Obligatory red-light-district post
Jun. 26th, 2002 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moominmollyI'd been avoiding it, but I guess it's time to post about the bits of Amsterdam that are famous in the states.
This past weekend, I did a lot of non-purposeful wandering, walking the city, and admiring the canals. I got on a bus near my house that was headed into town, and got off it when things looked enticing. Then, I just headed in the general direction that the bus had been aiming, figuring that that would bring me somewhere close to the center of the city. I was pretty dreamy, I suppose; staring at yellow and purple bikes, people talking on cell phones while riding, men with their hands in each other's back pockets, and all of that good stuff. At some point, I was walking down a street lined with shops and with a nice canal running down the middle, and I was (typically) admiring the lush brown hair of a woman piloting a boat and how neat it looked in the sun.
Something made me look up at one of the shop windows and I noticed that the mannequin wasn't a mannequin at all, but a woman. I mean, I was actually startled! She was posing for a group of guys who were strolling and enjoying the window displays. And I looked down the street, and there were just dozens of little red velvet cabin-sized rooms, each with its own glass door and scary-voluptuous woman inside. Some cabin-rooms were larger and had two women, chatting or posing together, some were raised above street level, but they were all red, to a one.
Kristen had told me to be sure to walk down this street twice: once alone (or in the company of women), and once with a man, to see the difference. And it was true -- I was completely invisible. As a result, no matter how much I wanted it to be otherwise, all of the women seemed completely fake. Even when they were off-guard, painting their nails or reading a book or whatever, they looked like moving sculpture. Suddenly aware that I wanted to sit and gawk at all of the gawking, I felt self-conscious and ducked off of the main pr0n thoroughfare onto a side street. There, I saw a barely-legal-type girl, lanky and largely curveless, looking just like one of my friends who ran track in high school. She was wearing a bright orange string bikini and leaning out a dark green doorway, making wee-hours dinner plans with her friend standing across the alley wearing black hotpants and chewing on a soda straw.
This little picture made me incredibly happy, for some reason I can't explain. I think it was the second girl, ignoring the soda she was holding, absent-mindedly munching on her straw while she tried to figure out when she'd be free. Or maybe the first girl's earnest look, or maybe the Christian youth hostel that was sitting one block over.
I ended up walking through the area again, another day and later at night when it smelled like bar districts always smell at night. But I still didn't feel comfortable looking. Part of me had wanted to come to this city and sample neither sex nor drugs. I mean, I'm completely in agreement with Amsterdam's progressive policies on both counts. But, so many people come here looking to settle into a stupor for the duration of their stay, and I just didn't want to be a part of that. I love the fact that bikes and boats and trams and trains and skates are normal modes of transportation. I like the gay marriage laws. I like the friendly people. I like my office always having a few different languages floating over the cube walls. I like the northern-European climate, cool enough to keep me happy. I don't want to fade into the image of yet another American tourist, gettin' stoned and staring at prostitutes or slurring my loud American English over and over to the bartender.
It didn't help that the first few internet cafes I found were all in pot-selling coffeeshops, keyboards sticky with a gummy brown residue... sitting there and listening to the tourists come in, tittering, looking for good weed and borrowing bongs from behind the bar, it all made me even more ambivalent about the actual usage end of the whole thing.
But then, really, why not? OK, fine, I'm here for the bikes and the art, and I read Playboy for the articles. Actually, I don't read Playboy at all. Whatever.
I don't speak any Dutch, either. I can't even order my beer and make change without fucking up. That, more than anything else, makes me feel like an Ugly American. It made me feel a bit better when two French guys and my Danish boss were complaining about how terrible a place Amsterdam is if you want to learn Dutch. Dutch people switch to English immediately, here, if you so much as hesitate in your Dutch. Knowing -- really, hearing from other people -- that it wasn't just my American-ness that made them switch to English made me feel a bit better. And people do address me in Dutch rather than English, so I guess I'm better off than a corn-fed Iowa girl in a college sweatshirt and Keds would be.
So I still haven't gotten stoned or paid for sex. I *have* paid for internet access, multiple times. Just in case you were wondering!
This past weekend, I did a lot of non-purposeful wandering, walking the city, and admiring the canals. I got on a bus near my house that was headed into town, and got off it when things looked enticing. Then, I just headed in the general direction that the bus had been aiming, figuring that that would bring me somewhere close to the center of the city. I was pretty dreamy, I suppose; staring at yellow and purple bikes, people talking on cell phones while riding, men with their hands in each other's back pockets, and all of that good stuff. At some point, I was walking down a street lined with shops and with a nice canal running down the middle, and I was (typically) admiring the lush brown hair of a woman piloting a boat and how neat it looked in the sun.
Something made me look up at one of the shop windows and I noticed that the mannequin wasn't a mannequin at all, but a woman. I mean, I was actually startled! She was posing for a group of guys who were strolling and enjoying the window displays. And I looked down the street, and there were just dozens of little red velvet cabin-sized rooms, each with its own glass door and scary-voluptuous woman inside. Some cabin-rooms were larger and had two women, chatting or posing together, some were raised above street level, but they were all red, to a one.
Kristen had told me to be sure to walk down this street twice: once alone (or in the company of women), and once with a man, to see the difference. And it was true -- I was completely invisible. As a result, no matter how much I wanted it to be otherwise, all of the women seemed completely fake. Even when they were off-guard, painting their nails or reading a book or whatever, they looked like moving sculpture. Suddenly aware that I wanted to sit and gawk at all of the gawking, I felt self-conscious and ducked off of the main pr0n thoroughfare onto a side street. There, I saw a barely-legal-type girl, lanky and largely curveless, looking just like one of my friends who ran track in high school. She was wearing a bright orange string bikini and leaning out a dark green doorway, making wee-hours dinner plans with her friend standing across the alley wearing black hotpants and chewing on a soda straw.
This little picture made me incredibly happy, for some reason I can't explain. I think it was the second girl, ignoring the soda she was holding, absent-mindedly munching on her straw while she tried to figure out when she'd be free. Or maybe the first girl's earnest look, or maybe the Christian youth hostel that was sitting one block over.
I ended up walking through the area again, another day and later at night when it smelled like bar districts always smell at night. But I still didn't feel comfortable looking. Part of me had wanted to come to this city and sample neither sex nor drugs. I mean, I'm completely in agreement with Amsterdam's progressive policies on both counts. But, so many people come here looking to settle into a stupor for the duration of their stay, and I just didn't want to be a part of that. I love the fact that bikes and boats and trams and trains and skates are normal modes of transportation. I like the gay marriage laws. I like the friendly people. I like my office always having a few different languages floating over the cube walls. I like the northern-European climate, cool enough to keep me happy. I don't want to fade into the image of yet another American tourist, gettin' stoned and staring at prostitutes or slurring my loud American English over and over to the bartender.
It didn't help that the first few internet cafes I found were all in pot-selling coffeeshops, keyboards sticky with a gummy brown residue... sitting there and listening to the tourists come in, tittering, looking for good weed and borrowing bongs from behind the bar, it all made me even more ambivalent about the actual usage end of the whole thing.
But then, really, why not? OK, fine, I'm here for the bikes and the art, and I read Playboy for the articles. Actually, I don't read Playboy at all. Whatever.
I don't speak any Dutch, either. I can't even order my beer and make change without fucking up. That, more than anything else, makes me feel like an Ugly American. It made me feel a bit better when two French guys and my Danish boss were complaining about how terrible a place Amsterdam is if you want to learn Dutch. Dutch people switch to English immediately, here, if you so much as hesitate in your Dutch. Knowing -- really, hearing from other people -- that it wasn't just my American-ness that made them switch to English made me feel a bit better. And people do address me in Dutch rather than English, so I guess I'm better off than a corn-fed Iowa girl in a college sweatshirt and Keds would be.
So I still haven't gotten stoned or paid for sex. I *have* paid for internet access, multiple times. Just in case you were wondering!
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no subject
Date: 2002-06-26 02:58 pm (UTC)Much more interesting to see it from different viewpoints, as you get to. I don't think I can pass for a woman to see that side.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-26 07:23 pm (UTC)areas that they don't allow women into? Supposedly? Or is that mythos? I'd certainly be interested in, um, looking. But then I'm kind of curious.
I can't see myself getting drunk in a foriegn country. Ick.
I'll order in German. Which seems to be close enough to Dutch that it won't matter too much. Unless they win the world cup. Then srd might stop me.
I have to admit to also being curious about the "herbal" goofy stuff they sell in the drug stores. I saw one box of something that was called "Shaman's Suprise" or something. It was tea and just seemed to be very odd. Who knows what was in it. Cute box though.
Care to figure out how easy it is to get to Delft? And just how expensive are their wares, I wonder? Maybe I should see how many porcelain facotories I can visit.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-27 01:19 am (UTC)Speaking of unescorted women, I saw a girl about my age, sitting in the cafe I was in, drinking a beer and writing in her journal (just like me!) and I felt this incredible urge to go strike up a conversation, just because. Something stopped me, though - I don't remember what. I think I wrote about the urge first (I'm such a dork) and then when I looked up, she had already left.
Anyway, I'll certainly go look with you. We can try the with-and-without-a-man experiment. :)
I wish I spoke German! It is no small source of sadness and shame for me that I don't.
You. Don't. Speak. *German*? <GASP>
Date: 2002-06-27 10:20 am (UTC)Not that I'm bitter...