AMSTERDAM,
OH AMSTERDAM
I see the needle and the damage done,
a little part of it in everyone, every junkie's like the setting sun.
—from “The Needle and the Damage,”
by Neil Young, Harvest 1972
Ignoring the small red verboten circles with a camera icon nesting inside, a young
blonde leans out the sunroof of a red car, flashes her camera at a storefront
widow, the driver speeds off with squealing tires. The scantily dressed black
prostitute explodes out of the door, cursing in both Dutch and Spanish.
Sociology studies aside, photos are forbidden in Amsterdam's Rosse Buurt, the red light district where whores display their
goods behind velvet and glass. No money in stolen photos. It made me think of
the photographer Edward Curtis. Modern day primitives selling small bits of their souls to the gringos.
Only
the soulless reside here. It could have been me, a thief of images, come to
steal this scene, but I was on foot, with no fast getaway car—a dangerous
proposition. Appropriately, this street was once called Vleesstraat, the street of the butchers. The street of flesh, a slow river of
thighs and flagging desire commingling in the debris.
At the end of Gelderskade canal, is the Schreirestoren,
the Tower of Weepers, where women
watched the ships sail out to the Zuiderzee and beyond—perhaps never to return.
This is the city of human cargo, fed by black ivory and spice—the East and West
India companies had their headquarters here. This is where the concept apartheid was exported.
Scurvy of the tongue. The Cape Colony, a garden on the sea road to the
Dutch East Indies.
We'd just come across a footbridge into Oude Zijeds
Kolk, one of Amsterdam's oldest canals (or grachten—moats). This is one of the oldest sections of city
raised from the fens of the Waal, on one of the many tributaries of the Rhine
river delta.
Who were these bog people who first settled here in 50 B.C.,
preferring to wrestle with the sea and reside in isolated fishing camps, rather
than to suffer at the hands of their enemies? On the southern side of the
Rhine, Caesar first chronicled warring with the fierce Celts, and on the north
side of the river, with the Teutons. Amstelle damme. About 500 A.D. the dam across the Amstelle river
made it a permanent settlement. The medieval walls of the village kept
expanding outward in oblong concentric rings like the cross-section of a felled
tree.
My Dutch friend Vins, whom I knew from our college days in Sonoma County,
said, “These are new land wrested from the bottom of the sea.” The Zuiderzee, a
mere remnant of itself, is now the freshwater IJ, surrounded by the dyked and drained
polders, fields below sea level. Hy Brazil, Atlantis, or the city of Is
rising up from the sea, lights shining from the watery depths. This magic city
of the late ’60s, an important stop on the gringo trail—like London, Munich and
Istanbul.
On Kreupelsteeg, Cripple's alley, I break my sandal. Pointing to a
needle cap, Vins warns me to watch my feet. Wearing sandals can be a hazard in
a city where hard drugs are tolerated.
One introduction to Amsterdam's
wilderness is to learn to read the signs like a good tracker. I take a photo of
a pair of suede boots in good condition, and a needle with the orange cap,
neatly placed under a canal bench. Some childhood habit persisted long after
the junkie had left this realm. Perhaps the teutonic mode for organization led
this person toward the nirvanic solitude, a junkie's journey into hell.
This
compulsion for tidiness and propriety juxtaposed against self-destruction is a
paradox typical of the Dutch. A white whore, and several men descend upon us at
the street corner. I'm holding my arms around my pouch, camera and notebook.
Something's coming down—and quickly. A deal. A small white car came wheeling up
Geldersekade street—the police are quickly upon the scene. Vins points out the
runner. No one's caught holding.
This area is heavily patrolled by cops, users, customers and tourists.
Contrary to popular belief, hard and soft drugs are
not legal in Amsterdam. Brothels and coffee houses were legalized mid-1990. I
find my broad-minded notions are quickly challenged in less than a block.
The
dark energy of the skinny whores, the users and dealers—tangible as a knife
severing the umbilicus from the mother of chaos. I'm in the duck-and-cover
mode, protecting my psychic, and physical space from these stealers of souls. I
haven't had to use those street skills in more than twenty years, skills
learned in the ’60s and ’70s. No more flower children, just the walking dead,
the zombies seeking other planes of sensation.
Two men prepare their fix a la Chinees style. Foil, a match, a spoon if one is lucky. The
tentacled stench of urine curls up from the cobbles, seeking a brain-hold via
the nostrils. On this street, it's too much of an effort for the junkies to use
the commas, the curvilinear green
wrought iron urinals punctuating each canal mid-sentence to the bridges where
one can cross over to other islands of thought. The East India Company
building, for example. Once this was the center of the universe. A fabulous
empire that changed the map of history, now reduced to a sandstone building
housing a maritime collection for the tourists to contemplate.
Four burly teenagers sit in front of an empty
building and roll a joint in public. Vins snarls at their stupidity, “A fast
way to get deported.” Weed is only allowed in the coffee houses. Grass is not legal either, but a loophole in the
law allows people to indulge in a little smoke.
One coffee house, the Cafe
Paradiso, formerly a church, still caters to higher thoughts as well as rock
and roll. The Dead Kennedys & Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing. At another
coffee house we scan the menu du jour. Afghani, Maui, Thai, and several local brands of Dutch whiet (weed) in varying weights are available for 12
guilders (about nine dollars). I feel like I'm perusing a wine list. Sonoma Grown is not
offered on the menu.
We cross over to St. Olaf's street and alley, the
oldest streets in Amsterdam.. This original wharfside with its confluence of
cutthroats, junkies and whores could use a saint, it needs all the blessing it
can get. The newest addition of tourists creates a strange tide marching
through this section of alleys constructed before the Renaissance.
Yuppification in the thieve's den.
Here, the buildings lean toward each other as if to
kiss the neighboring buildings across the canal. At first glance, Amsterdam
resembles a forest of leaning towers of Pisa, some of the older towers really do list a bit. The proliferation of
acute angles is not the result of too much good Dutch beer or grass. Many
building were used for storage, goods had to be lifted from the street through
street-front windows. They were designed to lean out to make it easier to hoist
things up.
People still use the hook and pulley system to move into apartments.
I watched Vins's new neighbors move a bureau up to a fourth floor flat, the
woman using a guy rope to keep the bureau from smashing out a window. Many of
the newer buildings don't lean out so much, but centuries later, the system's still the same. The bureau
careens, as if attempting first flight—the man yelling. Vins comments, “This
part always tests the relationship.”
On the street of curtains, an interesting thought
comes to mind as I watch the hookers gyrate under blacklights. One needs to
observe both the whores and the customers—those who are window shopping, those who
are buying, and those who are disturbed at the sight of the oldest profession
on the world.
An ironic twist—the abbreviation of Amsterdam is A'dam. Calvinists
and Catholics divvied up the churches, spires and clocks dominate the sky. Calvinist
guilt and commerce make strange bedfellows. Time is money. The ladies of the
evening are efficient, a john clocks out anywhere from six to ten minutes.
My third sortie into the red light district has the
same unsettling effect upon me, I come away with disturbed energy. Tired, I
can't sleep. Seeing the junkies at sunset with their fixes, I'm buzzing, a
contact high. I can philosophically deal with the skinny derelicts—they exist
in every city. One develops a discerning eye, learns to see through them. I'm
not sure I want to get used to seeing the junkies preparing their fixes with
such tender devotion.
One image I can't shake is of the well-dressed young German
in a teal jogging suit and Gucci bag, fumbling to make her fix in a shop
doorway on St. Antoniebreestraat between Nieuwe Markt and the Rembrandt house
in the old Jewish quarters.
When the city fathers decided to clean up the slums
of the Oude Zijde to put in a new metro line, they destroyed what was left of Mokum
(an old nickname for Amsterdam), the old Jewish quarters. Some perennial
sadness as long as the lines in front of Anne Frank's house, clings to the gray
skies and adheres itself to the cobblestones—lest we forget.
Once called the Jerusalem of the west, Amsterdam
relies on commemorative plaques and sculpture in place of memory. The WW II
pink granite triangle takes in new significance as AIDS take its toll here too.
A bouquet of yellow roses—Tiger, I miss you. —Love, Bear. The triangle, half the equation of another symbol of
persecution. The yellow star of David. And another monument proclaiming Amsterdam,
oh Amsterdam! I toss rose petals
into the canal, drops of blood emerge from the other side of the bridge. Those
who have their fix for the night are gezellig, euphoric.
Everyone openly prepares for the coming night, the
stars barely visible specks of light. Where I am I living at this moment? I
don't exactly know. . .
? 1993
