I’ve had a lot of good times in Amsterdam, but I think the best moment— one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen— happened the second time I was there when my best friend got punched in the face by a prostitute in the Red Light District.
We must’ve been 18 at the time. It was the first summer after our senior year and I had just moved to this little village in Northwest Germany. We asked my ex-girlfriends parents if it would be ok if two of my friends from California could sleep in their basement for a few days. They said yes, so a couple weeks later the two of them flew into CGN in Cologne. It was only about an hour from home so we went and picked them up. The first friend- Jani (which you pronounce yaw-nee) was right on time. The second one- James, whose name couldn’t sound any more American, was held up. Airport security called it “a random check,” but James said, and I believe him, that, “it was because he was brown.” We had a good laugh at it then loaded in the car and drove back home.
That’s where they got to experience for the first time the “Autobahn.” And just like me they had the concept of Autobahn completely misconstrued. We thought it was just this one stretch of road in Germany where you can drive as fast you want. In reality though, the Autobahn, which literally translates to the “freeway,” runs all throughout Germany, just like at home. So yes, on the way back home we would take the Autobahn. And they were as impressed as I was. We were in this pretty nice Audi that was souped up and flew down the freeway at 280 kilometers an hour. I remember looking at James in the rearview mirror and telling him to buckle up. “What’s the difference,” he asked me, “if you have it on or not when you hit the center divider at 175? You’re gonna die either way.” He was right. You should feel what 175 miles per hour feels like. It’s honestly like you’re flying.
Back in Germany, I introduced them to my friends, and like 18 year olds who are able to legally drink at a bar, we went out every night. The german’s showed us a good time. And so did the Hollanders.
The train from Muenster took us about 2 and a half hours to get to Amsterdam. When we got into Central Station, we rented these red bikes from this place called Mac Bike and road down one of the main streets to our hotel. It wasn’t one of those big chain hotels. It was your typical european private hotel, which is more like a big house. I remember the hotel clerk—some mom-aged chick who probably lived on the top floor with her family— looked at these three little American kids and told them “in under no circumstance was smoking marijuana prohibited in her hotel.”
After we got settled in we did, in the spirit of those three little American kids, exactly what you guessed- we went straight to the first coffee shop we could find. If you’ve ever been to Amsterdam, I’m sure you would recognize the logo or at least the name. It’s called the Bulldog. They have a few locations, even a hostel, but this particular one was in the Leidseplein.
We locked our bikes to these trees in front of this ice-cream and pancake shop next to the Bulldog. At the door we showed our passports and walked down the stairs into the little dungeon like room. It’s real dark down there. And if I remember right, the only lights are red, which give it a deep red, glow. On the right is a bar where you can drink coffee or beer or whatever and at the end there is a menu for weed and a register, which usually has a long line before it. They’re usually all foreigners, so if I had to guess this would be the tourist coffee shop, but that’s just what we were, and I’ve always liked it just the same. I think we all bought a gram each. For some reason I remember either Jani or James getting White Widow but I definitely gut Bubblegum.
From there we got back on our bikes and went for a ride in search of a good place to smoke some weed. Every time I’ve been back to Amsterdam I’ve looked for that original spot we found, but I’ve never seemed to find it. I can still see it in my mind’s eye. Both Jani and James can too because we always talk about it.
It was at this bench among one of the many canals. I’ve never been to Venice, but people always explain it as the city with Canals and I’ve always wondered why Amsterdam isn’t thought of in the same sense. They’re literally everywhere. So somewhere along a canal we take a seat at a green bench. In front of us was the canal with it’s dirty green/brown water on which a few houseboats were parked. And I remember there were ducks all around us. Josh was trying to roll a joint, and he kept dropping all the weed. We told him that he better stop or the ducks were going to come and eat it all and we wouldn’t have any. I also remember that one of us was playing music from our phones because the Eagles “take it easy” was playing. That’s what we kept singing to him, “take it easy, take it easy,” as he fumbled with the joint. To this day, whenever that song comes on and at least two of us are together, we sing it. James still gets pissed. It’s hilarious.
After James had finally managed to roll one up, we smoked and then rode our bikes around the city. That day was one of the highlights of my life. When I think back on it, I can still see a little mental film— I’m in front of the two and we’re riding down the canal away from this little kiosk where we just bought some Candy peach rings. I can still taste the little sugary-sweet things in on my tongue. I don’t remember in what order the rest of the day went, but we ate at the Hard Rock cafe in that little square with the human-sized chessboard. James has the palette of a toddler, so we had to appease him, and I was missing ranch and a good burger, so we sat out on the patio and watched the people walk by on the path that snakes its self through the square. If you were sitting at our table and looking at that path and went left, it would take you to Vondel Park. It’s like the Central Park of Amsterdam. We went there too where we rolled another joint and rode around the park on our bikes, doing skid outs with our kick-back back breaks on the dirt paths.
It was dark out by the time we decided to check out the Red Light district. We parked our bikes at some square, which on the map looked not far from where we needed to be. We walked round and round until we stopped in this dark little backroad so we could look at the map and smoke a cigarette. It was at this loading dock thing with a blue fence. That’s when this super shad-looking dude walked up to us. First he asked us for some money. Then the greedy mother fucker wanted for a cigarette too. We obliged and then asked if maybe he could help us out too. When we asked if he knew how to get to the red light district, his eyes lit up, like we had just walked into one of his traps, and he tried to send us down this shady-looking Alley which he said would take us right to it. Maybe we were just being paranoid, but there was no way were gonna follow his directions. It looked like the kind of street on which you might get robbed, shanked, or maybe both. So we didn’t take his directions, which in reality were right, regardless of its safety. Every time I’m in Amsterdam and I walk by that spot where all that went down, I take a picture of it and send it to the guys.
Back to the story though, we end up finding the Red Light District. And to be honest, not in a good way or a bad way, but that thing is not how I imagined it. In reality it is one long block separated by another canal. Sure there’s little off shoots, but the gist of it is on this short street that lasts for maybe 1/3 of a mile or so. It’s a very lively street though. Of course there are bars, plenty- most of them seem pretty normal and I’ve had some good nights in a few of them. You’ve got your coffee shops, a few hotels which you’d have to give me a hazmat suit and pay me to stay in, another Bulldog, and few hostels, which in my opinion, are also quite questionable. But then it gets a little seedy and I’m not talking about the strip joints. I’m talking about the kind of place where you can watch live sex shows. The dudes in front of these places always look a little scummy and have no shame in what they say about the product they’re selling. And then of course, how it got it’s name, you have the windows, which are lit up in red lights. Usually they’re never at eye-level, because of the way the houses are built. The houses remind me of little Brooklyn brownstone houses where the windows are up the stairs, on both sides of the front door. That’s where the girls stand- out on display yet out of touch. And just like at a shopping center there is an option for every taste. I’m talking every taste. It doesn’t matter what color or size. From Princess Leia to Jabba the hut, they’ve got you covered.
Well after we had taken a couple of laps up and down each side we came back to these two girls, who were side by side and shared a house. These girls were so fine, they could’ve been displayed in the pages of Vogue rather than in Amsterdam window. Maybe Victoria’s Secret is more fitting though, because they had on this skimpy lingerie.
So the three of us stopped in front of their window again. And again they were beckoning us up. Then, from behind the glass, one of them opened their swinging window and told us to come on up so she could talk. None of us ever had the actual intention of doing anything— between the three of us we had maybe seen five whole boobs— but we were being little fuck faces and wanted to fool around and see how the deal would go down. So theatrically, so they could definitely see us, we pulled our money from our pockets so that they could see, and Yani decided he would be the one to go up and talk.
James and I watched as the girl left her window and walked to the front door where she met Yanni at the top of the stairs. From down there James and I were giggling, and so was the girl but in a flirty kinda way. And then, I can’t see my friends face because his back was to us, but I could see the girl’s and it was starting to change to something not so friendly. It turns out he had a total of maybe 35 bucks and 10 of them were in Swiss Francs, which definitely weren’t the currency of the Netherlands. I didn’t hear it in person, but Yani told me that she told him “that he couldn’t even go around the corner and get a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk with so little money.” I don’t remember what he said in response, but whatever it was, it was enough to piss her off. That I could see from all the way down there. Things were starting to get agitated.
So I run up the stairs to help him, and right as I get there, she grabs him by the arm and tries to pull him into the house. As she’s calling for her bouncer, or pimp, or whatever it’s called, she has him almost all the way in. And Just as she starts to close the door behind them I jam my foot in door and grab his arm. While she’s pulling one way and I’m pulling the other, I hear the footsteps of a sumo wrestler busting his way down the stairs. And right as I pull him from her grip, she pulls back and decks him right in the eye. We don’t wait for whatever comes next and the three of us run down the street and turn down another little ally where we laughed our heads off.
Although we were being ignorant little asshole american teenager tourists, I think that was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
And one of the most random things was the next morning when we ended up back at the pancake place next to the Bulldog, the girl in the window next to Mike Tyson’s was our waitress, or so Jani swears.