I took the tram today because it was raining and when I stepped out of the tram in Amsterdam I saw these two cups, glued to a traffic pole. I wonder how long they will stay there.
November 18, 2008
November 15, 2008
De(con)struction of a country
The Christian government’s War on Fun is plodding along at a glacial pace here. This can make it difficult to get a decent picture of how bad things have gotten. Luckily, over at the Yak’s forums, somebody who calls themselves DutchLlama has provided a list of battles lost and about to be lost:
- A total ban on magic mushrooms (effective as of 1 December 2008)
- Proposed closing of all coffeeshops by 2010 (already a reality in some border towns)
- Proposed closing of the Red Light [District] (already a third of the windows have shut down)
- Closure of the famous Yab Yum brothel (it closed in january of this year)
- Likewise the Casa Rosso and the Bananabar
- Smoking ban in all restaurants and pubs
- A Christian Union MP has now proposed to ban smoking in cars as well “to protect the children”. To force equality in the law she also wants to enforce it when there are no children in a car.
- The blasphemy law was scrapped but instead the [anti-]discrimination law is strenghtened to cover criticism of religion
One thing DutchLlama forgot is the ban on flags in the inner city of Amsterdam, as these make the city look too cheerfulcommercial according to some politicos.
I should point out that although all of these bans are right up the alley of the Reformed government (the Reformed are a protestant sect), the measures taken in Amsterdam can likely be subscribed to nimbyism, as they’re often based on decisions taken by the council of the city center borough.
Yak is the pseudonym of brilliant games programmer Jeff Minter, the guy who almost single-handedly brought the concept of author’s voice to the video game world, and kept it there against great opposition.
Via Cloggie. Photo of the spire of the Westerkerk by Mararie, some rights reserved.
Tags: Amsterdam, traits, War on Fun
October 29, 2008
Lambiek comic book store turns 40
Not withstanding a recent lament (Dutch) by Dutch comic giants Hanco Kolk and Jean-Marc van Tol about the decline of the local comics scene, comic book store Lambiek is still going strong. Next week the store even celebrates it’s fortieth anniversary. As they put it themselves: “[Lambiek] is probably the oldest existing comics shop in the world.”
The store in the heart of Amsterdam, just off the busy Leidsestraat, is named after a character from the popular Flemish series Suske & Wiske who in turn was named after the beer. To those who don’t shop for comics in Amsterdam—what’s wrong with you?—Lambiek is probably best known for its online comiclopedia, an encyclopedia of comic artists from around the world in English and Dutch.
October 24, 2008
Amsterdam 200 years older than previously believed
Amsterdam is 200 years older than is commonly assumed, says historical geographer Chris de Bont. The settlement was originally started in 1000 AC instead of 1200 AC, which is still pretty young. De Bont bases his conclusion on the patterns formed by old brooks. “I found the same patterns elsewhere in the region where farmers lived around the time,” De Bont told print daily Metro, “so it’s logical to assume that farmers also created the patterns in Amsterdam.”
According to Volkskrant, De Bont also claims that parts of the rivers Amstel and Zaan were dug, and that the IJ used to be a big swamp instead of a waterway. De Bont’s assertions are part of his PhD thesis which he gets to defend next Tuesday at Wageningen University.
Illustration: one of the earliest city maps of Amsterdam (1544) by Cornelis Anthonisz. after one of his own paintings. Check the larger version at Wikimedia Commons, it’s pretty detailed and a great demonstration of how little the inner city has changed in 500 years (they built a McDonald’s in the Kalverstraat and that new-fangled ‘palace’ on Dam Square, and that’s about it).
Tags: Amstel, Amsterdam, brooks, dikes, geography, IJ, Wageningen, water, Zaan
October 20, 2008
Amsterdam fence wins Dutch Design Award 2008
After having found out in July all about this nature accommodating fence on the Olympiaplein in Amsterdam, designed by Ruud-Jan Kokke, it was announced last Saturday that it won a Dutch Design Award 2008.
Out of 700 nominations, Kokke’s fence won a public space award for his one-kilometer-long fence around a big park/football field. It is the second time this year that the fence won a prize, as Kokke was also awarded the public award of the Design to Business Award 2008 together with the Oud-Zuid District earlier this year.
(Link AT5)
Tags: Amsterdam, Design to Business Award, Dutch Design Award, Olympiaplein, Ruud-Jan Kokke
October 19, 2008
Second Dutch Project Gutenberg sampler
I decided to make another Nederlandse Project Gutenberg Reader, containing the Dutch books that were released in the past month at the internet library. Once again you can find it at Brewster Kahle’s excellent Internet Archive.
Since the past month was a bit quiet with regards to new releases, I decided to add a couple golden oldies. The new releases were Jacob Cats’ Spaens Heydinnie and Shakespeare’s Twee edellieden van Verona. Cats was a moralistic writer from the Dutch Golden Age. Spaens Heydinnie (Spaans heidinnetje, Spanish gypsy) is a reworking of Cervantes’ La Gitanilla, in which an infant girl of noble birth is kidnapped and raised by gypsies. The third release last month was a lecture held in 1840 for the Frisian Association, which I find wholly uninteresting, but I am not going to be all judgmental about your kinks.
I added two extracts from older works. The first is a travel account of the Netherlands, Door Holland met pen en camera, by the French journalist and photographer Lud. Georges Hamön. Let me translate a bit for you:
One has to keep in mind though that Holland is a desperately flat and monotonous region, that it does not spark any fierce emotion, nor does it lead to excited enthusiasm or even quiet inner delight. Holland is the land of serenity, where one submerges in the calmest comfort.
The opposite of calm comfort is Herman Heijermans’ Diamantstad (Diamond City), a novel about and an indictment of the poor living conditions of the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam around the turn of the century. Earlier I sort of translated the fragment I quote in the reader over here.
Photo of Father Kick in quiet contemplation by Lud. Georges Hamön. See also the first Dutch Project Gutenberg Reader.
Tags: Amsterdam, Herman Heijermans, Jacob Cats, Project Gutenberg, Spain, William Shakespeare, Zeeland
October 15, 2008
Glamsterdam, yet another lifestyle magazine
The Dutch version of TimeOut Amsterdam won’t be the only new magazine to be launched in January 2009, as there’ll also be Glamsterdam. Glamsterdam will be a bi-monthly glossy magazine for “Amsterdam and its residents”. The content will be decided upon by locals together with an editorial staff. The goal is to portray the creativity of residents of Amsterdam (‘Amsterdammers’). Every edition will feature articles and reports of events and parties, music and film, and all that jazz.
Contrary to TimeOut, Glamsterdam will be free and have a print run of 40,000 copies. There sure won’t be a lack of anything to read in January 2009.
(Link: adformatie.nl)
Tags: Amsterdam, Glamsterdam, magazine
October 12, 2008
Gay Frenchman fought the law and helped change it
A few months ago I wrote the following article on the Amsterdam Weekly blog about a French homosexual having his nationality revoked for marrying a Dutchman:
“Frédéric used to be French, but because he married a Dutchman, the French Embassy forced him to give up his French nationality. The French consulate revoked his nationality because they did not want to recognise his marriage when he also acquired the Dutch nationality. According to an agreement between France and the Netherlands, anyone who opts for the nationality of the other country automatically loses their original nationality, unless they are married to a person of the other nationality, in which case dual citizenship is automatically awarded.
The consulate declared Frédéric unmarried and wants him to hand in his passport, ID card and has told him he is banned from voting. Frédéric, very much attached to his home country, is terribly upset.
Tanguy Le Breton, the official representative of the French community in the Netherlands, calls this “blatant discrimination”. “It’s obvious that the French authorities discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In this case, the discrimination is symbolically terrible because we are depriving homosexuals of their nationality. It is about time to start a debate on the issue and put an end to this discrimination.”
Frédéric is French again
This summer Frédéric got his French nationality back thanks to the efforts of people like French gay Amsterdam politician and author Laurent Chambon who spread the news and got things moving. The entire “reintegration process” took a speedy two months and was aided by a high Sarkozy cabinet official, Emmanuelle Mignon. Frédéric still had to show his birth certificate, national ID cards (1995 and 2004) his passport, proof he had become Dutch in 2006, and proof he kept ties with France by being registered with the consulate in Amsterdam.
What happened to Frédéric will probably never happen again to any French person in the Netherlands, as the law will change as of March 2009. Any French person marrying a Dutch person will not have their French nationality automatically revoked.
(Link: laurentchambon.blogspot.com (in French))
Tags: Amsterdam, gay marriage, homophobia, identity, nationality
October 5, 2008
Letter reveals Anne Frank house as ‘unworthy’
According to De Telegraaf, The Dutch government had no objections to the house where Anne Frank wrote her wartime diary being torn down in the 1950s. The place where the young Jewish girl described life hiding from persecution by the Nazis was not considered worthy of preservation, De Telegraaf said, quoting from a letter written by Joseph Luns, the foreign minister at the time.
Luns said the house where Anne and her family hid from 1942 until her betrayal in 1944 was “not a historical monument of the Netherlands” and unremarkable from an architectural point of view. The letter, dated May 3, was sent to the Dutch ambassador to the United States, informing him of the official position of the Ministry of Education, Art and Science towards the Anne Frank House. The newspaper said the letter was discovered recently when the part of the ministry’s archives was being moved to a new home.
According to the Anne Frank Foundation, it was apparently written in response to questions by Americans why the house was not declared an historic building. Located on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht, the house began attracting its first visitors shortly after the book Anne Frank – The Dairy of a Young Girl was published in 1947. In the mid-1950s, a real estate firm proposed knocking it down to make way for a modern building, but dropped the idea after a series of protests.
(Link: earthtimes.org)
Tags: Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House
September 26, 2008
TimeOut Amsterdam magazine launched
On the ground floor of the new, warehouse-style offices of the Amsterdam Weekly, Amsterdam’s prize-winning English-language newspaper that was recently saved by the bell financially, TimeOut magazine made its first public appearance with a launch catered in every sense of the word by local night theatre and AW partner, the Sugar Factory.
The link between the two is in fact a new strong bond: while a new investor swooped in and saved the weekly, he also used the staff to set up TimeOut Amsterdam. The two have separate staffs, with American author Nina Siegal heading up the magazine. Rumour has it this Israeli investor is buying up newspapers left and right, Berlin being an upcoming target.
Although the crowd was very positive about the newcomer, one question remained, asked to me by one of the Dutch lawyers who worked on the investment deal: can an Amsterdam magazine that people have to pay for instead of get for free really work in Amsterdam? There’s NL020 in Dutch, and many other little guides… Exactly: there is no comprehensive going out guide of Amsterdam in English, although the weekly has a big section devoted to that. Moreover, the free guides are all in Dutch, which does not help the 1.5 million tourists that come to Amsterdam every year. And if people pay exorbitant amounts for food and beer in tourist traps because they do not know where to go, they’re better off buying a world renowned guide like TimeOut to tell them where to better spend their money. And so the lawyer offered to get me another gin and tonic.
For the unconvinced and the “oh no, it’s another expat mag crowd” – which it is definitely not! – beware: TimeOut magazine will also have a Dutch edition as of 2009.
Disclaimer: I write freelance for both the Amsterdam Weekly and TimeOut about music and shows.
Tags: Amsterdam, magazine, Sugar Factory, Timeout