Last year I was asked to write a piece for the ‘City Hotels’ exhibition at Amsterdam’s architecture centre Arcam. My story ended up being about Andaz Amsterdam from Dutch design icon Marcel Wanders. But I also managed to slip in references to being a doorman, eel-pulling, lion shit and being snotty about fringes…

Mucus in mid-air

A few decades ago my first job in Amsterdam was as doorman at the Melkweg. It was a different time; it was an educational time. I learned how to tear a ticket while having a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other. I listened to stories from my hardcore Amsterdammer colleagues about when the city was one big rafelrand – a giant fringe bursting with fringe activities. About sniffy squatters building giant robots to battle police. About lion shit being thrown around to freak out horses pulling royal carriages. And about other things that appealed to my stunted sense of humour – a sense I seemed to happily share with my colleagues. Good times.

By day, I continued my education at the old OBA library on Prinsengracht. Compared to its present location by CS, it was an ugly mess. But at least it had books. In the sprawling section dedicated to Amsterdam, I would leaf pages and scan indexes for appealing terms. That’s how I found out about the ‘Eel Riot’ of 1886. About ‘tobacco-smoke-enema-applicators’. About all the rafelranden of the city’s past. Back at the door, I would share these stories with my appreciative colleagues. Points scored.

Years passed. Amsterdam gentrified. I joined my colleagues in complaining about having to bike further and further out from the centre to discover any quality fringe activities. Some bona fide post-apocalyptic-vibed weirdness. Some updated version of ‘eel-pulling’.

I also gentrified. I applied my accumulated Amsterdam lore to writing guide books and travel pieces. One day, an international style mag sent me to review a newly-opened hotel called Andaz Amsterdam. The location was the old OBA library where I had learned about the city’s deep connection with rafelranden.

Now it was a ‘tribute to the city’ by design wonder boy Marcel Wanders. Naturally, I totally enjoyed the free room and food. But it was all too slick. This wasn’t my Amsterdam. It lacked grit.

After dinner I went downstairs to go to the washroom. There, down a red Lynchian hallway was a display of Wanders’ ‘Airborne Snotty Vases’ based on 3D scans of sneeze mucus in mid-air.

Sure, it was a very small rafelrandje. But at least I didn’t have to bike far to find it.

The Supperclub’s host-with-the-most offers the best seasonal message possible: stop whining and ‘go to the light and be happy!’

By Steve Korver, 22-12-2004, cover feature, Amsterdam Weekly

Howie is a warm, witty and welcoming Jewish-American boy who is known to embrace such distinct identities as Howie Krishna and The Safe Sex Pope. I  run into him under the pretext of getting his professional views on the state of clubbing in this, the clubbing capital. He’s been hosting in the city’s clubs for around 10 years now, and if he doesn’t know, then indeed all is not right with this crazy, mixed up world.

Ol’ time religion was already in the air when I entered Howie’s home in a former Catholic school. He was busy putting the finishing touches to his darkroom-hungry pope outfit, complete with blinking lights and a silicone cast of a huge fucking cock. He was preparing the costume for the evening show at the Paradiso for the World Aids Night Love Dance.

‘I’m going to dangle all sorts of condoms from this baby and wave to everyone from the highest balcony,’ Howie tells me, appendage wobbling in hand. ‘I will bare a message of safety that will remind people that real love is never dangerous.’

Once upon a time…
So how is a Jewish pope made? Well it all began on a winter’s night very much like the one on which I am writing, when a star appeared over America. ‘I was born on February 12, 1950 on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday,’ says Howie. ‘You know, the guy who freed the slaves. I was a nice Jewish boy who ended up with a nice Jewish boy job.’

In fact, Howie became a child development specialist and set up shop in various places across what he calls ‘Safe America’ — one assumes that’s anywhere where gays aren’t treated like shit — before settling down in Provincetown Massachusetts, where he treated and cared for severely handicapped babies. He also got involved with the Unitarian Universalist Church. ‘You know what they say about Unitarians; they’re the ones who burn question marks into people’s lawns.’

In 1992, he was asked to present research on HIV and child development at the first International Aids Conference in New York City. But since HIV-positive people weren’t allowed into the USA, the organisers had to change the location at the last minute to Amsterdam. Lucky Howie. Lucky Amsterdam. He decided to take off the whole summer so he could also attend the Olympics in Barcelona.

‘I also wanted to have lots and lots of safe sex while generally enjoying the non-ghettoised vibes of both Amsterdam and its darkrooms,’ Howie says. ‘But mostly I wanted to be invisible for a while and enjoy the fruits that only anonymity can bring. In many ways I didn’t really exist anymore, and there was certainly not much to leave behind in the States after that holocaust called AIDS.’

When Howie first came to town, then, he was feeling really open for anything that might happen. ‘I’d have probably gone home with a serial killer if one had come up to me and just said “Hi.”’ He gave his conference paper on the morning he arrived, ate space cake in the afternoon, and went later to the Roxy’s Hard Night expecting complete debauchery. Instead he met the man who would deliver him ‘a lifetime of domestic bliss and marriage.’

(The fact that his future husband was an established Bekende Nederlander, by the way, is irrelevant to both Howie and this story. As Howie says: ‘I’m just happy he has a job.’)

Almost immediately, Howie exchanged his hotel room for the squat where his future hubby lived. ‘It was real liberating to just go for it. Dump the fear, shut up the ego, get rid of the judgement, rewrite the script and just go for it. I felt like a gift was being presented and I couldn’t refuse. Yes, it felt like Christmas. I finally stood with my palms open ready to receive. And to think all I had to do was shut up and say thank you. I also realised that we are sometimes given gifts that are never fully opened. And this city was one of those gifts.’

This gets him onto a theme that is apparently fairly common these days among pessimists: the claim that ‘this city ain’t the same’, etc, etc. ‘OK, today there’re a lot less squats and less money around. But here are just as many parties if you look for them and it’s still sweeter than almost anywhere else on the planet. Besides, everywhere else they’re still debating abortion, gay marriage and mixed babies and all that. Here it’s all just a done deal. Sure some people might find me disgusting but at least I can sue them if they do something about it. Thank god for hate-crime legislation.’

Dam sweet hom
After that pleasant summer, Howie returned to Provincetown and spent a few months tying up loose ends before returning. With his boyfriend as sponsor, dealing with the foreign police was a relative snap. He even got a free coupon to learn Dutch. And through fellow squatters he quickly scored a job. The next couple of years he spent working in the kitchen at the then very-happening West Pacific at the Westergasfabriek.

‘After that I got one of the jobs I’m proudest of in my life,’ he tells me, warming to his tale. In short, he became a toilet lady at the legendary Roxy club. ‘Who knew you could make money from piss? I’d already done that whole define-yourself-through-your-job-thing. Now I just wanted to BE.’

‘Being’ for Howie meant introducing such industry innovations as the Pissenkaart — ’10 haalen, 7 betaalen’ — and evolving into a local legend thanks to a rapier wit and an even sassier dress sense.

Even the police hoped to take advantage of his talents. ‘Years ago during that whole drug crackdown, when they were closing all those places like Mazzo because, oh my god what a shock, people were actually taking drugs, the police tried to recruit toilet ladies in the war against hard drugs. During one of their workshops, I told them that I wasn’t a drug enforcement agent. I’m a landlord. I just rent a space to people for a certain amount of time. I’m not going to search anyone and I am certainly not going to follow anyone into the toilet. If you really want me to look for drugs then I want a drug poodle!’

Unfortunately, the police weren’t visionary enough to embrace a powerful image, and not to mention the potentially highly lucrative spin-off industries that could be built on it: that of Howie and his Drug-Busting Poodle. The cops’ loss was the Supperclub’s gain. Howie became one of their favoured faces behind the door.

I’d been hoping to use the Supperclub’s evolution, from ‘artistic’ chaos to ‘professional’ enterprise, as a metaphor for how Amsterdam has changed in the past decade. But Howie is quick to put me in my place.

‘The city hasn’t changed,’ he says. ‘People have. Don’t blame this sweet and innocent city for your own troubles! In fact, there are just as many parties as before, if you actually look for them. OK, there’s no pill-testing at parties anymore — that’s something that has changed — but that’s more about Amsterdam trying to become like Europe. But what’s Europe? Amsterdam may have been more of an isolated island in the past, but it’s still totally happening.’

I agree with Howie. I’m the one who’s changed. I admit to Howie that I’m one of those who don’t upholster the town plaid as much as they used to. He responds with a message that doesn’t exactly fill me with seasonal cheer. ‘Yes. People change. That’s natural. But the scary thing is that it means that you’re aging.’

Thus the still-kinetic fifty-something host’s advice to the already decomposing thirty-something writer. But he tries to cheer me up again: ‘Aging, like partying, is a learned behaviour. You need practice to get good at it.’

Yes, it’s practise, practise, practise…

‘Moving here when I was 42 saved my life,’ Howie continues. ‘I started here fresh without history and without bad press. At first I knew no one here who had died from AIDS. There was no sadness because there were no houses that I could walk by that belonged to friends who had died. And that was very nice for a change. Really, travel is the ultimate way to avoid a midlife crisis. Do you want to stay young? Then travel. It’s too bad travel is wasted on the young because if I wasn’t in a happy relationship, I’d be desperate to get out. Be young again in India or somewhere. Find some more tension to feed off and be forced to wake up…’

On the job
What is his job these days at the Supperclub, then? He’s ‘a host’ he says. ‘My job is to make sure everyone is relaxed and to break down the expectations of people who are nervous, or who confuse being hip and happening with being chic and arrogant. I just check to see if you’re happy and up for it. My role is to say: welcome and now go towards the light and be happy. If you don’t want to be happy then just stay away. I can guarantee one thing. Grumpy. People. Will. Not. Get. In.’

The Supperclub, he says, is about the relationships between the guests and the staff. Everyone participates in the experience. ‘We provide a lot of the ingredients, but it’s up to you whether you want to bake matzo or krentenbol.’

Am I starting to smell an all-inclusive seasonal message coming from the kitchen?

‘I also check reservations, arrange seating and return to my medical roots as a nurse fighting on the front line of that other drug war: the one against too much space cake,’ Howie continues. ‘It amazes me how hard soft drugs can be for some people. But I’m still learning. A while back I got into big trouble with a German lady who asked where the ladies’ room was and I answered “uni-sex, uni-sex.” Well, we have uni-sex bathrooms at the Supperclub. But she mis-heard me and started screaming: “How dare you? How dare you say:  ‘You need sex?’ What do you mean, I need sex?”’

But in general, Howie speaks very glowingly of cross-cultural relations. ‘In the old days I used humour, but when there’s no shared first language you have to find other ways to communicate. I can be bitchy and horrible in English but in Dutch I just don’t have the nuances you need to be truly cruel. The other day, I almost got run over by a speeding car but I managed to catch up on my bike at the next stoplight. I started to scream: “Je…bent…een…onzettende…” — and then I couldn’t think of the right word, so I just yelled “douche bag”… But in general two different languages can be a real diplomatic boost to any long-term relationship. And who wants to go out with themselves anyway? Would you ask yourself out for a date?’

Hey, we’re talking about you, Howie.

He admits that he went through a difficult period when the Supperclub changed ownership a few years back. ‘It was extremely stressful. But it was inevitable. Supperclub wasn’t just an artists’ hangout, it had to support itself. And that meant wine had to be bought and toilets cleaned. Maybe we just took it too seriously back in those “good old days”. It was all fun and romantic, but it was just fun. It’s not as if masterpieces were being created every night at the old Supperclub.’

As he puts it: green mashed potatoes are fun but they aren’t the heights of artistic expression. ‘The old Supperclub days were wild and crazy, but every party ends,’ Howie says. ‘In today’s economic climate it’s difficult to have a creative platform that’s self-supporting. One of the things I always loved the most about this city is its free-flowing creativity. But at some point we could no longer live the millionaire’s life on one euro.’

Artists have to develop more business sense, Howie believes. The days of patrons and popes supporting the arts are over. Gertrude Stein is long dead…

Family values
A certain sense of family permeates the whole Supperclub experience — a vibe that can only be accentuated by the fact that everyone’s in bed together. Certainly the employees feel part of a larger family and this attitude has been extended to their upcoming New Year’s Eve party. Instead of asking a party promoter, they’ve decided to organise this year’s in-house. Is there any extra seasonal cheer being planned?

‘It’s not a heavy trip, just laidback fun,’ says Howie. ‘It’ll be about freedom and respect. Is that inclusive enough for you? Guests will get a party bag with mask, fan, name-tag and all that goodness. You’ll also get me, Host Howie, a Howie Krishna lounge with Yoga instruction, a Salon Social, clean uni-sex — or should I say u-need-sex — toilets, an attitude-free coat-check, an early DJ-free area with environmental sounds ‘n’ images.’

‘The door people will also not  treat you like a criminals,’  adds Howie. ‘There’ll be no negative vibes, no foreign police, no Madonna. Well OK, Madonna can come. But she has to buy her own ticket.’

The only rule for the New Year party will be that party-goers show enthusiasm. (Oh, and the usual one: don’t be rude.) ‘If you want be nude, be nude,’ Howie says, a glint coming to his eye. ‘Or wear a tux. Just come and express yourself. Matza. Krentenbol. Pick your own dish. Wearing your own skin might be an excellent start to creating your own happy new year.’

Photography by Sophie Morner

Amsterdam’s new city archive on Vijzelstraat is one of the largest in the world and is now open for business. Can you feel the excitement? Well, some folks can—especially when the numbers and the details turn into some hardcore stories.

By Steve Korver,  13-09-2007, cover feature, Amsterdam Weekly

‘So can archives be hot and thrilling?’

‘Very,’ replies Hans Visser (1958), head of information services at Amsterdam’s Stadsarchief, as his eyes begin to glimmer. His response was not quite a ‘hell yeah!’ but it was very close.

Of course, part of the excitement stems from the archive’s new location, the epic De Bazel building, a former bank built between 1919 and 1926, which is now, after a ‚¬65 million renovation, as light-infused inside as it is in-your-face imposing from outside. Open since August, the Stadsarchief this week unveils, complete with Queen, pomp, and much circumstance, its Schatkamer or ‘treasure room’.

This intricately designed and restored two-floored hall—really the ultimate hang-out for the Egyptian mummy crowd—will feature such prizes as the paperwork that shows how Amsterdam bankers helped finance the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ in 1803, when the US doubled in size by making the largest land deal in history with a cash-strapped Napoleon. But it will also have seven-inch singles from the great Rotterdam singer of Amsterdam songs, Louis ‘De Kleine Man’ Davids (1883-1939).

But the true richness of this collection is its 35 kilometres of files—and it ain’t just knipsels. The stored memory of Amsterdam and its millions of residents also includes books, magazines, newspapers, letters, drawings, prints, photos, films and sound recordings. Visser himself began working at the archive as a librarian in 1991, when it was still the Gemeente Archief and located on Amsteldijk. In 2000, he took on his present job of making the archives as accessible as possible to the public. He can still get all worked up about the role. ‘I can’t imagine anything more suspenseful. The whole of life, and especially society, is locked up in the archive. It’s not just official government records, but also private collections from cultural institutions, businesses and famous Amsterdammers. Pretty much “everything” tussen haakjes.’

‘Now, thanks to digitalisation and a proper organisation of the collection, a lot of it is easily accessible through the website. We have two million scans online already. If we continue at the rate we’re now going at—ten thousand scanned documents a week—we should have the most important parts of the collection, which number approximately two hundred and twenty five million pieces, online in the next ten years.’

Good God. These ambitions sound near Mormon-like.

Mormons as the archivist’s archivist
The Mormons come up a lot in conversations with archive aficionados. A quirk in the religion has members tracing their family trees to find the names of ancestors who had died before benefiting from being saved, Mormon-style. Once documented, these past relatives can be baptised by proxy in the temple. Currently, about 2.4 million rolls of microfilm containing two billion names are stored behind 14-ton doors in the Granite Mountain Records Vault, a climate-controlled repository built into a Utah mountain range. And, yes folks, it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast.

‘We know the Mormons well, of course. They started coming here in the 1960s to copy huge amounts of information. There’s nothing childish about their approach,’ says Visser. Of most interest to the Mormons, and anyone wanting to do a bit of carving into their family tree, are the Stadsarchief’s identity records. Currently all 1.1 million ‘person cards’ from between 1939 and 1964 have been digitalised, along with about 600,000 ‘family cards’ from between the late 19th century and 1939. And before 1811, people were registered through the church via ‘birth books’, ‘wedding books’ and ‘grave books’. The database now has five million names and counting.

Numbers into stories
But numbers are numbers that only get exciting when they become a story. Visser comes up with a serious one: ‘There was a Jewish man, who came from a family of market traders, who was given away during the war by his parents, who were being transported to concentration camps. He ended up in the countryside, being raised by [another] family. After the war, no one from his [birth] family returned and he had no mementoes of them. About four years ago, he had heard about our files of market licences, and that on these licences are photos. Through them, he actually found photos of not only his parents but also his grandparents. That had an impact, let me tell you…

‘Or it can be more trivial. A friend of mine who lived on Westerdokstraat during the 1950s looked it up in our image bank [the online beeldbank currently has over 220,000 photos] and not only found a picture of his house but, in front of it, his mother and aunt, along with his father’s VW Beetle. If you look closely, you can even make out his grandmother in the window. That’s just fantastic. Imagine that moment of recognition! And it’s exactly those instances of petit histoire coming to life that makes this great work.’

The glint in Visser’s eyes is now turned up to 11.

Murder and manslaughter
‘Well the gleam in my eye is from the fact I’m allergic to dust—not really the best start for someone who spends so much time in archives,’ states Eric Slot (1960), journalist and crime historian, who was recommended by several archive users as the best person to help find a nice, hot archive story. In his favourite bar—Cafe De Zwart on Spui—he is smoking cigars. We drink beer. It is old-school journalism at its best.

Slot is naturally happy about the squeaky clean and freshly dusted Stadsarchief. ‘The only thing I miss is Louise’s soup, now that the staff canteen is separate from the public one.’ Slot made a splash last year with the book De dood van een onderduiker (Mouria, 2006) which used archival research to question film-maker Louis van Gasteren’s claim that, in 1943, he had beaten to death the hiding Jewish man, Walter Oettinger, because Oettinger’s erratic behaviour threatened resistance people. Whenever anyone suggested other motives besides this relatively noble one, Van Gasteren would initiate a lawsuit, as he did against Slot himself when the ‘Murder on Beethovenstraat’ was featured as one of 100 murders covered in his 1998 book Wandelingen door moorddadig Amsterdam [‘Walks through murderous Amsterdam’].

Slot’s publisher decided to remove the book from the stores. Understandably resentful, Slot was motivated to dig deeper, and spent a total of three working years—spread over the next seven—doing just that. When Van Gasteren took him to court to stop the product of his toils, the judge saw no reason to ban the book, since it was based on documentation and made no mention of what could have been the real motive.

Slot has also dug deep into other affairs. His first book Vijf gulden eeuwen. Momenten uit 500 jaar gemeentefinancien, Amsterdam 1490-1990 (Gemeente Amsterdam, 1998) was commissioned by the city itself to investigate its own financial dirty laundry. Not surprisingly, Slot found lots of fraud.

Mixing it up
‘The Stadsarchief is especially interesting since it’s so impossibly huge,’ says Slot. ‘When taken separately an archive may only be of passing interest, but when you use it with others you can really get somewhere. Of course those “family cards” and “residence cards” are incredibly boring stuff, but by combining that with other information, such as from the police archives, which you need special permission for, or from some other private or business archives—not to mention the newspapers and magazines. ‘Newspaper clippings alone are an incredible source of information, and at the Stadsarchief that’s all thanks to some crazy guy who started to preserve newspaper clippings in 1840 on every imaginable subject. So now if you want to know something about bathhouses in Amsterdam—I wouldn’t know why, but just imagine—you now have in one handy a place all the articles on bathhouses since 1840. And it’s the same with murder and manslaughter. Very handy.’

Another amazing feature of the archives is the staff. ‘There’s a specialist in everything there. If you have a picture of an Amsterdam street and you have no idea where it is, there’s someone there who will know—as long as you can catch them running down the halls. And that kind of knowledge only builds up over many, many years.’

In other words, by working in and creating archives, one becomes an archive. With your own personal built-in search engine.

So what has been the happiest of eureka moments for Slot? ‘With De dood van een onderduiker, it was probably what I found in the child protection service archive—and very lucky it was, since they only saved one out of every ten boxes of their collection. There was a dossier about the sister of Van Gasteren—who was having some trouble raising her child—and there was an actual statement from Van Gasteren in 1956 about something that happened ten years before. Bingo. He said she had had a relationship with a German soldier—and that was information that I could do something with. Only then did I realise the power of combining these different archives.

‘But, of course, there are also these other moments of pure coincidence. For example, I was looking for one of the original detectives working on the Van Gasteren case. All I knew was that he was called Timmerman. And while I was actually working on a whole other subject I just stumbled across him. And those kinds of moments happen a lot. Especially because you don’t go through an archive once or twice or three times. You go through them at least ten times because you have to go back every time you find something new. Only then can you make more connections and discoveries.’

Keeping it present
Currently, Slot is busy working on a book about the criminal underworld of the penose on the Wallen during the 1950s and 1960s and is in the archive almost daily, out to reconstruct life as it was then. ‘You can take the police records and compare with pictures in the Stadarchief’s image bank with all these pictures of buildings, where you can see exactly what they were: a liquor store or a carpenter workshop or a bordello. And all these details you can use to fill in the blanks of a particular police report of a crime that occurred there. The more extra information and local colour you get, the more you actually begin to see it as it actually was.

‘As far as I’m concerned, the nineteenth century could have never existed. But there are still so many interesting and entertaining stories to be written from archives that can say a lot about what’s happening right now. This Wallen book will reflect what’s happening now in the criminal circuit. For instance, with the famous prostitute murders of Magere Josje and Chinese Annie in the 1950s: there’s a lot more in the police report than ever reaches the papers. And it’s those extra details that help make the story. The basic story is very simple: woman murdered and killer never found or convicted, anyway. But the real story is about the relations between the people involved. These dossiers can also tell you exactly how those peeskamers looked. Everything is described and in words that never made it to the Dikke van Van Dale. You just can’t invent that sort of stuff… Reading these reports you really begin to sense the police’s relative naiveté. They were used to the husband standing over the wife with a bloody knife, and now they were confronted with these murders of prostitutes by unknown assailants. They were just not used to it. And actually it’s these murders and a few others that are the precedent for the liquidations of today. Those murders changed everything. The police had to become more systemised and detailed in their documentation to ensure a conviction.’ In other words, the archives had to become much thicker.

What story is Slot itching to research next? ‘My latest book De vergeten geschiedenis van Nederland in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (2007) ended with a few post-war affairs One of them began in 1945, when a man claiming to be Paul George de Bruyn Ouboter was arrested heading east across the border at Enschede. He had a SS mark tattooed on his arm. But he was Dutch. And, most likely, he did something highly criminal on the eastern front and maybe even in the Netherlands itself. The authorities spent five or six years trying to figure out his real name. He said he was born in Amsterdam, but there were no records. There’s still a huge dossier on him. But who was that man? They never found out, so eventually he was freed and he went directly to South America.’ Slot pauses, ‘And that says quite a bit… And I think I can still find out his true identity by diving into the archives.’

‘And there are thousands of stories like that still to be found yet within the Stadsarchief. And really if you can’t find something, anything, no matter what it is, go to the Stadsarchief. It’s probably just waiting there.’

It’s enough to make a person into a glinty eyed Mormon.

Improv comedy troupe Boom Chicago on how the cops and the suds have changed in our fine town.

By Steve Korver, 17-04-2008, Amsterdam Weekly.

A couple of weeks ago Amsterdam Weekly reached out to the Hells Angels for some advice about trademarks and brand-building. This week we’re reaching out to another club. A comedy club. One that is celebrating its 15th anniversary this month as a highly successful, English-language-fuelled business. ‘Boom Chicago paid a million euros in taxes last year,’ says executive producer Andrew Moskos as we drink beer in the sunshine on the theatre’s Leidseplein terrace. ‘So it’s safe to say we’re totally ingeburgerd.’

It’s a heartwarming story—especially since Boom Chicago was founded by Moskos on a stoned whim, back when he and a friend were passing through Amsterdam on a holiday and noticed a hole in the improvisational comedy market. Today, Boom Chicago fills its 300-seat Leidseplein Theater most nights with smartass shows that incorporate suggestions from the audience. It’s a formula that Moskos learned back home in Chicago, Illinois, where he was inspired by Second City and trained at Improv Olympic.

‘We just started peddling these two basic things: beers and laughs,’ says Moskos. ‘And we were lucky that there was always an audience for the shows we wanted to do. We never had to go through any heavy inner battles about art versus commerce.’

‘Thank god for that,’ chimes in Rob AndristPlourde, a 12-year veteran Boom actor and improv teacher, who has joined us at the table.

Okay, beer is obviously always a good basis for a strong business model. But were they able to apply the laughs to the model as well? ‘Well, in a way,’ says AndristPlourde. ‘The basics of improv are to always remain positive and respond with a “Yes, and…” to whatever gets thrown your way, even if every fibre of your being is screaming Noooooooooo! And on a business level I think we’ve tried every idea that’s come along.’

‘But just as on stage, some business ideas work better than others,’ deadpans Moskos.

Meanwhile these two Boomers also busied themselves with saying ‘Yes, and…’ to Dutch society at large. While they began as purveyors of ‘cheese, pot and pussy jokes’, as AndristPlourde describes it, they have long escaped the tourist/expat ghetto, both personally and professionally.

‘Sure, we’re still welcoming to tourists, but our shows are now aimed at the Dutch,’ says Moskos. ‘It wasn’t a conscious decision. We learned the language, started reading the papers, had Dutch children and became part of the culture,’ Moskos goes on. ‘And now we’re the ones complaining about all the fucking tourists. Just call it natural evolution.’

Over the last five years, Boom’s audiences have also shifted slightly, going from half Dutch to two-thirds. That may have to do with the popularity of the TV show De Lama’s, which has brought improvisational comedy to the Lowland masses. ‘Although they are obviously influenced by us, we don’t feel ripped off at all,’ says Moskos of the show. ‘You could say we introduced the grammar, but we ripped that off from elsewhere as well.’ Indeed, good comedy is like folk music: it belongs to the world.

During a decade and a half of taking the piss out of Amsterdam, these two Boomers have watched the city change. ‘I’ve seen two big shifts,’ says Moskos. ‘In beer and in police. Fifteen years ago, the beer price ratio was one to two: the cheapest place might sell a beer for 1.75 guilders while in the most expensive place it went for 3.50. (I should say that I’m not including bars featuring naked women in this observation.) But now that ratio is one to three. A whole new level of quality establishments has been laid over the top. And that’s been at the expense of the city’s underground. And let’s be careful with that: you don’t want to become Switzerland.’

‘Meanwhile the cops have gotten more petty,’ continues Moskos. ‘Before, it was about mature policing that focussed on the lessening of troubles. Remember those parties where the cops warned about bad ecstasy going around? Now they spend their time busting kids at Sensation parties for smoking joints and people on the street for jaywalking.’

AndristPlourde professionally cuts the situation to its essence: ‘I totally agree. The counterculture is dead and the police have become the stereotyped pigs.’

‘I sometimes miss that Amsterdam,’ continues AndristPlourde. ‘I remember years ago seeing two men walking down the street arm in arm and going “Wow what a great city”. Okay, it turned out to be a cop and a guy in handcuffs, but my sentiment was real.’

‘Yes, and maybe they were just bondage sweeties,’ says Moskos, spinning it positive.

‘Actually, I knew we had really become part of the city when I got married a few years ago in the Filmmuseum,’ recalls Moskos. ‘My brother-in-law is a cop and was all smart in his uniform. Before the main event, he went for a walk in the park and was stopped by two undercover cops to check if he was for real. These cops were pretending to be tourists and part of their disguise was our tourist magazine stuffed into their back pockets.’

So Boom Chicago’s future in the marketplace seems secure. But what can save Amsterdam from becoming Switzerland? More cheap beer perhaps?

Both Boomers respond simultaneously: ‘We’d “Yes, and…” that!’