.nl)

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December 2, 2008

John keeps socks on, gets busted

Filed under: Fashion,Weird by Branko Collin @ 8:51 am

A man got arrested last Sunday after he kept his socks on for sex. The prostitute at the Doubletstraat in The Hague whose services he was availing himself of thought his behaviour was strange and asked him about it—she thought maybe he had cold feet. The man admitted that he was carrying a valuable load of drugs in his socks, and even offered to sell some of it to his supplier of sex. Instead the woman called out to two police officers who were passing through the street and who in turn arrested the man and discovered that indeed, he had hidden “229 drug balls, 32 pony packs cocaine and 2 bags of marijuana” in his socks, according to the Telegraaf (Dutch).

Photo by Lauren Weinhold, some rights reserved. Boy is there a lot of sock porn on Flickr.

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December 1, 2008

Blame the navigation device

Filed under: Automobiles,General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:36 pm

According to the police, a 47-year-old man on a scooter in Apeldoorn, Gelderland was fined last Friday for driving on the A50 motorway. The man listened and blindly obeyed the advice of his navigation system (I’d love to know which one, as I can’t automatically assume it’s from that Dutch brand, but it’s a distinct possibility).

The guy drove his scooter over the emergency lane of the A50 in the direction of Zwolle en route to Leeuwarden. The police eventually stopped him and fined him. The man claimed his GPS ‘told’ him that the quickest route to Leeuwarden was to scoot over the A50.

So the GPS obviously screwed up, but the man deserves a ticket for forgetting anything he learned about driving and safety. And how about that GPS software?

And just in case it was that Dutch brand:

(Link depers.nl)

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November 30, 2008

Flemish student loses her job due to drunk Belgian minister

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:36 pm
Fortune cookie

What a lovely bit of gossip. A Flemish student living and working in New York blogged about a drunk Belgian minister and got fired for it.

The story goes that Nathalie Lubbe Bakker who until recently worked as a barmaid in New York City to pay for her room and board described the loud, lewd and drunk performance of Belgian defense minister Pieter de Crem at her bar in detail on her blog. Then, after some discussion between a representative of the minister and her boss she got fired without any explanation. Lubbe Bakker asked and heard from the defense minister’s representative that the minister wasn’t even supposed to be in New York as his meetings were all cancelled. That last bit was immediately picked up by the Belgian parliament and has been fueling the Belgian media and talk shows as of late. Lubbe Bakker asked the respentative, “didn’t you know beforehand that your meetings in New York were cancelled?”, “oh yes”, answered the representative, “but you know, it’s so quiet in Brussels at the moment, nothing is happening so we’d thought we’d come to NYC since we’ve never been here before”.

Yes, this is not really about the Netherlands, but I was weak. I will repent soon.

UPDATE: The girl is Dutch and lives in Antwerp. I have repented.

(Link: telegraaf.nl)

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