Amsterdam Pride

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Mark and Tim are standing in the park. Mark is staring at the fountain..

Mark: "So, you wanna..."

Tim: "Wanna what?"

Mark: (keeps staring)

Tim: (turns and looks) "Go pee?"

Mark: (keeps staring)

Tim: "Oh! Sure. My place?"
 
~BTW, were was this laundromat with no gas?

I'm sorry but I don't recall in what part of Amsterdam it was located.

I want to say my hotel was near Central Station, but I honestly don't recall clearly.
 
I was just curious because it would be very uncommon still having a heating installation on oil in the 1990's. Most oil burning heaters were phased out after the introduction of natural gas in 1967. It is a very long time ago that I saw a lorry with oil tank in the city centre.
 
Of all the big cities in Europe,

Amsterdam ranks way up there on my 'places I'd like to live'.
The truly fascinating thing about the Netherlands is that nearly all the people are personally rather conservative and not into kinky sex, drugs, etc. But they respect the rights of others to live their lives as they wish.
It says quite a bit about just what jerks the Puritans were that the good residents of Amsterdam couldn't cope with them.
Quite a bit.
There are just some places in this world where the geography and the people come together to make it work; San Francisco, Amsterdam and Berlin are three I know.
 
If there was gas, it was probably in the form of a gas burner head replacing the oil-burning head in the boiler; not gas used directly in the dryers.

Sorry I don't have any better information!
 
Before the introduction of natural gas it was uncommon to use gas for heating. Being produced from coal it was an expensive fuel. My parents used coal and our neighbours used oil. However, with the introduction of natural gas the opposite was true. Within a few years most households used gas for heating. My parents used gas right from the start of natural gas supply. I remember the new stove already installed before the gas supply switchover. It couldn't be used with manufactured gas so we had to wait a while. One day in 1967, I don't remember the exact date, I came home from swimming and the stove was burning. Oh, what excitement! Our neighbours even had a central heating system installed as the price of gas dropped with increasing consumption. No energy conservation worries in those days!
 
Getting in the mood...

Some Friday night street parties. Picture quality below standard but I forgot to bring my tripod with me :-)

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Saturday Parade

The Canal Parade on Saturday afternoon is the best known and most important event of the Amsterdam Pride week. This year it was bigger and more crowded than ever before. I made some movies during the parade so I have only pictures from before the start and about one hour after the end. This is ca. 1 hour before the first boat appeared. Fortunately there was no rain during the parade, but it was not as sunny as last year.

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This is after the parade. I was amazed that there were still so many people around one hour after the parade had finished. As said before I made a some video recordings. I cannot tell yet if that material is usable. If so, I will make a compilation of the parade boats.

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Theo

Wonderful pictures. I saw an item about the Canal Parade on the news. This year is very special because several politicians were participating in this including the minister responsible for emancipation and the mayor of Amsterdam. It sends out the message that they take equal rights very serious.
 
Louis, I heard on the radio news that there were more than 500,000 spectators, 100,000 more than last year. No wonder it was so crowded, I could hardly see the boats from my usual viewpoints. I decided to look for a better location near the end of the parade and probably that is why I missed the politicians. I think that they left the parade at the city hall.

See the video.

 
Louis, please don't complicate things. I already have enough difficulties with left and right as it is ;-) So Mr Cohen must be the man in the beige suit then. He's too far away for me for a positive identification. He wasn't there after the boat had passed the City Hall.

PS
Did you notice anything of yesterdays tornado in Groningen?
 
At last!

Well, it took me some time, but the first part of the video of the Canal Parade is online. I have used up most of my allowance of 500 MB upload for this week so the next part will be online next week and so on. I won't add further messages about this here as I don't want to unnecessarily extend the life of this thread.

For best viewing results: download the video from Vimeo (link in lower right corner of window) and watch full screen.

For your information: the picture is a still frame from the recordings that I made. It is not in this sequence. That may save you the time of watching an 11 minute video :-)



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Thanks. Those high-def videos are gorgeous! I'm so used to YouTube's blockiness, yours were a total joy to watch.
 
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