The latest craze among yobs in Amsterdam seems to be Smart tossing. Jeremy Clarkson would undoubtedly approve, were he not busy urging Britain to invade France.
posted by acb on Jul 27, 2009 - 47 comments

Rest in peace, Simon Vinkenoog [Dutch blog w/English option], poet, friend of artists like Karel Appel, translator of Beat Generation figures like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, psychedelic enthusiast and "weed ambassador" of Amsterdam, and author of such guides to hip living as How to Enjoy Reality. One of the European jazz-loving proto-hippies who made the '60s swing and mentored several generations of culture hackers, though he was never widely known in the US.
posted by digaman on Jul 14, 2009 - 15 comments

[E]ven if you are unemployed you still receive a base amount of [vacation money] from the government, the reasoning being that if you can’t go on vacation, you’ll get depressed and despondent and you’ll never get a job.
[...]
But does the cartoon image of [the Dutch system] — encapsulated in the dread slur "socialism," which is being lobbed in American political circles like a bomb — match reality? Is there, maybe, a significant upside that is worth exploring? [...] I think it’s worth pondering how the best bits might fit.

After a year and a half of living in the Netherlands, American writer Russell Shorto compares the Dutch "welfare state" to the tax, health care and social security systems of the United States.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on May 4, 2009 - 119 comments

On a sunny May morning, six plainclothes police officers, two uniformed policemen and a trio of functionaries from the state prosecutor's office closed in on a small apartment in Amsterdam. Their quarry: a skinny Dutch cartoonist with a rude sense of humor. Informed that he was suspected of sketching offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities, the Dutchman surrendered without a struggle.

"I never expected the Spanish Inquisition," recalls Gregorius Nekschot, the cartoonist.
posted by plexi on Jul 24, 2008 - 111 comments

Willie Nelson "Superman" featuring Snoop, Snoop Dogg "My Medicine" featuring Willie Nelson, live at Melkweg.
posted by 445supermag on Apr 26, 2008 - 11 comments

Amsterdam plan to legalize public sex in park from this year September onwards. The police's National Diversity Expertise Centre (LECD) wants this to expand this plan to all public parks of the Netherlands.
posted by insatiablehee on Mar 19, 2008 - 53 comments

One Wall Away: Hidden Spaces. Jan Theun van Rees photographs secret spaces in Chicago landmarks to allow us to access to what we normally never get to see. My favorites: the old heating ducts for Unity Temple, and inside the Bean. He other series explore Amsterdam's disused theaters, galleries and museums and various personal looks at public spaces.
posted by hydrophonic on Nov 6, 2007 - 7 comments

Amsterdam: a deal has been made that will shut down a third of the prostitute windows in the city's famed red light district [nsfw] and turn the buildings into shops or housing. Advocacy group De Rode Draad (The Red Thread) worries that a shortage of windows will push prostitutes away from the safe, monitored areas. [via QI] [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Sep 25, 2007 - 45 comments

Amsterdam's bike culture is jarringly different than the U.S. A photo essay.
posted by craniac on Aug 26, 2007 - 148 comments

Clara the rhinoceros. Hansken the elephant. Monster from the deep. Prints from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam [previously].
posted by tellurian on Sep 12, 2006 - 7 comments

"Soon there would be no space left. But the cats kept coming. What could she do with them all? The solution turned out to be right outside Henriette's front door. If people could live on the houseboats which lined the canals, why not cats? And so came the idea to buy one for them." De Poezenboot.
posted by reklaw on Aug 7, 2006 - 22 comments

Gas prices too high? Try Europe. $7 a gallon? That's what drivers in Amsterdam pay. But Europeans have long adapted to high prices.
posted by Postroad on Aug 28, 2005 - 117 comments

Urban Haute Couture "is about street art and street art only. Since a couple of years ago there's a boom in street art. To be clear we're not talking about graffiti. We're talking about street art that is spraypaint/marker template based, stickers, posters and combinations of those. This new breed of street art, except for using the urban landscape as a medium, has actually nothing to do with graffiti." Cities include Berlin, Amsterdam and the Romanian Stencil Archive.
posted by vacapinta on Apr 4, 2004 - 16 comments

De Hermitage Amsterdam. In the early 1990s Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg was considering the possibility of having satellites of the museum in the West. The Nieuwe Kerk and the Hermitage had already established a strong relationship through the organisation of major exhibitions, and Ernst Veen, director of the Nieuwe Kerk, suggested that Amsterdam would be the ideal location for a branch of the Russian museum, given the historical links between the two cities over the past 300 years.
posted by the fire you left me on Mar 16, 2004 - 3 comments

There go my dreams of retireing in Ouagadougou or Baghdad but Vancouver, B.C. and mmmmmmAmsterdam are still in the running. A little help, please?
posted by dreeed on Mar 1, 2004 - 20 comments

This site is edited automatically. Mediamatic, a Dutch inclination toward media and being.
posted by the fire you left me on Feb 22, 2004 - 3 comments

Threat of ban to Dutch cannabis cafés...
It'd be like an airplane without wings! Surely the whole point of buying some weed at these places is to smoke it on the premises?
posted by tomcosgrave on May 29, 2003 - 7 comments

NYCASD. Themed photos of New York and Amsterdam.
posted by plep on May 8, 2003 - 2 comments

Give a group of Amsterdamers a GPS tracking device for a couple of months, plot their movements over a black background, and the resulting traces map the city through the movements of its inhabitants. Alternately, make your own GPS art, or play GPS Hide and Seek.
posted by gravelshoes on Jan 24, 2003 - 5 comments

US Marine Expat Burns Passport In Protest. As the International Court of Justice (ICC) in The Hague officially started operations on Monday, US activist and expat Kenneth Nichols burned his passport in front of the US consulate in Amsterdam.
posted by tpoh.org on Jul 8, 2002 - 15 comments

Dutch siege is a protest against wide-screen TV manufacturer. A gunman is holding hostages in a Amsterdam office. Apparently he's demonstrating against the manufacturers of wide-screen TV's for selling "creative nonsense". Who reckons he's just pissed cos he can't afford one?
posted by jiroczech on Mar 11, 2002 - 19 comments

iToke - Just place an order through any WAP enabled device and the folks at iToke will deliver you all the marijuana you want. And in less than a half hour guaranteed! Sorry. Amsterdam only. The way the sites designed you'de think they had a secret alliance with Apple.
posted by Nyarlathotep on Aug 18, 2000 - 0 comments