Amsterdam, 1994.
My first visit, age 20, staying with my girlfriend on the Amstel Botel, just across from Centraal Station.
Hotel notes: disappointed to find a cannabis leaf with a red line through it on the info card, surprised to discover the “movie” channel showing free hardcore porn; upon our nighttime return we flicked it on to see two blokes going for it in the missionary position-Welcome to Amsterdam!
Before that however, we had ventured into the Red Light District to make our first “legal” cannabis purchase.
*Quick point of order*-cannabis is not actually legal in the Netherlands but has been “tolerated” since 1976 (“gedoogbeleid”). To quote the Dutch Government website:
“Soft drugs are less damaging to health than hard drugs. In the Netherlands, coffee shops are permitted to sell cannabis under certain strict conditions. A coffee shop is an establishment where cannabis may be sold but no alcoholic drinks may be sold or consumed. This is part of the Dutch policy of toleration…This means that the sale of soft drugs in coffee shops is a criminal offence but the Public Prosecution Service does not prosecute coffee shops for this offence.
Neither does the Public Prosecution Service prosecute members of the public for possession of small quantities of soft drugs. These quantities are defined as follows:
no more than 5 grams of cannabis (marijuana or hash);
no more than 5 cannabis plants.The sale of cannabis (hash and marijuana) in coffee shops is tolerated, provided that coffee shops keep to the prescribed rules or ‘toleration criteria’. Coffee shops:
must not cause any nuisance;
are not permitted to sell hard drugs;
are not permitted to sell cannabis to minors;
are not permitted to advertise drugs;
are not permitted to sell large quantities (over 5 grams of cannabis) in a single transaction.”
These are the present day rules and have tightened considerably since 1994, when coffeeshops could sell both cannabis AND alcohol and you could buy/carry way more than five grams!
This was also of course before the days of the internet.
I had garnered this information and the addresses of a few shops from some of my cooler friends who had already visited and the now near-mythical “Mellow Pages” by Kip, purchased from Tower Records in London-a black and white notebook detailing the author’s favourite coffeeshops and herbal recommendations.
The most appealing place in here for us was “The Other Place” (R.I.P) on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, a small bar run by the Amsterdam Hells Angels that played a lot of rock and metal. It had a gorgeous picture window that you could sit in and gaze out at the red light windows across the canal and perhaps Amsterdam’s most famous tattoo parlour, “Hanky Panky”, in the basement underneath, where I would get my first tattoo nearly twenty years later.
Feeling slightly nervous we ordered the first of many “two small beers” (Heineken, almost ubiquitous) and asked to see the “menu”, which here took the form of a many-paged photo album-like folder with actual samples of how much of each strain you would get for your guilders (pre-Euro Dutch currency) slotted into the pouches. Sativa, Indica, blond hash, black hash.
We decided on Super Skunk as we recognised the name and were eager to try sensimilla (just buds, no seeds) for the first time. The unbelievably gruff, handlebar-moustached barman took our order and slammed the beers and bag of weed on the bar in front of us-our first experience of Dutch “service”.
Upon opening the bag the smell hit us immediately-heady, woodsy with a hint of citrus. Closely inspecting the bud we could see the tightly coiled pistils and countless trichomes, glistening with sticky goodness. This was nothing like the African brickweed we had come across at university-we weren’t in Kansas any more Dorothy!
Having always rolled the European way with a bit of tobacco, largely for financial reasons, skinning up our usual tiny, skinny joint seemed quite the challenge with the hitherto unencountered stickiness but we persevered and were ready to light. Here we go.
The lighter flame greedily licked the end of the joint and almost seemed to hungrily consume the sticky ingredient, as though it created the perfect combustion cocktail. That unmistakeable skunky smell filled the air, the sweet flavour engorged our taste buds and we could immediately tell this was the best joint we had ever smoked.
We were sat at the bar on stools and stuck to our promise to only smoke half the joint and see how we felt. This was a wise policy indeed as after about five minutes we were gripped by almost uncontrollable laughter and the strange sensation that we were falling backward off the stools, when of course we were doing no such thing.
We held onto the underside of the bar with our fingertips just to be sure.
I remember hearing Guns n Roses on the stereo and thinking about how hardly any bars in the UK would play that sort of rock any more as Nirvana and grunge were taking over. Amsterdam was clearly more concerned with having a good time however and I immediately made a decision that one day I would live here, just like Tarantino when he wrote Pulp Fiction.
The music seemed louder, the sunshine brighter, the canal water more glistening than it had all been just five minutes ago.
The barman was having a conversation with a friend, or so we thought, as the volume and ferocity of his speech, coupled with the harsh consonant sounds of the Dutch accent, made it hard for us first-timers to work out whether he was actually giving the guy a compliment or having a full-blown row with him. We soon came to realise this confusion was not due to being stoned but just the Dutch way!
As the giggles and motion sickness subsided, we had a sip of beer and finished the other half of the joint. The barman asked if we had enjoyed it and laughed like a drain when we responded, no doubt red-eyed and slightly drooling, that it was “pretty good, yeah”.
Having recovered ourselves sufficiently to move onward we thanked the barman and stumbled off to our next port of call, after finding something to eat of course, as for some reason a roaring hunger had suddenly overtaken us and it had to be fed…
