The Low Down On Amsterdam Escorts.

Around another corner from my house is Amsterdam’s red light district. Municipal leaders want to clean the neighborhood up. It can get rowdy there: soft (and hard) drugs easily bought; sex even more easily bought; and then the rowdiness and messiness that traveling mischievousness can provide. Change, the politicians say, is needed: fewer prostitution windows, less hash smoke, more boutiques. In addition, they assert, there is a graver, moral issue at hand, namely that there is a good deal of human trafficking going on in the district. The thought of such a thing happening in Amsterdam is powerful enough to silence even the staunchest critics of gentrification. Whenever the term is used, however, details remain vague. Listeners are left to fill in with their own imagination. That’s easy to do.

See the full article from “Huffington Post”

Pollsters meet in Amsterdam
By: Mahar Mangahas
Philippine Daily Inquirer
10:00 pm | Friday, September 30th, 2011
Last week’s annual conference of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), hosted by the University of Amsterdam, was memorable for us from Social Weather Stations.
Tourists will find that prostitution is legal; the formally-named Red Light District is well-marked on street signs.  Starter kits for growing cannabis are on sale in the flower market.  Museums told us that Rembrandt was a well-paid celebrity, whereas poverty-stricken Van Gogh was dead by suicide at 37.  I missed the tour by canal, alas, so that I could do last week’s column.
The welcome reception was held at the historic Oost-Indisch Huis (East India House) of the Dutch East India Company, established in 1602.  The company was located here until its bankruptcy in 1798, when it passed to the Dutch government.  I think that Multatuli (pseudonym), author of the 1860 best-seller “Max Havelaar” that inspired Jose Rizal, according to John Nery, and fueled the movement that eventually ended Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia, must have been here, since he had been an employee of the colonial service.

See the full article from “Inquirer.net”

Supermodel Lara Stone repped hard for her home country of The Netherlands in a recent T Magazine interview, demonstrating her comprehensive Dutch-ness throughout. When discussing the notorious cultural capital of Amsterdam, for instance, she fully endorsed the two vices the city is best known for: marijuana and legalized prostitution.
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This one, she probably could have phrased better. I agree with her that it’s important to have the sex industry be legal and regulated, but it’s not like the prostitutes in Amsterdam have zero problems to deal with. And I realize that the “they get more benefits than I do!” part is supposed to be a joke, but a fabulously wealthy supermodel complaining about the benefits doled out to prostitutes (many of whom are from poor countries) is kind of a bad look. So I guess this statement is half-decent?

See the full article from “TheGloss”

Lara Stone has admitted to taking cannabis while growing up in the Netherlands (Picture: Getty)
Labelled as one of the world’s top models, Stone confesses that while she was growing up in the Dutch town of Mierlo she would smoke a lot of pot.    
‘That’s why I can’t remember so much. But really it’s just a plant,’ said the model.
In the Netherlands – Stone’s home country – cannabis is legal, and licensed cannabis coffee shops like those in Amsterdam are a popular tourist attraction.
While talking in the Sun about her journey from the Netherlands to becoming one of the biggest paid models in the world, Stone also joked about Amsterdam prostitutes saying they have great social care.
‘They get more bloody benefits than I do. The women are their own bosses.

See the full article from “Metro”

Amsterdam art exhibit focuses on the Antwerp school
The Hermitage Amsterdam starts an important exhibition tomorrow focusing on the Antwerp school of Flemish art.
Rubens, Van Dyck & Jordaens: Flemish paintings from the Hermitage runs until 16 March 2012 and features almost a hundred paintings and drawings from some of the great names in Flemish art. Peter Paul Rubens is especially well covered, including his famous work Venus and Adonis, painted around 1614 and shown above. Rubens was hugely influential, teaching Anthony van Dyck and inspiring Jacob Jordaens. Both of these masters have several works in the exhibition, as do many lesser-known names.
Hermitage Amsterdam is a branch of the St. Petersburg Hermitage and the works all come from there. Since its opening two years ago, it has been one of the major art destinations in Amsterdam.
While Amsterdam attracts a lot of tourists for its legal pot and prostitution, it’s so much more than Sin City. Amsterdam one of the art capitals of the world and a good base for many daytrips to places like Delft and several Dutch castles. I will be exploring Amsterdam and hopefully Antwerp next month in a miniseries right here on Gadling.

See the full article from “Gadling”

Amsterdam
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First adapted as hotel accommodations in the 1950s, the addresses eventually accumulated a collection of Dutch art and curios. Many of these pieces still decorate the newly renovated space, which reopened last spring. The owners, Peter and Jessica Frankopan, cooperated with the Amsterdam-based Concrete Architectural Associates on the interiors, and ensured that original structural features such as timber beams and ornate ceilings were preserved. Velvet and silk furnishings evoke the Golden Age. The insides of the large hemispherical lamps hanging in the hotel’s great room mimic molded plaster, while the cracked wood of upholstered chairs suggests a timeworn quality that the new leather contradicts. By emphasizing the connection between art and culture, Canal House plays with the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga’s notion that an image-based exchange between eras serves to illuminate history.
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For Canal House’s interiors, which are at once austere and modern, this strategy is crucial. The polished decor recollects 400 years of Dutch art and history. Purples echo the bruised clouds of Van Ruisdae …

See the full article from “Metropolis Magazine”

If one comes away with any certainty from the New York exhibition Frans Hals at the Metropolitan Museum (until 10 October) it is that the Golden Age Dutch master (1582/3-1666) keenly understood and sympathised with his fellow human beings. Whether Hals (beloved of Courbet, Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Whistler and Sargent) was painting drunks and prostitutes in tavern scenes, humble fisher folk, or burghers and intellectuals and their wives, he unerringly captured the essence of his sitters. There is little sentimentalisation or disparagement in his work.
Painting from nature, he told the truth as he saw it. If a subject has a trace of pride, fecklessness, or overweening gravitas, Hals allows it, but his generosity invariably shines through. Above all, he is fair.
Hals was not an anthropologist or much of a social commentator, but there is extraordinary psychological acuity in the work – he is, perhaps, the most insightful of all portraitists, more so than his revered countryman Van Dyck. His shrewdness is commensurate with th …

See the full article from “The Arts Desk”

THE HAGUE-(AFP) – A Dutch court on Tuesday sentenced a Nigerian-born man accused of leading an international prostitution ring which used voodoo to threaten victims to seven years in jail.
Three accomplices were also sentenced to between six months and four years by the court in the northeastern city of Zwolle for their part in luring at least 14 young Nigerian girls to the Netherlands and forcing them into the sex trade.
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Once in the Netherlands the girls, one as young as 17, were forced to become prostitutes and even travelled to other countries including Italy and Norway, where they were forced to “perform sexual acts with or before a third party in return for money.”
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At least 12 other young girls were also lured to the Netherlands and forced to become prostitutes, the court documents said.

See the full article from “Vanguard”

Prostitution Information Centre shines a red light on Amsterdam’s famous district
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Enter the Prostitution Information Centre, a resource for everything and anything to do with Amsterdam’s infamous neighbourhood. By giving advice and referrals, the PIC eschews the moral high ground for a sort of middle ground. It provides information to all, from the tourist seeking a recommendation for the best brothel to the anti-prostitution activist studying the regulation and repercussions of sex work in the Netherlands.
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My tour of de Wallen, Amsterdam’s largest red-light district (there are three), begins inside the PIC, a boudoir of a boutique that doubles as a small library. Over the course of an hour, we walk de Wallen, cross a network of canals, and stray in and out of Zeedijk, previously a drug dealer–dominated district that’s now reincarnated as Chinatown, home to one of Europe’s largest Buddhist temples.

See the full article from “Straight.com”

Dan Choi Reports on His Participation in the First Sanctioned Military Contingent in Amsterdam Gay Pride Canal Parade
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My presence at the festivities was poignant to many in The Netherlands who followed the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell debate closely this past year. One activist American general in particular drew the ire and ridicule of many when he contended last year before the US Senate that openly gay Dutch soldiers caused the massacre at Srebrenica (Kosovo). I am happy that our presence could serve as some repudiation of some American individuals who happily stir international uproar to satisfy their own selfish political motives. His bogus testimony and our first White House arrests were highlighted in the same news story along with the legacy of Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich on Dutch national TV. 
In my off time, I spoke at a meeting of the “Democrats Abroad” and met the Ambassador and some expatriates. Not surprisingly, many of these American-Dutch are gay and eagerly await immigration equality legislatio …

See the full article from “Towleroad”