amster(damn)

on sunday i went to amsterdam. i didn't leave until the middle of the afternoon because i had to finish some school work beforehand. i hoped to have enough time to walk around before going to see a concert. on the way to the train station i ran into my friend jurrian who was also going towards amsterdam. i asked him about how the canals fill with water quickly if there isn't much runoff. he said it is because the land is below sea level so when there is a void the water comes through the ground to fill it, i guess due to pressure. he said the bigger problem is keeping the water out. there is a massive set of locks and pumps throughout the polders in holland that are controlled by computers to regulate water levels in the major canals. he has seen one of the controller substations. i should check out this infrastructure.


this is what you see when you leave amsterdam centraal train station. lots and lots of bikes.


i walked along the western docks. they are tearing this older building down. there are impressive new condos and apartments being built in the area. some had trendy design studios on the first floor.


ok, this is really why i was walking here, to see silodam. it is a housing project by MVRDV. it sits on pylons above the water. i don't think the tides here are drastic which is odd because of the latitude. anyways some apartments on the first two floors have gangways directly to the street while the upper units have a separate lobby. there is a public deck that you have to cross under the building to find, navigating between the thick columns. in one of the upper units there was a party and the sounds drifted into the road.



the building's visual interest comes from its diversity of cladding and window types. i was disappointed by how flat the building reads. it is just a standard set of apartments (with generously sized windows) with a bunch of different materials slapped on. so its block-ness is a bit deceiving. it would've been more interesting to me if there was more push/pull action going on so you got some overhang, some shadow, some recession, some sense of depth. the building does it twice on the upper floors to create some deck space but it isn't enough. it is odd because stacking as an organizational idea is something MVRDV uses a lot: for references, see their housing block in spain that just finished or the new bank that construction just started on or the fiero milano tower. but maybe this is an early project so they weren't all about stacking yet? maybe the budget was too tight to allow that type of excess? anyways.


ok. now we're talking. this is more typical. i started walking back towards the downtown area.


canals here are wider than anywhere else i've seen in a city. most were lined with houseboats. amsterdam, if you haven't seen a map, is arranged radially outward from its downtown node. canals run in a circular fashion like rings. some frenchman (sartre? camus?) compared the layout of amsterdam to the seven levels of hell. the red light district is on the east side. i wandered mostly in the western areas and downtown. the city is hugely devoted to leisure of all types, from movies to shopping to a vodka museum to coffeeshops (i.e. doobie dens) to galleries to whatever. everybody seemed pretty relaxed. i passed some french hippies smoking joints on the street. in a society where everything is allowed not much is abused.


there is a lot of shopping here. and trams.




after i got downtown i followed the main street south to leidseplein where lots of people where out. i bought a ticket for the concert and kept wandering around, mostly in the oud west and jordaan area. jordaan is the hipster part of amsterdam, with galleries and bars and good-looking restaurants. it gave off sort of a new york east village vibe but here things felt older.




i ate a cheap pizza in jordaan and walked back towards the melkweg, the club where i was going to hear a band. there was a concert in the leidesplein too so i stood and watched a dutch group go through the funk hits of the 70s. i met up with my friend sebastian and his friend helen and we went back towards the melkweg.


i was really excited to hear the dirty projectors live again. i saw them once in june in boston and it was good. seeing a concert at a rock club in holland is like seeing a concert at a rock club anywhere else, with the same etiquette, lights, etc. the opening band (tune yards) was interesting, with just a woman on ukelele and loops and a guy who sometimes laid down some basslines. they both wore face paint. the dirty projectors were good despite a persistent hum in the sound system throughout their set. they played pretty much the same set as i saw in boston three months ago but with some additions in the middle. tempos seemed a bit slow but they have been on the road for a while. it was still a good concert. "bitte orca" means a lot to me.

afterwards we walked to the train station. a woman hit sebastian on her bike and was very angry. we managed to miss the 12:45 train because were distracted and sitting on the wrong end of the platform (15a instead of 15b). what to do? hit the late night albert heijn for some grolsch and wait for the 1:45 nachtrein. good times. and when that train finally came, we sat in a cabin with two kids flying back to barcelona. they talked about how cheap the prostitutes were in amsterdam compared to spain. and the lack of discoteques. they asked us if the security at schiphol would find the weed in their checked luggage. they had it stored in their shampoo bottles. they seemed pretty paranoid, but it was probably the herb talking.