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BACK TO PAGE TWENTY-THREE
COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE -- Issue 2
PAGE TWENTY-THREE; DIARY COLUMN
SNEAKY, SNEAKY, PEEKY, PEEKY, FREAKY, FREAKY
RESTRAINING ORDER IN FORCE
THE MIDNIGHT RAMBLER
AMSTERDAM'S SAMUEL PEEPS
BALLOON BONANZA
For the second year running and for the third time in all, I made it to the Balloon Party this year. Taking place at the famed Paradiso a few days before New Years Eve, the Balloon Party is an annual event that is almost legendary among the decadents and dillettante of Amsterdam. So called because high above everyone's heads there are balloons filled with helium each containing a joint that, throughout the evening, slowly drift down into the crowd provoking pockets of rugby scrum-type brawling on the dance floor, the Balloon Parties are events that should, at least, be experienced.
...If you can get hold of a ticket, that is. For the Balloon Party is very much an 'insider's' event and the tickets are very tightly controlled. The parties are organised by the Balloon Company, which is based at Ruigoord, an artistic community half way between Amsterdam and Haarlem. And, like Ruigoord itself, the Balloon Parties are one of the best kept secrets in Amsterdam.
...But that is hardly surprising. The parties are fun events for a fairly hip crowd (but they let me in, anyway) and the wrong sort of people always create the wrong sort of vibe. And, as they may have discovered this year, if there are too many people at the parties the atmosphere is far less congenial.
...The real secret, however, is Ruigoord. It is a little known (comparatively) gem in the crown of the alternative culture. It is a shame that so few non-Amsterdammers ever get to know about it. For it is a magical place full of figures from myth and legend. Minstrels and jesters, bards and prophets, elves and fairies, wizards and wanderers. In Amsterdam, the reputation that Ruigoord possesses is a high calibre/low profile one. Although it is seen as one of the last bastions of the hippy years and of the squatting generation, it is as an evocation of the vibrant artistic impulse that was at the core of those times that Ruigoord's real reputation rests.
...That and, of course, their great parties. The Balloon Party is the biggest but they organise lots of others. Traditionally, their big bash is around the summer solstice and people come from far and wide to camp out in tepees and tents, to skinny dip by day in the grey meer and dance by night in the old church and under the starry starry sky. In fact, every solstice was a good excuse for a big bash. And between there were monthly full moon parties. But -- notice the past tense -- not even the summer solstice party remains in its original form. The parties, however, still go on. They are just called something different. Twice a month there is a Dance Night or something similar and between there are Global Music Nights. The live music at both is, in my experience, excellent and the DJ'd drum 'n' bass and trance is . . . . well . . . okay if all you need is a beat. The Global Music Nights have not been going long and tend not to be very crowded -- crowded enough for a self-conscious person like me to dance but with enough space to move like a total spaz without knocking anyone unconscious. The Dance Nights are much more crowded but there is still room to dance. And at both, the vibe, the atmosphere, the warmth and unobtrusive friendliness, is overwhelming.
...It is almost thirty years ago that the village of Ruigoord, just to the west of Amsterdam, was squatted by hippies, artists and free-thinkers. They established a very cool community based around a village church that provided a performance art venue and was an excellent place to hold parties. Set on the edge of rural Holland, the village was surrounded by some beautiful countryside. That, however, has long since been stripped away and replaced by a harbour development. With the harbour claiming more and more space, much of the village has been bulldozed and many of the inhabitants have been evicted but the church remains. To a certain extent it has always been the heart of Ruigoord and it remains a symbol of both the community and ethos.
...But it is the ethos more than the community, that endures. But that is enough.
...The atmosphere at the parties is really good and to maintain that, tickets, as I said, for all the Ruigoord events are tightly controlled. But it is the Balloon Party tickets that are hardest to get hold of. They have to be pre-booked through the Ruigoord web site and then picked up at the Supermarkt coffeeshop in the west of Amsterdam against a code number and proof of identity. (And next year, honest guys, we're going to do it the way you would like us to do it -- through the web site.) Indeed, the Ruigoord party organisers would seem to prefer all the tickets organised through their web site. And, it would seem, many tickets are. But many -- like us -- just pay on the door.
...It is an honour to attend their parties, to be a part of such a noble venture. Even to know about Ruigoord is a special thing. And it is important that such great ideas, such high purposes (and we all know that there is no higher purpose than a good party) and such attitudes do not go unlauded.
RITUAL HUMILIATION
As a stranger in a strange land, I am forever on the outside of Dutch culture and, therefore, in a constant state of cultural assimilation. ('Cultural assimilation' is what culture shock becomes when it grows up and stops wetting the bed.) We wish it was integration rather than assimilation but . . . . I am trying to reach some understanding of the Dutch psyche. Honest to gawd. But it is hard. Watching TV is always a good way to get into the psyche of a particular nationality. Or, at least, into the psyche of the people who produce TV programmes. So that is what I do. I have noticed an interesting trend on Dutch television recently -- ritual humiliation. For all I know it may not be just Dutch TV, but I can't speak about TV in other countries. Certainly, the trend here is towards ritual humiliation in the most public of arenas. In its most mild-mannered form, it is there in Big Brother (which, by the way, like the speed camera, is one of those useful Dutch inventions.) It gets more sinister, however, when several ill-equipped, unprepared and psychologically unsound plonkers are left on a desert island to live out their Lord of the Flies fantasies. Or two accountants, a bank teller, an estate agent and an environmentalist are coerced into a synchronised vomiting extravanganza after eating something I would not like to even think about. Or when a group of librarians is airlifted into forests of Borneo and left to live off the land with only a fruit knife, a packet of Elastoplast, two travel sickness pills and a video camera between them.
...It is strange, isn't it? What is it that leads people not only to allow themselves to be set up to look like fools, villains, weaklings and all-round screw-ups but actually volunteer for it? Is the irresistible lure of fame, fame at any price, that irresistible? I used to think it took a lot of courage to do those awful commercials for Kelloggs Cornflakes. But this is way more perverse than that. Do they think that in some way it is going to enhance their prestige to be seen to lose bladder control when confronted by a tank full of eels? Do they actually think they are going to eat out on such stories as 'the bungie jump and the brown vapour trail' or the day I ate the slugs right from off the patio?
...Strange. I mean screwing up in public?
GA-GA-BLAH-BLAH LAND
It really is amazing what absolute crap people talk.This, of course, is not just a problem in Amsterdam but in other places as well.
...The French, in particular, are famous for the high level of rubbish that emerges from between their palsied lips. But in Amsterdam the problem is complicated and exacerbated by the fact that so many people occupy a completely different reality to anything I recognise.
...Wandering the purple plains and paisley pastures of their own little worlds, their eyes glaze over and gaze at some distant horizon, their mouths fall slackly open and their brains pack their bags and take a holiday. Then you know it is time for Ga-Ga-Blah-Blah. Normal conversation, that vibrant and dynamic exchange of ideas and wisdom, ceases. Ga-Ga-Blah-Blah. The words still emerge from between their lips but it is all Ga-Ga-Blah-Blah. Time to go and peek in some windows.
BLINDMAN'S BLUFF
But it wasn't. This is Amsterdam you know. About town with the stand-up comedian who was pretending to be an editorial assistant of this august (to December) publication, the Rambler happened to be walking near the Stopera -- the ugly opera house they couldn't stopera, hence the name -- in Waterloo-plein. Not far from the Stopera's notorious leaking sculpture, there is a large circular fountain with a small stepped wall around it. It was delightful on that bright and sunny day to see a blind boy of about 20, complete with white cane, walking on the wall while his guide man (it now being considered demeaming to canines for them to provide services to disabled people when there is a waiting list of disabled dogs in need of their servcies) held his hand and encouraged him. It was clearly a new experience for the blind boy and the delight on his face brought tears to even the calcified eyes of the Rambler. The thumbs-up sign I gave him seemed to go unnoticed.
PARENTALISIS
Chancing out of the house in daylight hours early on one summer's evening, I was amazed to find the outside world peopled by fathers doing their fatherly thing with kids of all ages. Being from England, where fatherhood is being able to remember that there are small people living in the house that should not be treated as things to sit on, I was impressed by this genuine display of parental responsibility. It is, of course, difficult for English fathers to play with their offspring when all children in England are provided by the State with a Mary Poppins until they can learn to release the proffered popout and are then sent off to a prominent public school (which is what the English call the most select and expensive private schools -- it is irony, doncha know) for a character building flogging and a bit of buggery. It does them nothing but good but, somehow, the Dutch do seem (again) to have got it right.
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