I moved to the AVC in the morning and started working that afternoon. My job would be to cook in the kitchen and I was obligated to 30 hours per week. The first day I found out that it was going to be an easy, albeit boring experience. It was a nice kitchen with a great location but the management had no interest in making it into anything more, which was fine by me as I wasn’t looking to work too hard for only 75 guilders a week. A couple of days in they hire another guy from Miami named Frank, He was only 21 but was already a seasoned traveller who loved to party and smoke weed, needless to say, we hit it off straight away. We were joined a few days later by an Englishman named Kurt and he fit right in, soon the three of us were inseparable. We spent all of our free time together smoking weed all day and hitting the clubs all night. Frank turned me on to a new form of craziness called ‘strolling’ which was smoking, tripping and, rolling all at once ( rolling was taking ecstasy ). It was a wild ride and I loved it, I was never much into the electronic dance music scene but now I couldn’t get enough of it and found myself dancing the nights away. We found a coffeeshop/bar ( a place that sold both weed and alcohol ) down the street from the hostel called ‘The Hill Street Blues’. It was big, had a great happy hour and was the most comfortable place in town. They had leather chairs and couches to melt into that looked out on a canal and the Damrak past that. We would spend hours just chillin’ with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other. Most of the Europeans I met smoked their weed with tobacco, I thought it was madness and would refuse their joints every time. Of course they wanted no part of my pure smoke so I felt a bit ostracized when it came to passing it around the circle but since I had never smoked tobacco and had always hated the taste of it, I didn’t feel I was missing out on anything. Soon we were on a first name basis with the staff and had made friends with a nice group of locals who also loved to party. We started showing up to the dance club with groups of ten or more, all ready to dance the night away, it was truly a magical time.
It wasn’t long before I found a weekly pool tourney down the street at a place called Hunter’s, it was also a coffeeshop/bar so it was the first tourney I ever played in where I could openly smoke weed, it was awesome and I won the first 3 times I played. As the end of April approached, the conversation turned to an upcoming street party called Queen’s Day. The boss lady was so worried that she sat Frank and I down and made us promise we would show up for work on the day. I didn’t see what the fuss was about as it was a daytime thing and mostly a Dutch thing ( or so I thought ). Then the day arrives and I am blown away! I had been to street parties before that would close down one or two streets for the event but nothing could have prepared me for this. The whole city was a party zone, there were stages everywhere with bands and dj’s. the canals were full of boats of all sizes and all the people wore orange, it was quite the spectacle to behold. Kurt, Frank, and I set out in the morning thinking it would be no problem for Frank and I to be back at 3 for work. Soon we were swept up in the celebration and minutes turned to hours when Frank mentions that it is almost 4. We rushed to get back but it took us half an hour to get a few hundred yards through the throngs of people. When we returned we found that the place was a ghost town, the weather was perfect so nobody was inside much less buying the crappy food we had to offer.We took over and spent the next 4 1/2 hours sitting out back watching the party continue, we made 2 meals the entire time. It was a complete waste of time and I was not too happy that I had to leave the best street party I had ever seen, I promised myself that this would be the first and last Queen’s Day I was ever gonna work.
Soon after ( as I had expected from the start ) things at the hostel started to go downhill. First Kurt got himself kicked out for insulting the owner’s daughter, she was a big girl and happened to be in earshot when he was making jokes about that fact. Then about a week later the owner calls Frank into her office and tells him that she is going on holiday in Greece and wanted to make sure that he would be staying until she returned. He told her that he would and when she called me in shortly after, I thought it would be the same conversation. I couldn’t have been more wrong, she was firing me and told me that I had to pack my bags and leave that day. I was shocked, I certainly wasn’t the best employee but nobody was for the slave wage they gave. I returned to the room and started to pack up my things, when Frank sees this he asks what is going on? When I explain that they canned me and I had to leave, he says without hesitation ‘then I’m leaving too’, and proceeds to packing up his bags as well. I will never forget the look on the owner’s face turn from smug to confused to despair as she first sees me walk out and then followed by Frank with all his stuff, it was priceless and I knew right then that Frank would be a friend for the rest of our days.
Frank said he knew of another cheap hostel a few blocks away from the Red Light called Bob’s and we headed over there. The place was like a barracks with over 20 beds in the room but at least we had a place to stay. Finding a new job was my first priority and I started looking the following day. Frank was not interested in a new job as he had plenty of money and was planning to do some travelling through Europe. After a few days of unsuccessful searching, one of the group from Hill Street Blues mentions that a hostel called The Flying Pig hires people with no work papers for up to a month giving them a free bed and a little cash. It sounded like the job I had just left but I needed something so I headed over to check it out. The place was over next to the main park called Vondelpark. It was cool and hip with a great staff, they hired me straight away and I was sleeping there that night. With my new job and Kurt having found a real job ( since he was English, he could work legally ) and a room to rent, Frank decided it was time to explore Europe further and headed out on his journey. He said he would be back in a month or so and he would contact me when he returned. Now it was just the two amigos but we continued the party just the same. At the Hill street blues the folks were all buzzing about a concert that was coming to town called the Tibetan Freedom Festival. Not so much for the politics as for the music, the bill was loaded with great bands… Garbage, Blur, Tom Yourke, Alanis Morisette, and the headliner was Rage Against The Machine. After they blew me away in Washington, I was pumped to see Rage again. The day on the show arrived and it was absolutely beautiful, the sun was shining and we were ready to party! Kurt and I were in a group of ten from the Hill, we took the subway out to the convention center called the Rai. I had a big bag of mushrooms set for the day and was ready to rip it up when we get to the gate and see a big sing that says that Rage will not be playing and would be replaced by a band I had never heard of called The Urban Dance Squad. Who??? My heart sunk as the main reason I came was to see Rage but the show must go on so I put away my outrage and prepared to have some fun. It turned out to be a spectacular day, Blur and Garbage were incredible and the others weren’t too shabby either, even the replacement band was pretty good. I remember the joy I felt on the ride home thinking how lucky I was to be in Amsterdam and having such a blast.
A Continuing Story About Life On The Run