The gays and Amsterdam

The city is compact yet not small and not too provincial. It's pretty. The scale is very nice. The scale of the gay men is great too - tall, reasonably attractive, lanky and horse hung.

Coffeeshops with weed and magic mushrooms. Plus, it really is a nice place outside of touristy hotspots. It's artsy and liberal and filled with delightful architecture and countless bridges and canals. Like Venice, but way cooler.

Also, tall guys with huge cocks live there, so there's that.

Dutch guys are hot and in my experience have big uncut cocks. In my 20s I had a lot of fun going to bars and meeting nice friendly guys.

Yet I went more recently (but pre pandemic) and it seemed like the bars and area I had gone to before were no longer there.

Still a beautiful place.

It is - or was - the San Francisco of Europe. A port city with a history of gay seamen, liberal politics, progressive. At least it was - like so many cities hypercapitalism has homogenized/neutered a lot of the uniqueness.

When I was coming out I the 80s and 90s, it was a revelation to me. Sex positive - even during AIDS - normalized gayness, pragmatic, very liberal by American, and even European, standards. The sex bars were the best in the world - before Berlin took over. There were tons of gay bars and you could hold hands on the street - which was rare in the 1980s. I think Amsterdam was a wonderful gay city - and a great city in general. Not sure there are any great gay cities anymore.

It was a dream city in the 60s, 70s and 80s prior to AIDS. However it has since dramatically changed – and not for the better – due to a number of familiar factors: Dutch white flight to the provinces, which began in the 70s; massive immigration and high immigrant birth-rates, and all the attendant factors of them holding different social values; the disintegration of gay ghettos; high real estate costs excluding bohemian communities. Just as London is no longer an English city, but feels a kind of post-colonial international one, Amsterdam feels the same. It's a sad shame. A classic case of you don't know what you've got till it's gone. I remember a business appoinent I had just outside of Amsterdam, and there was a vase of tulips on the guy's desk, all very dutch, but directly behind him outside the window, like a scene from Afghanistan, were was this group of women in full burquas. The contrast was so surreal I had trouble concentrating. The taxi driver I got on the way back told him he was fed up with the immigrants in his neighbourhood and was moving to the Canaries.

I, a gay, hate every single thing about Amsterdam.

The Rembrandt and Anne Frank Museums excepted.

[quote]excepted.

LOL

Oh, dear, R7!

Excepted: adjective "Not included in the category or group specified."

I thought the people were bitchy and rude. No desire to go back.

The Thermos Day Sauna and Thermos Night Sauna, both since long closed, were delightful. Both very distinctive. You could have a lovely dinner in the former, home cooked by a pretty Dutch boy. There's a fab Dutch 70s gay film (I forget the title) that captures the carefree hippie spirit of the city at that time under Queen Juliana – long golden hair, patched jeans, and smiles. What a vast difference to the Amsterdam of today!!!

[quote]I thought the people were bitchy and rude. No desire to go back.

They're sick of the low lives who turn up for the drugs and the prostitutes en masse.

R11 They should be happy for the tourism dollars. Otherwise nobody would visit that shithole.

Our heavenly Amsterdam period was 1992-2007, we shall always cherish the wonderful memories.

it ended when everything stopped being fun.

Now Berlin is the homosexual capital of. Europe.

The butt-ugly psychopath homosexual PM does not help either.