Image: Another drunk bloke with a flabby ass parades his not-fit-for-television wares in Amsterdam

Here I sit in a jet-lag-drunk haze, utterly confused, conflicted and betwixt cities…back in my beloved Laurel Canyon after a week or so in my second home of Amsterdam. I should be more precise, as one friend of mine and I had discussed, and just tell everyone I vacationed not in The Netherlands, but in the Jordaan, for I barely left the posh and charming central canal ring quarter. Such is my tendency when I fall in love…with a specifically charmed spot. 

I am after all what they might call a “grachtengordel [central canal ring] girl.” One Dutch friend has dubbed me “Shani Jordan,” after the famous Jordaan crooner Johnny Jordaan who even has a plein (or square) named after him (kind of like Johnny Grant Way in Hollywood for all you xenophobics and provincially inclined–Johnnys are popular guys, what can I say?).

Anyway, the above image, Exhibit A (or exhibit A-S-S is more appropriate) displays a moment of my trip that perfectly captured the ethos of the typical Amsterdam tourist. Amsterdam it would seem is everyone’s own private Tijuana, there to be pillaged and plundered, and offended. Yet the Dutch are in my opinion, far more subdued than their city implies. The one exception being Henry Pronker, a guy from Rotterdam who for over a decade has skated through the streets of Amsterdam year-round–tan as a tomater–in nothing but a g-string leotard. And, a hard-hitting interview with him by yours truly once revealed that when people make fun of him he gets depressed.

Image: My Head in the Clouds; I popped my head out of the ’sun roof’ on a canal boat tour in A’dam

Anyway, my trip back out to the Land of Nether has felt like some kind of completion process. For six years since I moved back to L.A. I have avoided returning because I hate the sad feeling of visiting a place in which I once lived, as a tourist (it took me six years exactly as well to visit New York after my departure). But this was a mistake because in so doing, I shut myself off in an L.A. vacuum and my psyche has suffered the consquences of a shallow, boob and butt obsessed, uncultured culture ever since. Clearly, I’ve been “sun damaged” by L.A. on a myriad of issues: sex, love, offspring, and work ethics versus quality of life.

One exception to my praise of Holland, however would be the weird breast feeding fetish that some locals seem to indulge in. My friend Malini was attempting to cover up while feeding her baby in a restaurant in town when the two women working there sprinted over the minute she put the infant’s mouth to her nipple. “Nothing to see,” one lamented. “She’s shy,” said the other. I know breastfeeding is healthy, normal and human but tripping over your own feet to catch a glimpse of it is, in my puritanical opinion, a bit much.

Other than that little glitch I relate very well to Euro culture. It’s weird because even though I grew up in L.A. surrounded by 80s sun, surf and punk, I was born in London, grew up with a Portuguese nanny, went to a French school and then lived and studied in Amsterdam for four years, so my cultural allegiances are mixed. Note: I will be exploring some of my observations from this trip on love and sex and these two divergent cultures when I read a piece I wrote at the first L.A. “In The Flesh” reading series in May. The New York “In the Flesh” series has included readers like porn star Nina Hartley and been written up in the New York Times and New York magazine. For this one, I’ll be in good company with writers like event organizer and erotic book author Carly Milne and William Belli (a.k.a. Matt’s transsexual friend on the FX show Nip/Tuck).

Back on topic, I’m in dire need of integration. I feel compelled to create a European-inspired world for myself in L.A. separate from the head-shots-of-horror show I experience on a regular basis…a world where I can feel free to be human and not have to apologize for forgetting to PhotoShop myself. And I’m manifesting working at least three months out of the year in A’dam.

As you might imagine, the trip was pretty much as close to perfect as one could intend. I reconnected with old friends I hadn’t seen between six and nine years and in all cases the ties were just as strong if not stronger and the conversations just as a profound and inspiring. Not in that “L.A. Deep” way of “unloading” on people because your shrink was unavailable, but real human connecting. 

I stayed in a fabulously ideal boutique hotel/workspace/canal house called the Miauw Suites, launched by a cool fashion designer named Analik who used to have her store there in the Negen Straatjes (a charming little shopping enclave of the Jordaan). Her boyfriend was one of the creatives behind Baby magazine.

Miauw is a concept hotel that features MACs and DSL connection in every room and/or suite or apartment. The old canal house has essentially been revamped to look sleek and contemporary. There’s a capuccino machine and wooden conference table by the entrance (which I used often to entertain guests when we wanted to take a load off between long walks).

I stayed in The Black Room initially, then with a friend over the weekend and then back at the hotel in the White Room–so the phrase “Once you go black, you never go back,” didn’t really apply. But the latter was a gorgeous little romantic white washed room with detailed sculptural ceilings, a chandelier, huge bouquet of white flowers and gorgeous canal view of the Keizersgracht. I would highly recommend this spot except that I am praying that it does not get over-run by Internet rif-raf (no offense to you Internet rif-raf).

 

Images: The conference room/”lobby” of the Miauw Suites (above) and the upstairs foyer overlooking the Keizersgracht

Anyway, before I start divulging little trip details I shouldn’t divulge out of sheer exhaustion…it’s past my jetlag bed time of 7PM. I got up with the birds today, bleary-eyed and still dreaming…of a world with canals, avocado trees, bicycle transportation, beautiful AND soulful and emotionally well-adjusted men, payment in Euros, gorgeous weather, surf-friendly beaches and universal healthcare.

Posted by Shana Ting Lipton