Smoking ban in Amsterdamned...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- This city's famed marijuana bars have weathered many challenges over the years and are still smoking.


A man uses a vaporiser at an Amsterdam coffe shop.

But now they face an unwelcome blast of fresh air: On July 1, the Netherlands will be one of the last European countries to ban smoking in bars and restaurants in compliance with EU law.

The Health Ministry says the ban will apply to cafes that sell marijuana, known as coffee shops. But this being Holland, which for centuries has experimented with social liberalism, there's a loophole: The ban covers tobacco but not marijuana, which is technically illegal anyway.

But that still leaves coffee shops and their customers in a bind. Dutch and other European marijuana users traditionally smoke pot in fat, cone-shaped joints mixed with tobacco.

"It's the world upside down: In other countries they look for the marijuana in the cigarette. Here they look for the cigarette in the marijuana," said Jason den Enting, manager of coffee shop Dampkring.

Shops are scrambling to adapt. One alternative is "vaporizer" machines, which incinerate weed smokelessly. Another is to replace tobacco with herbs like coltsfoot, a common plant that looks like a dandelion and that smokers describe as tasting a bit like oregano.

But most shops are just planning to increase their sales of hash brownies and pure weed -- and are hoping the law isn't enforced.

Michael Veling, owner of the 4-20 Cafe and a board member of the Cannabis Retailers' Union, said he expected a small decline in sales as smokers are forced to separate their nicotine addiction from their marijuana habit.

But he expects the long-term effects to be minimal. "It's absurd to say that coffee shops will go bankrupt in the second week of July. Nonsense," he said.

Veling is instructing his staff to send tobacco smokers outside, but he doesn't expect all coffee shops to do the same. He said some owners will ignore the ban -- and will probably get away with it, at least for a while.

But "if obeying the smoking ban becomes a condition of renewing your business license, just watch how fast it will happen," he said. "That's the way things work."

Chris Krikken, spokesman for the Food and Wares Authority, charged with enforcing the ban, said his agency won't be targeting coffee shops in particular.

"For the first month we'll just be gathering information about compliance in a wide range of hospitality businesses. Depending on what we find, we may focus more squarely on a sector that's lagging," he said.

But he said individual businesses caught allowing customers to smoke will be warned and definitely checked again. "Repeat offenders will face escalating fines," he said.

Marijuana possession is illegal in the Netherlands, but smokers are not prosecuted for holding up to 5 grams. Around 750 cafes -- half of them in Amsterdam -- are licensed to have up to 500 grams in stock at any one time.

The Dutch "tolerance" policy recognizes that some people will smoke pot regardless of laws, so it might as well happen in an orderly way. Critics complain this encourages substance abuse.

But cannabis abuse in Holland ranks somewhere in the middle compared to other nations and is lower than in the U.S., France and England, according to statistics compiled by the United Nations' Office on Drugs and Crime.

At the same time, the levels of THC -- the main active chemical in marijuana -- have soared in the past decade and are now at 16 percent in Dutch weed.

The U.S. government sounded the alarm earlier this month because THC in American marijuana has doubled to 9.6 percent since 1983, and it warned of recent scientific findings linking the drug to mental problems.

The Dutch government, currently led by a conservative coalition with a religious bent, is slowly squeezing back the number of coffee shops by not renewing licenses when shops close.

Growers are arrested, leaving coffee shop owners struggling to obtain their main product.

"The rules are being set to pester us out of business one by one, slowly but surely," said Richard van Velthoven, manager at The Greenhouse, who said he feared being shut down for tobacco violations.

"I've taken the cigarette machines out, I'm putting Coltsfoot on the tables, I've bought extra vaporizers, the staff is watching out -- what more can I do?" he said.

German tourist Lars Schmit said lamented the possible end of an era.

Without coffee shops, he said, "a little bit of Amsterdam will die."

Food photography 101

There is a specialized type of photography known as "food photography" - these people are masters of making food look even more delicious than it is....a good (or scary, rather) place to look is HERE, where a site took the advertising photographs of various German foods and then photographed what the *actual* food looked like - some of these comparisons are really frightening!!!

In Holland, they don't even seem to bother making the food look appetizing to begin with, as can be evidenced by these pictures I came across in the supermarket ads -

Becoming what we despise...

Do we become what we despise?? I am beginning to think so. The other day after my martial arts class, I rode my bike over to the amazing French bakery, Le Fournil, that opened on Olympiaplein. First I stopped at the Dutch bakery on the corner as they have amazing walnut bread, and then I made my way a few shops down to Fournil (how fortunate 2 of the best baker's in Amsterdam are so close to each other!) Anyhow, I was a bit tired and spacey and at Le Fournil, the girl would ask me questions and I kept having to ask her to repeat herself. I'm not THAT deaf yet, but after 3 times, I suddenly realised my ipod was still playing and my headphones were still in my ears cranking My Bloody Valentine! Helpppppp!!! I've become one of them!!!! Soon I'll be SMSing on my bicycle and talking loudly on my mobile on the tram. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Bill O'Reilly's meltdown...

Old news to some, but pretty amusing footage of Bill O'Reilly freaking out long ago, further evidence of his disgustingly angry, abusive and narcissistic character=





And a pretty funny pisstake of what the producer might have been saying=





And finally, Stephen Colbert's comments=

Gas...

Gas prices from most expensive to least - hmmmm, look who's at top of the list, goddamit...maybe I should drive to Luxembourg to fill my tank :-D


Nation City Price in USD Regular/Gallon

Netherlands Amsterdam $6.48
Norway Oslo $6.27
Italy Milan $5.96
Denmark Copenhagen $5.93
Belgium Brussels $5.91
Sweden Stockholm $5.80
United Kingdom London $5.79
Germany Frankfurt $5.57
France Paris $5.54
Portugal Lisbon $5.35
Hungary Budapest $4.94
Luxembourg $4.82
Croatia Zagreb $4.81
Ireland Dublin $4.78
Switzerland Geneva $4.74
Spain Madrid $4.55
Japan Tokyo $4.24
Czech Republic Prague $4.19
Romania Bucharest $4.09
Andorra $4.08
Estonia Tallinn $3.62
Bulgaria Sofia $3.52
Brazil Brasilia $3.12
Cuba Havana $3.03
Taiwan Taipei $2.84
Lebanon Beirut $2.63
South Africa Johannesburg $2.62
Nicaragua Managua $2.61
Panama Panama City $2.19
Russia Moscow $2.10
Puerto Rico San Juan $1.74
Saudi Arabia Riyadh $0.91
Kuwait Kuwait City $0.78
Egypt Cairo $0.65
Nigeria Lagos $0.38
Venezuela Caracas $0.12

Home sweet home on the Daily Show!

Home sweet home....

I'm not a great blogger - while some are out there digitally clicking fotos, uploading them immediately with their webphones to their blogs within moments because we live in superfast ADHD-times, here I am uploading some pix I took 3 months ago but couldn't be bothered downloading from my camera until now. I am really beginning to feel the generation gap close in - I don't care that a faster laptop has been released - I don't care that my mobile phone has internet capability (in fact, after 8 months, I only used it once) - I guess I'm truly on my way to becoming a grumpy old man :-) Anyhow, here are some pix of my old hometown.

Ah, the good ole days of the ratrace downtown. Actually, it's changed quite a bit - barely saw any homeless people - it's not that there are less - they just seem to have found a way to sweep them away somewhere else I guess




A view of San Francisco from Emeryville, which used to be a shithole, but now has turned into a bit of a yuppietown



Sutro Baths by the Cliff House, a favourite restaurant with a view of the Pacific Ocean. To think, I used to live right near here - you never appreciate what you have until its gone...


The Cliff House restaurant - best view from a restaurant in San Francisco! Very expensive but luckily the dollar is very weak at the moment so we went there twice ;-)




I think this place may have been shut down which isn't surprising given its name...


Obligatory tourist cable car photo


The Video Cafe on the corner of my old apartment - we very undiplomatically used to call it "We Hate Roundeye Video" because they were always incredibly rude to us, but it didn't matter because they were a 24-hour Food/Video Rental place 1 block from home! Ah, those 3am milkshakes!!


We decided to have lunch at a place called Moe's in North Beach, but never in my wildest dreams would I imagine the name was inspired by The Three Stooges!! Great burgers and Stooges memorabilia on the walls- the only bummer was no Stooges on the TV - I considered asking, but thought the guys watching "the game" would probably beat me to a pulp