A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Tap Dancing

Like too many other people I’ve been the victim of credit card fraud. I’m aware of at least one of the warning signs now. A transaction for a dollar or two on your statement, innocuous enough and anyway, you can’t recall the circumstances. That’s usually the douchebags ensuring the validity of your number before the big hit. After that, you’re at the mercy of your provider.

When Ann and I returned home from Amsterdam (and environs) I reviewed my credit card history. I suffered heart palpitations when I saw the litany of miniscule charges. Breathe. The memory of the way we’d lived for the past weeks was still fresh. Over there, you don’t sing for your supper or a service, you tap. You tap for trams. You tap for public toilets. You tap like you’re a hybrid of “Mister Bojangles”, Leo Sayer and Sammy Davis Jr.

Ann and I spent paper euros just twice. An emergency situation each occasion. The DUTY PAID seal on a package of cigarettes sold within the European Union is also imprinted with the retail price. There’s no room for a merchant to chisel an extra euro or two. A credit card company’s tap fee erases his margin, maybe even costs him. He needs you to buy something else to make the transaction worth his while, a lighter, a Bob Marley tin for pot storage (I watched the recent estate authorized hagiography on the flight over and unlike Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocket Man, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief – the character on screen was an actor portraying Marley, nothing more), a set of windmill salt and pepper shakers. Something else, anything else. We understood; there’s nothing criminal about requiring and desiring a modest profit.

Medieval cities are not paragons of urban planning. Amsterdam was Diana Ross sans the Supremes, upside down, inside out. Our first few days there Ann and I walked round and round. Right was left, east was north. The landmarks kept rotating. One Sunday afternoon we found ourselves in the Red Light District. I’ve no idea how. The bars were open but the neon LIVE FUCKING sign switches hadn’t been flicked, too early, too soon – I’m familiar with this problem. No window shopping on the side streets, all the red curtains were drawn.

One morning while poring over a sideways city map over a second cup of coffee, I had a directional epiphany. Knowledge came knocking, tap, tap, tap. I suddenly understood the lay of the (low) land. Look at the touchless symbol on your credit card. It’s brilliant graphic design, a dot emitting increasingly larger electromagnetic waves in one direction. I visualized Amsterdam Centraal, the train station which backs onto the Het IJ, the waterfront, as the dot. The five curving canals, each one added for defensive purposes as the city grew larger, each fed from the channel behind the station on one side and the Amstel River on the other, are the pulses. The trouble with canals of course is that you can choose to cross that bridge when you get to it, or not. Either way, left and right will pose dilemmas.

He said, You must be joking, son. Where did you get those shoes?

The rich world was inadvertently half-prepared for the covid-19 lockdowns. A home office wasn’t just a branch of the British government. We were shopping online for consumer goods and groceries. We were streaming our entertainment through devices that provide astonishing audio and visual clarity. We rarely saw our neighbours anyway. These Amazon Prime times make us all forget that one of the most powerful retail marketing tools is a well-designed, enticing display window; they have the limited reach of billboards in that you have to be there, but you can’t tap your credit card against a giant sign.

Ann and I spent our time in Amsterdam just being. We tried to live as if we really did live there. We went to the grocery store daily; we bought what we’d need for the next twelve or sixteen hours. Our walk took us over two canals. On the gently arched bridge of one was a kiosk that sold bad coffee, “American” hot dogs and chocolate in all its forms. We also had to pass an Adidas store, and didn’t I clock a pair of blue suede shoes with crepe soles twice a day, back and forth.

Our main grocer was Albert Heijn, purveyor of Heineken, Amstel, milk, coffee, cheese, meats, fruit, bread and pastries. When I first saw the pale blue sign with sans serif white type, I was reminded of an Alberta Treasury Branch outlet (since rebranded in green as Servus Credit Union), same shape, same simplistic utilitarian design. Albert Heijn’s main competitor is JUMBO (pillowy, childish font on a harsh yellow field); Ann and I stumbled upon one on Keizersgracht, our canal straat, though we were never able to find it was again. Anyway, Ann had an Albert Heijn “bonus” card which shaved a few euros off every order.

Our first encounter with Albert Heijn was mildly disconcerting, discombobulating. We brought our basket of groceries to the sole human cashier. She asked us if we were paying cash. We said no. She pointed to the array of scanners. Ann and I hate self-checkouts. I hate those machines so much I’d rather stand in line to deal with a human being and I hate standing in line. Also, I’m not overly fond of other people. Another employee helped us through the process and issued Ann said bonus card. We quickly learned exiting the store was mission impossible without first scanning our receipt at the locked, automated turnstile. Had I already crumpled it up? Was it in the bottom of one of our bags? Just Like the train station. Just like the tram. Just like anything in Amsterdam: you've got to tap to get in or out. We adapted because we had to, so much so that I even went shopping at Albert Heijn all by myself once. This is the essence of living. And to and fro, I kept looking at those shoes. They were sure fine looking, man, something else. 

Our despicable species is the healthiest and wealthiest it’s ever been in all of our recorded history. Most days don’t feel like that whether you read legitimate news media or scan social media. Every petty hobby activist has a gripe. Partisanship. Sectarianism. But, you know, if we all adopted a Carl Perkins-Elvis blue suede shoes sensibility – lay off them, don’t step on mine and I won’t step on yours – our world would tilt into Jackie DeShannon territory, become an even better place for you and me. Let it be, let it rock.

Ann said, “Just buy them.” 

When it comes to spending money on stuff for myself, I’m thrifty to the point of cheap. You don’t need things you don’t need; it’s wrong to want; that’s the way I was raised: make do, save your money for a rainy day. But I’d already been extravagant. I’d found two Rolling Stones albums I already owned in a very cool record shop near Amsterdam Centraal. You must understand they were Japanese SACD editions, different, beyond enhanced, and, besides, only nine euros each. Almost free. Velvet Records is on the No. 2 tram route, our transit lifeline to a destination which seemed just a tad too far to walk over crooked cobbles in the wrong direction. You board the car through the rear WELKOM door tapping either a timed pre-paid ticket or your credit card. You exit up front, but will miss your stop if you don’t remember to tap out.  

Ann said, “Just buy them.”

It rains in Amsterdam. It rains a lot. There are more rainy days and Mondays behind me than there are ahead. I know this and it’s not an alternative fact. Well, didn’t I just break down and buy those blue suede Adidas Spezials, some sort of indoor court shoe that will never be worn for their intended purpose. Tried them on and then tapped my credit card while Ann held my hand. It ain’t no sin to be alive and stepping out in a pair of snazzy sneakers a hundred times the cost of an immaculate public toilet with a floor to ceiling door.                                                                                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is awake and alive. Watch and listen to some of the songs I co-wrote with The Muster Point Project or buy 5 KG, the complete EP. Of course, you can still purchase my latest book Of Course You Did in your preferred format from your preferred e-retailer.