adventures in amsterdam, vol. 1

So, I arrived in Amsterdam yesterday. I'm staying near the Red Light district, which is right by the train station, and it's the first thing you see when you step into the city. I wasn't terribly impressed with it at first, and I'm still not.

After wandering the streets a bit, I decided to try people-watching at one of Amsterdam's "coffeeshops". I found one called the Hill Street Blues, and it looked nice enough, so I went in. It turned out to be a two-level pub/cafe/marijuana den, with a first floor and then a basement that had been converted. I walked down the steps to basement, and I saw that one half of it was filled with mostly grungy people, all fairly quiet. None of them made any sudden movements, but they did all look in my direction as I came down the steps -- prompting me to stop at the bottom, pretend to look for my friends, and, not finding them, precede back up the stairs.

On the first floor, I headed to the back, which had several plush leather couches covered with graffiti. They were arranged in 2 sets of 4, each set grouped around a coffee table. I sat in a free couch and pulled out a book. The people in the neighboring couches included two guys on one couch playing gameboys or something. They weren't together, they just happened to be doing the same thing. Across from me was a guy with a girl I think he had just met; he had a drum with him. To the left of me was a guy lounging back in the couch, half-closed eyes, breathing but not moving. He stayed in the same position for maybe half an hour, but didn't seem to be sleeping. Eventually I followed his gaze and determined that he was watching the Discovery Channel ("Dirty Jobs") on the TV in the corner. A few minutes later, he came alive, lit his joint, and returned to his watching position.

Stoners are not an active people. The more you know (NBC).

This next part contains some filth, so if you are easily offended, a prude, or are my parents, you can stop reading this entry and go on to the next one. Seriously.
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Ok, so I decided to see one of the Live Sex Shows dotting the Red Light District. I figured it was going to be some trick, a glorified striptease, and that the audience would leave disappointed. That's how it would be in America. The Dutch, however, seem to be an honest folk.

There was an opener to the whole affair, involving a dancer and 4 audience members, and eventually a guy in a gorilla suit. It was bizarre, a lot like a Japanese Gameshow that went horribly, horribly wrong.

Then the curtains closed, opening again a few minutes later to show a man and woman. They got together and did stuff on a rotating bed. Serious stuff. They didn't look all that into it.

Another curtain close, opening again a few minutes later. This time, a lady in a red Moulin Rouge outfit came out and "danced". I use the quote marks there because this was the most mechanical, uninspired dance I had ever seen. She moved almost as if she was following a dance footprint pattern on the stage. She seemed like a not-so-graceful stripper who had memorized, but not learned, a few dances. It turns out that's really what she was, because a little into the second song, she started taking her clothes off. All in all, the act was pretty tame. Then, it veered in an awful and astounding direction as she produced a cigar from out of nowhere, lit it, and did something that, for lack of a better term, was exceptional, producing a collective gasp from the audience.

For good or bad, she was finished and off the stage a minute later, to be replaced in a few minutes by another dancer, this one with a latin flair. Things went pretty much the same: tame, tame, nudity, tame, tame, holy christ. At the end, she suddenly produces a dry-erase marker and proceedes to do the most amazing thing with it.

Then she's gone, to be replaced a few minutes later by another couple. This one was a little more lively, with the guy performing some gymnastic/callesthenic routine.

Afterward, the third dancer of the night appeared, establishing the pattern. By this time, I realized that the women had all been hired because they have a singular talent in something uncommon, and that the dancing had just been tacked on to their act to stretch it from about 60 sections to about 3 songs. After realizing that, there was a palpable anticipation as to what prop the dancer was going to produce for the finale -- and then when it appeared, the collective, unspoken question: "Gosh. What's she going to do with THAT?"

Most of the finales were just variants of the "Where can Jenny hide things?" game, but others were wondrous.

It wasn't at all "hot", though.

After, I got some quick food at a chain of french fry kiosks out here. You get a bagful of fat fries with 1 of 20 available sauces, from ketchup to curry. I got mayonnaise.