‘Wouldn’t two balls solve the whole problem?’

‘If two teams can’t get it together to share, what hope is there for the bleeding billion different teams that make up this planet?’

It would be easy to smirk my way through some smart-ass facts like orange being the colour of the sex ’n’ spleen chakra, or that orange was considered by Goethe as the colour of the rough and uneducated, or that orange is the favourite colour of everybody’s favourite god of wine ’n’ bonking, Bacchus.

I could even dwell on the irony of orange — despite advertising’s Golden Rule: ‘Never Use Orange’ — becoming a marketing phenomena where seemingly everything that is now currently being sold in this country, from condoms to contact lenses, is orange.

But actually I’ve been getting into the spirit of things and now when those orange guys score, I even catch myself jumping to my feet as if an industrious fart of mine has suddenly harnessed the secrets of rocket science. So out of respect, I choose to discuss the aesthetics of football. It is such a purty sport after all…

For instance, when the mass psychosis surrounding the game gets too much for my weak and dicky ticker, I let my eyes glaze over and randomly follow the lil’ orange blobs darting about the green field until the sport takes on the vibe of fireflies darting about in a kid’s glass jar (or flames randomly darting about in a campfire…). It is all so very relaxing and probably similar in effect to staring into an orange hypno-pinwheel and getting very, very sleepy.

But before I get too lost in these visual games and a dull-voice inside my mind starts chanting ‘Must… Buy… Orange… Products… Must… Buy… Orange… Products’, I redirect my focus to take in the equally pleasing rhythmics of relaxation to be found within the stadium crowd scenes. The texture reminds me of those scrambly computer-generated pictures that you stare at until a 3D image pops out at you. And yes, invariably out of the sea of distorted orange comes a freaking huge orange clog to kick me upside the ass and onto my feet again and thereby forcing me — albeit happily — to start the whole process again of trying to regain my preferred state of freestyle floating.

But I wouldn’t dare to come across all flaky like psychic spoon-bender Uri Geller who has spent a lot of energy trying to convince people that if enough fans of a particular team focus on an orange dot placed on their TV screen, the resulting convergence of cosmic energies will lead to certain victory for your team… I’m no jock pundit, but that sort of stuff doesn’t strike me as very sporting.

But whatever. Off to the stamkroeg.

Blijf van me stad af. Positive city propaganda from amsterhoppers Surya & Pharao.

The accent is quite uncanny… While the military police can often look like illustrations from A Field Guide to the Inbred, I’ve always regarded the local police as nothing less than cute and cuddly. And it’s that warm fuzzy feeling that is reinforced when watching this clip.

These are complicated times we live in. It was all much simpler back in the 1970s. To entice more people to visit Amsterdam all you had to do was put out some posters cajoling long-haired American targets to “Fly KLM, sleep in the Vondelpark”. Word of mouth did the rest.

And then there was the tourist board’s Get In Touch With The Dutch campaign during the 1960s. This one just gets me all misty-eyed; those must have truly been the most innocent of times.

And for the last few years, it’s been I amsterdam. I can imagine it can work to help attract tourists and business. I only start seeing red when it peddles the delusional idea that it also works to unify regular Amsterdammers. It’s as if the local government actually believes that culture is not a grassroots phenomena but rather something that can be shoved down our throats from the top down.

OK, it’s easy to criticise. Marketing a city can’t be easy. I certainly can’t come up with anything better. “Ich bin ein Amsterdammertje” would probably generate the same confusion and controversy as JFK’s grammatical gaffe, “Ich bin ein Berliner”. And “Handy Airport. Lotsa Coffeeshops”, while appealing to both the business- and leisure-minded, lacks a certain elegance.

I think I’d just opt for golden oldies like ‘Amsterdamned’ or ‘Amsterdamaged’. I regard these lines as way more effective ambassadors. After all, the visiting dope smokers of today may just hold our city’s future in their hands. I figure it was mostly sentimental ex-hippies who invested in this city during the booming 1990s. They figured it would be a good excuse to come and visit a few times a year, and maybe recreate certain perfect relaxed coffeeshop moments from decades past. (And these investments got the city thinking that they could get even more by coming up with that era’s ho-hum city marketing ploys — “Gateway to Europe”  and “Capital of Inspiration” — that resulted in the building of lots of new office space that today stands largely empty…).

Anyway… it was short-sighted to force Ai! Amsterdam to change their logo. The city is losing a perfect co-branding opportunity with a group that is both grassroots and community-driven.

The general impression was, um, it’s a tad shabby. Yo Grandmaster: time for a paint job and some new carpeting, perhaps? But I shouldn’t judge: maybe seeking world domination isn’t the high-paying gig we all assume it is. Or maybe they really are just some fellows banded together who use building metaphors in their voyage towards self-discovery. The Freemason I talked to said their secretive reputation comes only from the fact that they are protective about their rituals so that when new members experience them they are more emotionally affected. Regardless, they certainly aren’t Bilderberg. [Please note: out of respect for the Freemason's once-secretive reputation, I only took a picture from the outside.]

 

I also got to look inside some of the houses along one of my favourite residential streets, Bellamystraat, that runs up from the center of Ten Katenstraat market. At number 74, small-scale industry is alive and well in the form of the blacksmith company GF Meister en Zonen who have been at it since 1909. Compared to the Freemasons, this place is more manly than merely men-only.