Monthly Archives: August 2005

Sail 2005

Posted on by

Fireworks over the IJ - Sail 2005
Today was the first full day of Sail, an event which happens every 5 years in Amsterdam. A large number of tall ships, windjammers, clippers, etc. come to Amsterdam for a huge nautical event. And everyone that has a boat comes out to see the big ships. So you can imagine it’s very busy on the IJ. Every night, there’s a big firworks display over the IJ. Tonights display was very impressive. The weather (which has been horrible for the last two weeks) was real nice, and we stayed out till 11 pm. There’s another three days, and then Sail 2005 is over – and we’ll be off to Crete for a couple weeks of vacation. But first some more boat tours.

“Straight” Ahead

Posted on by
Reply

Straight Ahead was the motto for this year’s Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade. And so we did. The weather wasn’t as nearly as bad as the weather forecasters led us to believe it would be, so all in all it was a fine day. It started sunny, but by 10 am the rain was pouring down. Then 15 minutes later, it was dry again. So we could install the music installation, and the red carpet on the catwalk, and the giant syringe on the AYOR.

This year the theme for our boat was ‘old misses’, or ‘faded beauty queens’. We each had titles, most of which are puns on dutch words, so don’t translate very well, but there were a few english titles: Miss Take, Miss Behave and Miss Demeanor.

At the very last minute we decided to make the boat an homage to Connie Breukhoven, who – 25 years ago – used to be the singer Vanessa. Vanessa gave a come-back concert during Pride Weekend, so we thought it fitting to name the boat: Connie’s Botox Salon. She now makes her living running a beauty clinic where rich bitches get their lifts, nips & tucks.

Because boat nr. 1 never turned up, we – with boat number 2 – were at the head of the parade. We were right behind a very late addition to the parade, a boat nr. 0, an initiative of the organising committee. It was a very simple boat, completely covered with a white shroud, and a huge picture of the two boys that were recently executed in Iran for being gay. It was a chilling picture, and a very sobering sight. Literally, a tough boat to follow.

We tried to keep a certain distance between that boat and our boat, but that wasn’t always easy. Some people had trouble with readjusting to 15 bears in tight swimsuits and sashes. But most of the crowd seemed to like us. We had a couple of songs as our them music: Julie Andrews singing ‘I Feel Pretty’ from West Side Story; Shirley Bassey singing ‘Big Spender’; the ‘Stripper’ music used in the movie ‘the Full Monty’ and ‘Que Sera, Sera’ by Doris Day. The people along the canals loved it, and it got us a round of applause every time.

No prizes for us of course, as we are not a member of the GBA (organising committee). The prize for best boat went to the April-Exit-Soho boat, who had a huge blow-up dummy of a woman. I think I’ve seen that before on the Roxy-boat about 6 years ago, only that time it was a man.

All in all it was a fun weekend again.