The End of the Year

And so, my dear readers, another year ends as 2011 passes into history and we get ready for 2012.
The end of the year is always a time for reflection. People consider what have been the highlights of the year, or their low points. They draw up lists of best books read, movies seen or music heard. And ofcourse, this is the time of year when people make new year's resolutions, vowing to go to the gym more, or the pub less, often. I've never been a fan of new year's resolution because I think that if you want to do something, you should just go ahead and do it rather than wait for the 1st of January to roll around.

And so it was, on a cold November evening 6 years ago, that I decided to give up smoking. I was sitting in a pub in Rotterdam, during the half time break of a particularly uninteresting FA cup match, rolled another cigarette and for some reason wondered how many cigarettes I had smoked in my life. As the game analysis on tv wasn't that interesting, I decided to work this question out on the back of a beermat and, after some 10 minutes of estimating, multiplying, adding and subtracting, I arrived at the truly staggering figure of 85.000.
Think of that number, 85.000. If you had walked half a mile for every cigarette smoked, you would have gone around the world and back. Twice. If you had given every cigarette its own seat, you would have sold out Wembley.
These figures made me decide on the spot that it was time to give up smoking and that it would be before the end of the year. As it was, I gave up smoking on December 13 2005 and I have not smoked a single cigarette since.

All these thoughts of smoking made me think of my old friend Dennis. Dennis is not his real name, but nowadays he holds a respectable job in the army and I wouldn't want to compromise his career with the story you're about to read. I've changed all the other names too to protect, well, if not the innocent, then at least all those involved.
I met Dennis some time in the mid nineties through a mutual friend. Growing up in Holland, nearly all my friends, and not least myself, were no strangers to the odd taste of mindbending substances every now and then, but in my entire life I have never met anyone who displayed such an unbridled enthusiasm towards intoxicants as Dennis. No matter where you went, if Dennis was there, you'd know that the night was going to be a long and fun filled event. The first time we were introduced, we couldn't shake hands because Dennis was carrying a tray holding a dozen bottles of beer on one hand and joint about the size of a rolled up newspaper in the other. This set the tone for our friendship because over the years I can not remember one single night that ended with both of us sober. Or even one of us, come to think of it. No matter what the occasion was, somewhere along the line a bottle of brandy, a bag of pot or a handful of pills would always appear. A score of interesting characters moved about in Dennis' world. Tommy was a rock&roll type character with a hand to mouth lifestyle who would often appear with him, looking as if he hadn't slept in 3 days which, in fact, was often the case. Dennis and Tommy both worked for a guy named Jay, a man who owned a myriad of small companies that had no obvious correlation to each other. At one point, he was said to be running a construction company, a shoe store, an import business for motor cycle spare parts and a groundwork company, which is where Dennis and Tommy were employed. The advantage of working there was that they got paid cash in hand and the boss never complained about people showing up for work hung over. On one particularly heavy night, Tommy had crashed at my place and his boss, unable to find him, called me to find out if I had seen him. When he came to pick him up, that was literally what he had to do- pick him up of the floor because he was still unconcious.

One of the side effects of Dennis' never-ending intoxication was that he seemingly never slept. In all those years, I've seen him asleep once and that was only for about 15 minutes on my couch at about 6 in the morning, after which he began pestering me with requests to have breakfast at a nearby sandwich shop which at that time of day was most certainly closed.

Because of the location of my house at the time, in the middle of the city centre, Dennis and his mates would often drop by for a drink and a smoke. I had no problems with this because they were, after all, my friends. The only thing was that visits would often come at somewhat inconvenient times, like 5am on Saturday morning or something like that when we would hear the doorbell and found Dennis standing there, clutching a bottle of vodka and a bag of pot the size of an airline pillow. In Holland, at the time, everyone who worked in construction, or for companies attached to the construction business in some way or other, would get a whole month off in the middle of summer. This was generally known as the Construction Holiday and as Dennis fell under this arrangement, he had a whole month ahead without the irritant of having to go to work the next morning. I was fast asleep one Wednesday night, when all of a sudden, at 3Am, the doorbell rang. when I went over to see who was at the door, it was Dennis and Tommy, both with beaming smiles on their faces. They proudly announced that they had stolen a case of beer from somewhere and now had decided to drink it in my living room. When I explained that I had to get up for work in about 4 hours, they looked at me with blank expressions, until I explained that I worked in an office and as such was not part of the construction holiday arrangements. In the end, we drank 2 beers each before I kicked them out on the street. I heard them walking down the street, loudly discussing some issue until they were nearly 2 blocks away.

And that was another fun thing about hanging out with Dennis; he never realised how inappropriate or reckless his escapades were. One on occasion that has gone down in local history, Dennis and his mates were sitting on a park bench, having a beer and a smoke, when a police car pulled up about 30 feet away. When the cops didn’t come out of the car after a minute, Dennis walked over to them, joint in hand, tapped the window and after the police man had slowly rolled down his window, uttered the immortal phrase

“ Hi. Can I have 2 Strawberry Cornettos please?”

With a straight face, Dennis turned around and walked back to the park bench where he received a round of high fives and a fresh beer from his friends who were all laughing their guts out.

On another particularly daring occasion, a group of us went to a summer open air music festival in Holland and, after drinking an doping around for about a day and a half, we decided to go watch a gig by Public Enemy, a millitant 1980s New York rap group with ties to the Black Panther movement. Just before the gig was about the start, Dennis turned up in full skinhead regalia. Shaved head, Ben Sherman shirt, Doc Martens boots with white laces, the works. When the band started playing, Dennis made his way to the front of the crowd, unfurled a giant Confederate Flag and started waving it at the band. After a couple of minutes, he was politely asked by security staff to go elsewhere for reasons of public safety, never mind his own. He walked back to the bar lauging uncontrollably, as if it was the funniest thing that had ever happened. (It WAS funny, seriously)

Perhaps the most nerve wrecking adventure I ever ended up in with Dennis and his mates was when he arrived at the bar I worked at, at 4AM. I was just finishing my shift and Dennis rang the doorbell and asked me if I felt like partying. I happily agreed, got my coat and walked outside with him. Dennis happily pointed at a big pick-up truck, that he had “borrowed from work”. (I didn’t even ask for details). A colleague of Dennis was driving and after about half a mile I found out that, even though I had had a dozen beers during my shift, I was the sober one in the car. Dennis and his colleague had been at it since the end of the previous afternoon and were in no mood to stop. We first had to pick up Tommy who, I found out, was house-sitting for a friend. I have no idea how anybody would end up at the decision that having Tommy watch your house while you were on holiday would sound like a great idea, but apparently someone had. We arrived at a surprisingly posh-looking appartment building and my surprise grew further when I found out that the place had elevators and carpeted hallways. At the end of one hallway, a door was wide open and loud (I mean LOUD) punk music was pumping in our direction. We found Tommy on the couch in his underpants, clutching a bottle of bourbon, in what was basically nice living room that had been somewhat altered by the fact that Tommy had lived there for 2 weeks. Basically, this meant that you could not see the floor for the empty bottles and pizza boxes that covered most of it. When pressed to go out partying, Tommy drained the last 2 inches of his bourbon and declared that before we set off, we had to visit Paul first.

Paul was another local character, a guy who made a living lying on his couch eating caramel cookies and selling amphetamines to his friends. Paul was a decent guy, but at times he could be a bit strange. On one occasion, we walked in to his living room and found him asleep under his pin ball machine. When asked for the reason why he wouldn’t sleep in his bed, Paul explained that it was safer here. Another time, we walked into his garden and found a large plastic bucket full of cutlery and plates standing under a crack in his drainpipe. When Dennis asked him why the entire contents of his kitchen cabinet were out there in the rain, Paul calmly explained that it was Sunday and he always did the dishes on Sunday. As you will appreciate, Paul was a bit of a character. We arrived at Paul’s house, had a brief chat and a beer and then, restocked with all that was needed to keep the party going, we set off for The Hague. Dennis had been informed of a squatters bar that played good music and, no doubt the real reason for the trip, sold beer at a Guilder a bottle. (For those of you who have never handled Dutch money before the Euro kicked in- a Guilder was roughly 45 Eurocents at the time of the switch). We drove towards our target at an alarming speed (I was now in a car with 3 guys who had not been sober for over 12 hours) and the only reason why it took us about an hour to get to the bar was that Dennis and his colleague could not agree on the final part of the directions which showed us around some interesting parts of a nocturnal The Hague. In the end they decided that the easiest way to reach the bar was by driving down a one way street, obviously in the wrong direction, for the last mile or so. The bar, and I say this with great understatement, was very bare. A home made bar was backed by a couple of ancient fridges and the cracks in the wall were mostly covered with posters for gigs by crust punk bands. The men’s toilet consisted of a plastic funnel that was connected to some drain pipe. The ladies toilet consisted of a bucket behind a plastic shower curtain. We had a couple of beers and were eventually thrown out because Tommy thought it a good idea to throw the only bar stool in the place onto a group of dreadlocked crusties and we had to beat a hasty retreat. But what a night.

And before I leave you with my thoughts for the new year, I’ll tell you about what was arguably Dennis’ greatest stand. A couple of our friends all had their birthdays around the same time, and had decided to hold one big birthday bash in a large squat in town. I agreed to meet Dennis and another friend at the nearby railway station, so we could go and shop for the night and after that we would make our way to the party. I found Dennis and his friend at the exit of the station in a cloud of purple smoke. We made our way to the local smart shop and decided to get some magic mushrooms for the night. While I had a chat with the owner, Dennis set about doing our shopping and when he came out of the shop , he proudly showed 4 large bags of Mexican mushrooms. (For your information, half a bag would have been enough to keep someone completely of their head for an entire day). When I asked him why he had bought 4 bags while there were only 3 of us, he looked at me quizically, and then started smiling. He walked back into the shop and returned with an additional 2 bags of mushrooms. I was now carrying enough Psychopsilocybin in my backpack to keep a small city happy fir several days. The best way to consume magic mushrooms is to make a pot of sweet flavoured tea, strawberry or forest fruits or something like that, and soak the mushrooms in the tea. You then drink the tea and when the pot of tea is finished, the mushrooms have soaked up the sweet tea and you can eat them and they won’t taste as horrible anymore. After 2 pots of tea, Dennis had had enough of it, because it took to long, so he started to eat the mushrooms straight out of the bag. In any case, the tea drinking ritual was slowing down his progress on the 24pack of beer that he had dropped off earlier in the week. As the night progressed, ofcourse everyone there got increasingly intoxicated and, about halfway through the night, I asked Dennis why he was wearing a woollen beanie hat, even though it was the middle of summer and actually quite warm. Dennis took off his hat to reveal that he had a bag with about 100 xtc tables under there and he thought it a good place to keep them. When I asked him why he would take 100 pills to a party, he simply explained that he’d rather be safe than sorry.

As you will have guessed by now, the party went all night, and then progressed into the next day. After a night fuelled by pretty much every drug known to mankind and an ocean of booze, I woke up on the floor of an empty room the next morning around 10. I had blurred vision, a nagging pain in the back of my head and my throat felt as if it had been made of sanding paper. When I managed to get myself on my feet, I propelled myself in the direction of the kitchen to get a glass of water. What I found in the kitchen exceeded all my expectations. Dennis was wide awake- in fact, hadn’t even slept yet, I found later- and entertaining an audience with tales of wild nights and insane boozy adventures. While he was doing this, he kept taking hits from a big plastic bong, filled with bright orange weed, and taking sips from a bottle of clear liquid without a label on it. It was then that it dawned on me that I was supposed to go to a heavy metal festival in the far North of Holland and that the bus would be leaving in about half an hour. The thought filled me with dread, but when I reminded Dennis of this, his face lit up at the thought of another 24 hours of partying ahead. On the bus I was given a beer, drank half of it and then fell into a deep comatose sleep for the remainder of the 4 hour journey. On the festival, me and some others struggled through the day, wandering around zombie-like. Not Dennis. He was marching up and down the festival grounds, eager to check out everything that was happening, wanting to see every band, talk to everybody and make as big a party out of the day as possible. On the way back from the festival, I was again very happy to go to sleep soon after we set off, and I did not wake up until we returned back home at 5AM. Dennis was still talking and drinking.

The last time I saw Dennis was at a music festival in my home town of Rotterdam, in the summer of 2005. I was doing some promotional work for the bar I was working in at the time when, walking out of one of the toilets, I heard a familiar voice saying ‘Hey, Len!!’ . I turned around to find Dennis waddling across the footpath, clutching 3 pints of lager. He put 2 of them down to shake my hand, and we exchanged general pleasantries about work, where we were living now and what had been happening in our lives. As it turned out, Dennis had enlisted in the army and had just come back from a mission in some ridiculously dangerous part of the world like Chad or Iraq or something like that. When I asked him what the best thing about being in the army was, he told me, without blinking an eye, that the dope they smoked in some warzones was the best he had ever had, anywhere, and that he was allowed to shoot at people. The downside, he continued, was that soldiers were only allowed 2 beers a day, so as to keep them sharp and attentive. When I asked him where his friends were, he didn’t seem to understand, until I nodded to the 2 full pints standing at his feet. He smiled and told me that they were all for him, because he wouldn’t want to get stuck without a drink. I guess he still upheld his old ‘better safe than sorry’ motto after all those years.

I sometimes wonder what has become of Dennis. I like to imagine him in some high rank uniform, with a chest full of medals for bravery, but then again, I can’t really see that, just as I can’t imagine myself in a three piece suit as a corporate executive, and I think that Dennis will be just as happy to be a regular soldier, smoking excellent dope and taking pot shots at the enemy.

So here is to Dennis, and ofcourse to all my other friends, in Holland, Ireland and across the world. You were great this year, I enjoyed your company and hope to keep things rolling in 2012.

Cheers,

Lennard

Change

Welcome back, my dear readers. Our topic for today is Change.

The reason for this topic is this: in just 2 months, on the 4^th of January 2012 to be precise, it will have been 5 years since I moved to Ireland.

People often ask me if I have noticed things change over those 5 years. Ofcourse I have. In 5 years time a lot of things change, no matter what. As I have been away from Holland for extended periods of time since I moved, I am not as much part of my friends’ daily routine as I used to be. This is normal and I did not really expect this to be different. It was a thing I knew when I decided to migrate and I was prepared to take this for granted, in exchange for the experience of living abroad and in a different culture. Fortunately, ofcourse, due to ever improving technology and things like Facebook, Skype and messengers, I still keep up to date with what most of my friends do and, thanks to my friends at Ryanair, I can still come over and hang out with them on a semi-regular basis.

Still, things have changed. Instead of 3 times per week, I come down to the local bar 3 times a year. I miss birthdays of friends that I would never have missed had I still lived in Holland. People buy and sell houses, and I’m not there for the house warming party. People get married and divorced, sometimes to my astonishment, because I never knew something was amiss (which is normal because if your friend from overseas is in town, the last thing you want to do is waste the entire afternoon detailing every problem in your marriage). People have children, which I am normally informed about, but a couple of months ago, I spoke a friend I hadn’t seen in nearly a year and when I asked him what was up with him these days, he nonchalantly mentioned inbetween sips of lager that his second child would be born within 2 weeks. Up to that point I wasn’t even aware that his wife was pregnant again.

In short, people keep going about their lives, doing things that people in their mid-30s do, with the difference that I’m not in the middle of it anymore. This does not mean that we’re not as close anymore, just that interaction has changed.

Whenever you move to a different country, it is inevitable that you encounter change. When I just moved to Ireland, I was happily amazed by certain things, like the fact that every other door leads into a pub that opens at 9 in the morning, that you can gamble at any time or in any place because there’s a bookie on every street corner and that complete strangers greet you or start a conversation while you are on your way to a supermarket the size of an airport terminal or waiting for the bus. In Holland, pubs don’t open until late in the afternoon during the week, gambling is frowned upon (there are no bookies in Holland, except for 1 lone Ladbrokes shop in Amsterdam that is there for the benefit of British tourists) and when you address a stranger in Holland, even if just to ask for directions, you are met with a frightened stare that hangs somewhere inbetween ‘leave me alone you creep or I’ll call the police’ and ‘I hope he just takes my wallet and camera and doesn’t rape me’. Dutch people, as you may know, are not generally the most trusting people when it comes to strangers.

Apart from the improvements that I gained from moving to Ireland, there were obviously going to be downsides to my relocation too. Public transport in Holland is brilliant. It is frequent, reliable, efficient and affordable. Dublin has a transport system that I would deem sufficient for a midsize market town, not for a metropolis with over a million people in it. There are scores of beggars on Dublin’s street and they are nowhere near as creative as the ones in Holland. Beggars in Holland generally try either the ‘I do something for my money’ approach and recite poetry, play songs to your request on a guitar with 3 strings or try to sell you their magazines, or go for the ‘hey at least I’m honest’ approach and hold up signs saying ‘Need money for beer’ or ‘Ran out of heroin- please help’. Beggars in Ireland are very unpleasant. They walk alongside you on the street and stick their filthy hands or paper cups in your face. If you politely reject their invitation to part with your money to finance their next 6pack of cider, they will shout obscenities at you and swear on someones grave that, the next time you do not comply with their request, they will kill you, or they will throw an empty plastic bottle or cigarette pack at you. It really is quite unpleasant. As you see, there are always ups and downs to every move, but in general I am quite happy that I have taken the step and moved abroad. All on my own to a big unfamiliar city.

My parents’ biggest concern when I walked out of their house as an inhabitant of Holland for the last time, on 3 January 2007 was that I was going abroad all alone. They had no doubts whatsoever that my job would go fine, that I would find a place to live and find my way around. What they were worried about was that I knew practically nobody in Ireland and had to start pretty much from scratch. Now, let me first point out that I did have a number of connections in Ireland, mainly through the music scene, so I had at least someone to call when I first got there. I knew a bunch of guys from an Irish band that I knew through the Dutch band that I used to be a roadie/free beer drinker with. So after doing all the normal stuff that you would do when you arrive in a new city for an extended period of time (buy a mobile phone, study the bus schedule, get new plugs for your electronic equipment) I decided to give one of them a call. We went for a beer and everybody back home expected that I would slide effortlessly into their group and spend my weekends hanging out with them. Well, things didn’t quite work out that way. Not because there was any bad blood or anything, I just decided to do something else. Rather than hanging out in their pub every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I decided to look further afield to see what else was going. I started to become a regular visitor at a pub called Frazers (Now Murray’s) where I met an array of football fans that I still hang out with now, and later the Woolshed entered the picture, where I also met loads of interesting people.

And this, my friends, brings me to the biggest change that I have seen happening to myself over the past 5 years: the people I spend my time with. Before I moved to Ireland, for over 15 years I spent 95% of my time hanging out with people whose lives revolved around heavy metal or punk music. Meeting people outside the traditional circuit of heavy metal bars and concert venues also meant meeting people who didn’t give a rats ass about punk or heavy metal, or even about music in general.

This took some getting used to from my part, I have to admit. All of a sudden, I had friends who wanted to go home and change before going out. I had not encountered something like this for 15 years when , back in high school, my friends would want to change into a fancy new shirt so they would have a better chance of picking up a girl (or so they thought). In my circle in Rotterdam, nobody ever got changed before going out because everybody was wearing black boots, black cargo pants and a black t-shirt with a band logo on it all the time anyway. The only person who went home to get changed before going out was the guy working at the city’s waste collection department because if he went to the pub straight from work nobody wanted to play darts with him or even accept a beer from him, on the account of him smelling like bin juice, rotting vegetables and discarded diapers.

Women wearing make-up that went beyond black eye-liner was also a novelty that I had not seen in over a decade, as were men in dress shirts. A couple of months ago, I found myself thinking ‘wow what a great song’ during a song that was played in the Woolshed and found that it was a song called Stereo Love by one Edward Maya and a girl called Vika Jigulina. Last month I again heard a song in the pub, thought ‘now that’s a nice song’ ,consulted my phone to see what the artists name was and, to my considerable surprise, found that it was Rihanna. I would not have thought this possible 5 years ago.

Ofcourse, I also had to alter my subjects of conversation somewhat as my new friends would stare at me quizzically if I brought up next week’s Misfits gig or the newest Cannibal Corpse release (one of my friends still refuses to believe that a band by that name exists).

I am in the fortunate position that my friends here in Dublin are nearly all as crazy about sports as I am, and over time you get to know each other and find that you have a lot more in common than you originally thought, so you don’t have to get stuck in talking about exciting new releases on Head not Found records or small-town life in rural Australia, for example. My new friends have made the transition to my new country a lot easier than I ever thought possible.

On occasion, when there’s not much happening on a Friday or Saturday night, I miss living with my friends in Holland, and think back about the times when we were sitting at the bar together every week. But things change, it’s the way life goes.

Billy Connelly once said ‘Every succesfull culture must be subject to constant change’

I must say that I find the change of scene and the view-beyond-metal refreshing and eye-opening and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this experience for the world.

So, with that thought, I leave you for today.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got some Bestial Warlust videos to watch on You Tube.

The Best Bars in the World Part II

So, here we go then, on a tour of the 5 best bars in the world.

Grab your weekend bag and don’t forget to pack your flip flops because we’re going to Australia first.

It’s a long flight with a stop-over in Hong Kong, so get comfortable. During your stop-over in Hong Kong, you may just want to stop by at Taiwan Beef Noodle(Upper level). Apart from selling reasonably priced noodles(for an airport location), this place holds the somewhat baffling distinction that I managed to buy a single can of beer here, and paid for it in 3 different currencies.

Done eating? Good, then hurry up, because we have another 10 hour flight ahead of us. But don’t worry, the nice girls from Cathay Pacific airlines will supply you with as much beer as you like.

And there we are, Melbourne, Victoria, in beautiful Australia. Drop off your bag in the hostel and we’re going straight to bar number 5 on the list:

5.

Section8, Melbourne, Australia

Some people say that if you’ve seen one China Town, you’ve seen them all. I disagree. While there are obvious similarities (Pagoda-style roofs, skinned ducks in shop windows, garbage bags on the sidewalk) I think each one has its own distinctive vibe, though I would be hard pressed to explain exactly what it is.

Either way, we make our way to Melbourne’s China Town to visit Section8, number 5 on the list of best bars.

Why is this bar on the list? Not because I am or was a regular. I only spent 10 days in Melbourne so becoming a regular was not the case. Was it for the great music? Hardly. There was some sort of background music that you would only notice once it was turned off, but nothing spectacular to speak of. No big screen sports coverage either, so what was it that makes this place so special? Well, if you look close, and you may have to look twice, you will see why this place is so unique.

It’s a biergarten without a pub.

Read that again.

Yes, you read it right the first time. This is a biergarten, but there is no pub.

What happened is this: on this spot, as legend has it, there used to be a Chinese restaurant. The building was old and it was decided to tear the building down. Rather than building a new structure, the area that was left open by the removal of the building was fenced off, seats were built by piling wooden pallets around the place in varying heights, a couple of old oil drums where put in place as makeshift tables and one cargo container was fitted with a toilet while another had a window cut out of the side to function as an impromptu bar, selling bottled beer, wine and a surprisingly large selection of cocktails.

Voila, there’s your bar. It was an ideal place to just sit in the sun and while an afternoon away, having a drink, reading a book or just watching the hustle and bustle of the world go by, knowing your only worry was getting off your ass to order your next beer. It was bliss. The people were easy going, lots of arty types and students, the beer was affordable and I just thought the whole idea was pure genius. The picture above shows yours truly in this extraordinary bar.

So, if you’re well rested from sitting in the sun at Section8, let’s get going, because we have another long flight ahead of us: we’re going to cross the Pacific Ocean. We have about 12 hours on the plane, so take the opportunity to get some sleep. Or watch a movie. Or get a beer, your choice.

If you want an exciting start to your visit to San Francisco, make sure you get a window seat and press your head against the window when landing: it looks like the plane is going to crash into the ocean. Ofcourse, it doesn’t, but because San Francisco International Airport is situated on a sort of peninsula-esque piece of land, with the runway sticking out into the water like a pier, you may be fooled into thinking that you are about to find a watery grave. You won’t, which means that you have arrived safely for a visit of bar number 4. We take the BART, an excellent subway system that spans the entire Bay Area and has a station in the airport, and for a mere 8 dollars we're dropped off right in the centre of San Francisco, at Market Street station. To avoid the army of homeless people that live in and around the station, we will move on to Geary Street straight away. When I first arrived in San Francisco, on my first day I was looking for a bar called the Edinburgh Castle. To my dismay, I found it closed, so I ventured out to see what else was going in the neighbourhood. After some 10 minutes of walking around, I walked by a small dark bar.

4.

Whiskey Thieves, San Francisco, USA.

I walked past Whiskey Thieves, heard noise inside, had a peek around the corner and decided to have a beer. It was dark, noisy and looked a bit worn. I loved it the second I walked in. I took a seat at the bar, ordered a pint of lager and had a read through my guide book. The guy behind the bar introduced himself as Steve and he looked like a younger version of metal legend Kerry King, shaved head, bushy beard and dressed in black. As I was thirsty, my pint was gone in 10 minutes and when I ordered another one, he asked me if I wanted to try the Weekly Bourbon Special. As you may have guessed from the name, this bar, though a proper dive (noisy music, noisy clientele, black walls, only 1 working toilet)has a very impressive collection of whiskeys and bourbons. In fact, the whole wall behind the long bar was full of shelves filled with whiskey and bourbon bottles. I was informed that the Bourbon Special consisted of the bourbon of the week and a can of PBR for the special price of $7. This sounded like a pretty sweet deal and, as I had drunk neither the bourbon nor PBR before, I accepted the deal and dug in. When I remarked that PBR actually tastes like water, this attracted attention from the regulars who started shouting their favorite bourbons at me, urging me to try a shot. This is what a bar is supposed to be like. I had been in less than 20 minutes and already the bartender and the regulars had taken me in to their midst and now wanted to know my favorite music, baseball team and beer. One of the regulars loudly dismissed the bourbon I had just tried and put a shot of his favorite in front of me. I drank it, chased it with another beer and... well, you can all guess how this is going to end.

Whiskey Thieves became my ‘local’ during my 9 day stay in San Francisco and, as it was conveniently located only 2 blocks from my hostel, I usually ended the night there with a ‘one for the road’ that always turned into a couple more. On my last night, they even gave me an official send off, not surprisingly with a goodbye gift consisting of more beer and more bourbon.

If I lived in San Francisco, this would be my base of operations. A big salute to Steve and Simone for making me feel so welcome from the word GO. Top marks for this outstanding bar.

You’re awake? Good. I hope you slept off all that bourbon and beer, because we have to be at the airport in an hour. Where are we going? It’s a surprise, but don’t worry, we’re staying in the USA.

....

Okay, you fell asleep the moment you hit your chair on the plane, but you have to wake up now, because we are about to start our descent into the most exciting city in the World:

New York City!

And no, we’re not going to Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty, we’re going straight to the Lower East Side. We’ll make a stop at Mc Sorley’s Old Ale House

but after that, we have to move straight down to East 1^st Street, because we are going to the Mother Superior of all dive bars:

3.

The Mars Bar, New York, USA

The Lower East Side and neighbouring Washington Square/NYU areas are full of bars, cheap eateries and other round-the-clock entertainment. The place that ranks as my Number 1 for Best Bar in America, however, is The Mars Bar. I seriously considered putting this place up for Best Bar Ever, but as I’ve only been there once, I decided that 3^rd place would be a good spot for this stolen jewel in the muddy crown of New York. It was my last full day in New York and there were 2 things on my agenda: the Brooklyn Brewery and the Mars Bar. As the brewery only does 1 tour per week, I knew I had to be there at a set time, so off I went to Brooklyn. I did the tour, sampled all the beers available in the brewery biergarten (7 if I remember well) and headed back to the Lower East Side, with 7 pints in my stomach, a pack of peanuts being the only other thing I had thrown down my throat over the course of the tour/tasting session.

As you can imagine, I approached the Mars Bar at around 2.30 in the afternoon not entirely sober.

The Mars Bar is everything you would imagine a dive bar to be, multiplied by 10. The whole place, inside and out, was covered in crude graffiti. A dozen rickety bar stools, not 2 of them the same, lined a battered bar, also covered in graffiti, while the regulars, in varying states on consciousness, were throwing down drinks, meanwhile discussing whatever came to mind. Beer was sold in bottles only, directly from the box while stronger sustenance came in shots of Jagermeister, tequila and some obscure brand of scotch. Empty beer boxes were thrown over the bar and stashed next to a jukebox with an excellent selection of music and a smashed window. The smell of the toilets was pungent up to 2 blocks away. Despite my 7 pints before breakfast, I was a shining example of sobriety compared to the rest of the people in the place. I decided to attack this situation by ordering a beer and a shot of Jagermeister. It seemed like the right thing to do. The regulars, acknowledging this gesture, recognised me as one of them and offered drinks, cigarettes and other common barfly tokens of appreciation. Within half an hour, I was in the middle of a motley bunch of Americans, exchanging drinking stories while buying each other beers and shots, and taking pictures. It was like I had been drinking there for years and I never wanted to leave. Ofcourse, you can’t spend the rest of your life in a bar in the Lower East Side of New York, so at one point I must have walked out. This I deducted from the fact that I woke up, somewhere halfway through the next morning, on the floor next to my hostelbed, with one shoe on my right foot and the other one on my pillow. Everything hurt. Though I have had my share of hangovers, I never knew that blinking your eyes could cause so much pain in the back of your head. It was one of the Great Sessions in my long career of drinking and somehow I am still in contact with a girl from New Jersey I met there. Bad Vibes through the grapevine have spread rumours that the Mars Bar has since closed down, due to the building being caught up in a redevelopment project, but I won’t believe it until I see it with my own eyes, next time I get to New York.

Inside the Mars Bar

Yeah, that hurts, doesn’t it? Drinking with the professionals in the city that never sleeps? Well, you’re lucky, you can sleep all the way across the Atlantic because we’re off to Holland next.

Welcome to Rotterdam, home of the number 2 bar in the world:

2.

Paddy Murphy’s, Rotterdam, Holland

Situated behind the World Trade Centre, Paddy Murphy’s has been filling them up since 1997. When I first got word of the opening, through my sister’s then boyfriend, I decided to check it out for myself and, well, I never really looked back. Paddy Murphy’s, despite the less than original name, is the best Irish pub in Europe.

The pub is divided in a front bar, where the regulars line the bar, reading the paper and keeping the staff engaged in neverending discussions, and the back bar, where it’s quite during the day and gets busier towards the night. There is live music 7 nights a week and the sports bar next door shows most sporting events of note, including all Celtic matches. I started going there just after they opened in 1997 and have been a regular until I moved to Ireland in 2007. But what makes an Irish pub stand out from all the hundreds of others spread across the continent?

Atmosphere.

Every idiot can put up signs saying ‘Killarney 1254 miles’ and pictures of Michael Collins in uniform. Everyone, nowadays, can convince Guinness to install a pump. But people can buy beer everywhere. There is one thing that you can’t buy from the Irish Pub Warehouse in Glasgow: Atmosphere.

A real Irish pub doesn’t need shamrocks and from the moment I walked in, I knew this was the real deal. Over the years, I became one of the most regular regulars, spending many days there, watching matches, meeting people and having a great time. My parents once even sent a holiday card there as they expected the chance of me picking it up there would be bigger than at home.

Walking out of the door on the last night I was in Holland, before moving to Ireland, was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do up to then. Moving to Ireland, though, has changed the situation. Where I was always one of the regulars and respected for that, I was never ‘one of the boys’ because I wasn't Irish or Scottish. Nowadays, whenever I go back to Holland and find time to go there for a beer, I AM one of the boys, living in Ireland, and I’m always welcomed back with open arms and a free drink on the house.

This is where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.

A worthy runner up in our competition, leaving over 2000 pubs behind them, just falling short of 1^st price. But only just.

Come on, get your stuff together, because we’re nearing the end of our journey. It’s not far now, because we’re going to the best bar in the world and for that we only need to take a short 1 ½ hour flight back to Dublin, where we started. It seems so long ago now, doesn’t it? We’ve been around the world and back, literally, and the best bar in the world is just down the street from my house.

It will come to no surprise to anybody that The Woolshed has grabbed the gold medal in this competition and is the best bar in the world.

1.

The Woolshed, Dublin, Ireland.

Congratulations to everyone, past and present, on the Woolshed staff, who made the past 4 years so much fun. I had been living in Dublin for a couple of months, scanning the field, looking for a pub to replace Paddy Murphy’s as my home away from home. I tried numerous places, some better than others, but none of them had that homely feel of Paddy Murphy’s, where you could just sit in a corner and read the paper, or shoot the breeze with the other regulars. That was until one Friday morning, when I opened the listings magazine that came with the Irish Independent newspaper and saw a review of an Aussie bar called The Woolshed. I was intrigued by the review and decided to have a look to see what all the buzz was about. I couldn’t find it at first, having walked to the wrong side of Parnell Street, but a week later, when my sister and brother in law were over, I managed to locate it. (Result!) We watched Manchester United beat Chelsea in a Sunday afternoon penalty shoot out to win the Charity Shield and then we went somewhere else. But my Great Pub Radar had been triggered. I went back the next week, took up position at the bar and within 10 minutes I knew I was on to a winner and I had found my replacement for Paddy Murphy’s. This may sound bizarre to people who don’t have the same enthousiasm for bars as I do, but some places have a sparkle in the air. You sense it in the air, the moment you walk in. You know it is right. And this was one of those places. Despite being a large pub, the Woolshed still feels cosy and personal and I feel right at home. Throughout the last 4 years, I’ve been involved in a disproportionate amount of partying, at the most random times of day, from victory dances after Superbowl games to 12noon tequila shots after Tri-Nations rugby games to, ofcourse, the total and utter madness of Australia Day each year.

Home is where your heart is. Mine is right here.

So I raise my ale horn (or pitcher of Foster’s, more likely) to The Woolshed as the worthy Gold Medal winners in my Best Bar Ever competition.

Cheers!

Lennard

The Best Bars in the World

As most of you will have noticed, I visited my 666^th pub last week.(This one above was not it, but I like the picture)

I wanted it to be a place that sort of fitted the occasion. I considered Hell Pizza in Dublin and Frankenstein in Edinburgh, my sister suggested Diablo in Las Vegas and I got a number of other interesting suggestions. In the end, I settled on Jeckyll&Hyde in Edinburgh. I looked up their website, saw some interesting pictures and decided that I liked it and that it would be a venue suitable for the occasion. After a night out on Friday, me and my sister had a couple of beers in other pubs around Edinburgh, and then went to Jeckyll&Hyde.

We had a celebratory beer, a bite to eat, toasted on the achievement and then had another couple of drinks. We then partied the day and night away and the end of the exercise is hazy. On the Sunday, we moved on to pub number 667 which, for those of you taking notes, was Finnegan’s Wake in Victoria Street in Edinburgh where I watched the mighty Dublin football team win the All Ireland title. It was, without doubt, the best gaelic football match I have ever seen, a statement that, no doubt, was influenced by the fact that Dublin came out on top. So, before we continue to the main story of the day, here’s a big cheers to the heroes of the Dublin football team, who finally brought the cup home!

Quite some time ago, a friend asked me what my favorite bars in the world were. I promised that I would write a story about it when I reached 500 pubs (The Green Arms hotel in Sydney, Australia, it seems so long ago now). For several reasons, the story didn’t materialise at the time, so I told myself that I would make a list of my 5 favorite bars as soon as I reached number 666. As always when making top5 lists, there are several problems. If, like me, you have visited over 2000 pubs and bars in your life, it is nearly impossible to cut this down to 5, just like making a list of your 5 favorite cd’s, movies or meals of all times. Then, there is the problem that some pubs are great for one thing, but useless for another. Murray’s Bar in Dublin, for example, is excellent for watching sports, with screens all over the place, that are also visible from the bar if you’re going for a fresh pint. It is, however, completely shit for watching live bands, as there is no stage, no PA system and the accoustics are horrible. (Somehow they still put bands on on a regular basis). The other way around, Baroeg in Rotterdam, Holland, is brilliant for watching bands but shit for watching football as there is only 1 (old) TV and you can only see it from the short end of the bar. Ofcourse, Baroeg is not a sportsbar and Murray’s is not a music venue, but this just goes to show you how hard it can be to narrow things like this down. So, I put up a couple of criteria to make the selection.

First of all, I had to feel at home and comfortable there. One of the most important things in a bar is that you feel at ease and enjoy yourself while having a good time. Ofcourse, it is impossible to become a regular in every bar you ever go to, but it is always nice to feel noticed.

Second of all, the bar has to be good at what it does. To go back to the example above, I didn’t hold it against Baroeg that it is crap for watching football and neither did I deduct points on Murray’s scoresheet for being shit at organising gigs. Every bar has its own niche and they should stick to what they’re good at. You are not going to get angry if a carpenter has done a beautiful panelling job but is unable to fix your plumbing. Likewise, you are not going to get angry with the restaurant chef if he can’t fix your car when you try to drive home after a great meal.

The third point of attention is that the drinks have to be reasonably priced. By this, I don’t mean cheap as such. Reasonably priced means that the price is decent for the place that the pub is in. If I, for example, was charged 3 euros for a pint in Dublin, I would be pleasantly surprised. If I was charged the same amount in Bratislava, I would be outraged by the rip-off. This was the main reason that places in tourist hotspots like Temple Bar, Covent Garden and Times Square all disappeared from the list. If you charge me 7 euros for a pint that costs half that across the river, there is a big chance that you won’t see me again for the next 7 years. You can probably rip off tourists by charging prices like that, but I’m not going to play ball. I once took a friend to The Temple Bar in Dublin and was charged EUR 13,50 for 2 pints. That was the last time they saw me in there.

The final thing that I took into consideration is that the place has to be unique in its own way. This was the end of chain-bars like Walkabout, Hooters and Hardrock Cafe. Apart from generally being not the most soulful places on the map, every Hardrock Cafe is pretty much the same. This is worse at Hooters. Every Hooters across the world is exactly the same. They occasionally adjust the layout to the size or shape of the building, but apart from that, they all look exactly the same, whether you are in Sydney, San Francisco or Athens. This is not to say that Hooters is not good, to the contrary, I love Hooters and always go when I am near one. It’s just not very original.

Now, before we go to the top5, there are 3 special mentions that I have not put on the list because I either worked there myself, or they have moved from the original building to a new, less interesting location(or both, in 1 case).

The first of these is De Gonz in Gouda.

I worked there for 10 years, was a manager for 5 and had lots of fantastic times there. I made a lot of good friends there, learned heaps of great new music, drank an ocean of beer and worked countless hours, often until the sun came up. The bar was situated in an old house in the centre of the city of Gouda (near Rotterdam, in Holland) and, well, it was tiny. There was a narrow hallway which led to the main room (formerly the living room when it was still in use as a residence) which measured only about 6 yards across and 15 in length and this included the bar which was home built by the people working there. To save space, the stage(also home-produced) was built up out of a dozen smaller parts, so it could be moved around easily when no bands were playing. The claustrophobic DJ booth was constructed just below the ceiling, again to save space and even I (though only 5’8”) could not stand up straight in there. The walls were all painted black with a big red rose (the logo of the bar) on the main wall behind the stage and the stem of the rose curling around the room on the other wall. Some years later, one of the employees decided to cheer the place up a bit and painted most of the place in various shades of yellow and orange with Canadian Indian designs. The debate about the make-over remains undecided to this day. The place was cosy, friendly and home to all kinds of people who didn’t really fit the bill in the regular nightlife scene. Metalheads, punks, skinheads and hippies all existed happily side by side. Unfortunately, after years of harrassment, threats of eviction and a dozen proposed new locations, the local city council finally pushed the place out of its home and moved it to the first floor of an abandoned factory a couple of miles away. As I expected, the place, though bigger and with better amenities, has lost the feel of the original building and the re-location outside the city centre has seen an increase in overhead costs and a decrease in punters. With bankruptcy constantly looming in the background, management has now resorted to putting on techno nights, singer/songwriter matinees and other activities that are a million miles away from the original spirit of the place. It’s a shame this unique place has been harrassed to near-extinction by the local council.

The second special mention is for the Dynamo Rock Bar in Eindhoven.

For metalheads over a certain age the world over, Dynamo is a name that is much revered. It inspires the same awe that the Vatican would in Catholics or Las Vegas would in gamblers. This is partly because of the outdoor heavy metal festival that was attached to it and partly because of the bar in the centre of Eindhoven, in the south of Holland. The Dynamo building is a multi functional youth centre that is financed by the local council. Over the years it has organised and developed pretty much anything that is related to youth work, from teenage pregnancy prevention classes, to fitness classes to breakdance work shops. All these activities took place in the main building, which also had a concert venue. To the back of the building was a battered black door, full of graffiti, stickers and flyers. Behind this door was a narrow staircase that descended into the Dynamo Rock Bar. Once your eyes had adjusted to the pitch black darkness in there, you walked into a dimly lit room and found yourself in a basement bar, all walls and the floor totally black, with a huge white pentagram in the middle of what mainstream people would have deemed ‘the dancefloor’. To the average Joe, this would have looked like the basement of the Church of Satan. To us, it was where we drank and met our friends. To the side of the room was a battered wooden bar, selling affordable beer, next to which sat a dj booth, closed off around with iron wire, where a dj played music at such an earsplitting volume that even I sometimes wondered how long it would take before my beer bottle would spontaneously explode. I absolutely loved the place from the second I walked in. The noise was deafening, the people, contrary to popular belief, were quite cheery and jovial and the atmosphere was always great. Entertainment (other than drinking) came in the form of a battered pinball machine that was thrown around the place as if it was a cricket ball, and a local game in which you had to ram 10 inch nails into a log with a hammer. Whoever sank the last bit of the nail into the log had to get a round (or drink their beer in one go, but I forget). In all the six years that I drank there on a more or less semi-regular basis, not once did I find the toilet endowed with a seat and 9 times out of 10 it was clogged. We didn’t care. Dynamo was great and we loved every second of it. Somewhere in the early years of the new millennium, Eindhoven city council announced that the Dynamo building was in dire need of renovation and it had decided, rather than rennovate it, the whole building would be torn down and rebuilt in the same location from scratch. This created panic in the Dutch metal scene because what would we do without Dynamo? Fortunately, the Eindhoven city council had a lot more brains than the powers that be in Gouda and guaranteed the management of the rock bar that they would again have the basement at their disposal as soon as the rebuilding project was finished. This more or less satisfied the crowd and during the 2 or 3 years that it took to rebuild, rock and heavy metal venues around the country jumped in to help and organised ‘Dynamo on Tour’ nights to keep the black spirit alive. When Dynamo reopened, the rock bar turned the lights down and the volume up and was open for business as usual. As you would expect, the atmosphere and feel of the place weren’t as they used to be. Floors were clean. Bar stools had padded seats. Toilets worked. A Strange Experience for sure. To be honest to the bar and the regulars, many of whom I know personally, I’ve only been in the new building twice and that was just after it was re-opened. They have been going in the new set-up for a couple of years now and I sometimes wonder how it is now. I bet it is just as noisy as in the past.

And now, the 3^rd and final honourable mention in this election goes to Baroeg in my hometown of Rotterdam.

When you arrive at Rotterdam Central station, you can change trains and get off at Lombardijen Station, or you can take tram 20 and get off the stop before Lombardijen station. Either way, if you look to the left side of the road, you will see a large park with a stream running through it. Next to the stream in this idyllic park, there is a small building with a 3 pointed roof. The building is covered in graffiti and has a big chrome door. This, my dear readers, is Baroeg.

Baroeg is the centre of heavy metal culture in the west of Holland and has been going strong for 30 years now. Originally a youth centre, towards the end of the 1980’s Baroeg deviated from its original course and slowly but surely changed into a daring underground venue that catered for the heavy metal, punk and goth scenes. The place has the look of a classic heavy metal dive: a bare concrete floor, black walls, covered in murals of punk and metal legends (Ozzy Osborne stares at you from the entrance) the L-shaped black marble bar has 3 bar stools at its short end, bolted to the floor. A couple of tables (also bolted to the floor) make up the rest of the interior decoration and for the rest it’s just black tiles, black walls and a big black double door that leads to the stage area. The stage area is not the biggest and has a second dj booth and PA table. If you squeeze hard enough, you can just about fit 400 people into the whole place. (It does get uncomfortably busy though when the place sells out). Throughout the years, Baroeg has excelled at booking bands in most louder genres before they strike it big. Bands like Exploited, Cradle of Filth, Cannibal Corpse and Dropkick Murhphys have all taken to the stage here over the years. Baroeg is a unique place with a unique history and an atmosphere different from anywhere else.

So why is it not in my top5 list? The reason is that I worked there for 5 years. I first walked through the door in the spring of 1996 and up to the moment I moved to Ireland, I could be found there with increasing regularity over the years. I met lots of interesting people, made a lot of new friends and in fact, I met some of my closest friends there. I have had so many great parties there over the year, both at the bar and behind it, that I could write a book about my time in this place in its own right. And maybe I will in the future. I don’t know what first sparked my enthousiasm for the place, but when I first walked in there, I knew that this was a place where I would become a regular. Though it was much closer than the Dynamo, it was still a bit of a hike from where I was living at the time. To my annoyance, this normally meant that I had to leave for home just when the party was in crescendo and while everyone ordered another round, I had to make a beeline for the rail station or the tram. This all changed one night in the autumn of 2001. I was talking to one of the regulars at the bar, and his girlfriend stuck a flyer in my face, advertising the cd release party of their band. I happily accepted the invitation but informed them that I would probably have to leave early as it was a night gig and I had to get the train home. She rejected this notion and informed me that there was an afterparty at their house and I was invited and could sleep on the couch, the floor or anywhere else. After using the open invitation to stay over as often as I wished for 2 years I decided that, since I spent most of my time the vincinity of Baroeg anyway, I would move closer and I got a flat around the corner with a girl who worked in the kitchen there. I happily worked and drank there for another couple of years until I moved to Ireland. I still love Baroeg and it is one of my favorite places in the world. I have worked there as a bartender, dj, ticketseller stagehand, manager and even as a kitchen hand on occasion. Whenever I get back to Holland, I always try to make time to go down to Baroeg for a beer or, if there’s nothing on, get the old crew together for a beer in the pub. It is one of the few things I miss about living abroad- Baroeg and the people I met there.

So, that was the introduction to my Top5 list. I will present the official countdown next time around.

Cheers,

Lennard

There we go again..

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NAMEJET are dirty stinking Yid bastards

NAMEJET sells children to the highest bidder.

NAMEJET worked for the Nazis in World War 2

NAMEJET supports Gary Glitter.

NAMEJET organised 9/11

NAMEJET supports Al Queda

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It's not raining at the moment

Grand Theft and Wakefield Rugby Club

Earlier this week, when watching my favorite tv channel, Sky Sports News, I came across a bizarre but funny item about the Wakefield Wildcats Rugby League Club. No, they didn’t win a league or cup against huge odds, no player had gotten in trouble off the pitch or shot anyone, and they hadn’t made a big signing either. What had happened?

The entire electronic scoreboard had been stolen.

When I had stopped laughing, I considered that this was quite an impressive feat. The thieves had entered the ground during the night, dislodged the whole thing from one of the stands, and taken it. Now that is impressive. More on the story can be read on this BBC link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bradford-west-yorkshire-12641897

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of the scoreboard is urged to contact West Yorkshire police, so if you see someone walking around with a stadium sized electronic scoreboard in a wheelbarrow or the back of a car, please contact the appropriate law enforcement officer.

This news item brought back memories of similar weird and outrageous theft stories I came across in the past, so I decided to make a Top5 of the greatest thefts I have come across in my life.

5.

Item stolen: A garden gnome

Victim: Some guy in England

The thief: Unknown

I read this story about 10 years ago and it really made me laugh. Stealing a garden gnome, in itself, is not much of a feat. They’re easy to get to (they’re out in the open in gardens most of the time), are not big or heavy and the monetary value is low. Dozens, if not hundreds are stolen every weekend. Why this story made the Top5 anyway, is not because it was stolen, but because of what happened after it was stolen. Our victim, whose name got lost in the sands of time, woke up one morning and realised that his beloved garden gnome had been stolen overnight. After the initial shock, and probably a cup of tea, he examined the crime scene and found a little card saying ”Dear owner, I have been in this garden for many years now. It is time for me to leave and see the world. Thank you for your good care over the years. Goodbye, your gnome”

Or words to that effect. The owner decided this was some sort of drunken prank from one of the patrons of the pub across the street, bought a new gnome and thought nothing more of it. Until he started getting postcards from his gnome.

Apparently, some funny man who was about to go on a round-the-world trip, had stolen the garden gnome and taken it with him. The first postcard the owner received was a picture of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, with the gnome standing in front of it. The message on the card read something like ‘Aah, Paris, the city of romance’ or something like that and had a greeting from the gnome to the owner. After that, postcards started coming in at regular intervals, with the gnome posing in increasingly exotic locations across the world. Cards featured, among others, the gnome at the Statue of Liberty in New York, the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. The gnome then crossed the Pacific Ocean and was found posing at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Great Wall of China and Sydney Opera House. This went on for about a year and, sure enough, one morning the astonished owner found the battered gnome back in his front garden, where it had disappeared a year earlier, with another card saying something like ‘Thank you for my year off, I really needed it’.

I really like this story because it is weird and different and it shows that a lot of people still have a great sense of humour.

4.

Item stolen: Garden furniture

Victim: My parents

The thief: Unknown

Somewhere during an early 90’s summer , I was woken on a Sunday morning by my mum, at some unholy hour like 11am. After enquiering why she had woken me up this early, she informed me that the joke was over and that she wanted me to disclose the location of her belongings. Puzzled, I got out of bed and asked her what she was on about. As we walked in to the garden on this sunny morning, I vaguely registered that something in the garden was not quite right, but I couldn’t exactly make out what it was. After deciding to get a glass of orange juice and sit down to think this over, it suddenly dawned on me that there was no garden furniture. The wheels in my head started turning and it finally came together: all the garden furniture had disappeared and my mum thought that me and my friends had pulled of some drunk joke by hiding it somewhere. It took me about 20 minutes to convince my mum and dad that I really had no idea where the furniture was and either way, I had been drunk the previous night so even if I had intended to steal their furniture, I was in no state to lift anything bigger or heavier than a bottle, so I couldn’t have pulled it off anyway. Considering this, I must admit that this had been quite an impressive case of theft. My parents live in a small town, population 4000, on the outskirts of Rotterdam. Everybody knows everybody else and if you were to steal something as big as garden furniture, word would be out in no time and you would be caught out in a matter of days. I once lifted a case of beer from someones garden shed on a drunken night when we had run out of beer and, sure enough, within a week, I got a phone call from a local police officer, telling me to come over to the station. I was reprimanded for trying to steal someone else’s beer and told not to do it again. That’s the idea of how fast news travels in a town like that, which makes it extra impressive to lift an entire set of garden furniture from someone’s garden. There are two other reason that made this an impressive feat. First, my parents have a pebble path around their house that makes a distinctive noise when you walk on it, especially in the dead of the night.

My mom often said that she had woken up when I came home from the pub, because of the sound of me crossing the pebbles. Second of all, my parents’ house is right next to the police station. The furniture was never seen again and no one has ever had a clue as to who had stolen it. My mom always suspected the window cleaner who, as she argued, had free access to everybody’s garden and knew what was where. Even if she was right, that doesn’t make it any less impressive to steal an entire set of garden furniture, consisting of 4 chairs, a footstool and a 4foot round table from a small town garden that is surrounded by noisy pebbles, under the watching eyes of the police. A worthy number 4 in this list.

3.

Item stolen: The UEFA Cup

Victim: PSV Eindhoven Football Club

The thief: Local comedian Theo Maassen

PSV Eindhoven won the UEFA Cup in 1978. For 10 years it was their biggest trophy, until they won the 1988 European Cup after one of the dullest finals in living memory. The UEFA Cup still stood in their trophy cabinet as one of the clubs biggest achievements. Until 2000 that was, when the trophy all of a sudden went missing. The press had a field day when the news got out and football fans around the country were making jokes about the lack of security and the thickness of the ‘provincials’. (Thereby completely ignoring the fact that Eindhoven is the 5^thbiggest city in the country and also the smallest city ever to win the European Cup). Where had the trophy gone? There were no signs of breaking and entering, no security breaches on record and even after searching every inch of the stadium, the club offices and the training ground, the trophy was not found. It had simply vanished on thin air. The issue disappeared from the papers and was left as a strange anecdote in the history of Dutch football. 8 or 9 months later, the story was back in the paper because the cup had been returned. What had happened?

As it turned out, it was local comedian Theo Maassen who had lifted the cup while he was shooting a tv show in the PSV Stadium. As he was shooting the show, he had been given access all areas, and had smuggled the cup out in an equipment case. Being the funny man that he is, Maassen decided not to just give it back to the club, but chose to reveal his secret on national television. In a football panel show, several guests showed off their rare football memorabilia, mostly jerseys from old games, cup medals and other artifacts. Nobody had ofcourse expected Maassen to come up with the actual UEFA Cup, leaving both the show’s hosts and the other guests speachless. The cup was returned to the club shortly after the show, but the club could not appreciate the joke and pressed charges. Eventually, Maassen got off with a couple of days community service, which he performed with a smile on his face.

Theo Maassen 1 PSV 0.

2.

Item stolen: Stadium score board

Victim: Wakefield Wildcats rugby league club

The thief: As yet unknown.

On number 2 in the list, we find the Wakefield rugby score board from the start of the story. One can only wonder how the thieves in this case pulled off this amazing feat. Dislodging a stadium sized scoreboard and disappearing with it, without anyone noticing. I was discussing this issue with a bartender at the Woolshed last weekend and he commented that “If you pull off something like that, the score board is officially yours. It ceases to be property of the club and it is then rightfully yours.”

I must agree. Even though it’s probably something of a nuisance to the club and the fans, I can not conclude anything else than that I think whoever accomplished this should get free beer for at least a year in their local pub.

But, no matter how incredible a feat this may have been, we now reach the first place in our little competition and the winner for the most hilarious theft in history. Please put your hands together for ... Theo.

1.

Item stolen: 6 snooker tables

Victim: Theo, the proprietor of a local snooker hall in Holland

The thief: Officially, this is unknown, but most likely Theo himself.

When I was in high school, there were 3 locations nearby where you could play pool or snooker. One of them was the snooker hall, which was for serious players and had 4 snooker tables and a small bar. Another venue had about a dozen pool tables, a big bar, video games and the best location in the heart of the city. People often went there for a drink or to meet friends without the intention of playing pool. It was as much a social spot as a pool hall.

And then there was Theo’s place. Theo’s place had a bit of both, snooker and pool, and it was conveniently located, literally 30 yards from my school. Consequently, I spent more time in the pool hall than in school, but still managed to pass my central exams, albeit (and I quote the dean of students here) ‘by the smallest margin in the history of the school’. The pool hall was situated in a semi-rough working class area, a grimm neighbourhood with a relatively high unemployment rate and an urban jungle street feel. Lots of boarded up windows, graffiti, cheap appartments, people drinking in the street at 10am, that idea. On the main road through the neighbourhood was Theo’s pool emporium.

Theo’s place, most often simply referred to as ‘the pool hall’, was a right dump. Flyers from parties that had taken place 4 years earlier were still in the window, most pooltables had unidentified stains on the cloth, unmatched, rickety bar stools, a slot machine with a broken window, cracked mirrors, all the characteristics of a full on dive bar were there. But hey, table rent was cheap and the bar opened at 9.30 in the morning so me and my friends could be found there with alarming regularity. The beer was also ridiculously cheap, so that may have been another reason for the constant presence of students at the bar. Behind the bar, Theo ruled with an iron fist. What Theo says goes, was the law of the land and most people obeyed the law. The occasional trouble maker would often find himself out through the door, and by this I mean literally through it. Theo was a 6”5’ hulk of a man, with a receding hairline, permanently unshaven and a look on his face as if somebody has just killed his dog and then ran of with his wife. Still, we spent many an hour in the place, getting drunk on our study grants and playing pool for a couple of bucks per hour. When I graduated from high school, I somehow found myself returning to the place, even though I had nothing left to do in the area and the place was a dump. I guess the cheap beer was still an incentive to return, so I kept playing pool and snooker there on a regular basis. Until one day I found the door closed. I assumed that Theo had had a couple of his cheap beers himself the night before and would open again later, but the doors stayed closed throughout the day. A couple of days later, when I went to visit a friend who was living near there, the door was still closed and a police car was in front of the entrance. Later that week, when I was in the other pool hall (the nice one) I found out what had happened and why Theo’s place was closed. Theo had been robbed.

And not robbed in the street robbery kind of way (no one would dare) but robbed from his pride and livelyhood. All 6 of Theo’s snooker tables had been stolen.

This, ofcourse, went on to be THE talk of the pool playing community in the weeks that followed and no one could surpress a smile when Theo and his disappeared tables came up in conversation.

When I had stopped laughing, it dawned on me what a monumentously stupid claim this was. For those of you who have never played snooker or live outside the sphere of influence of the English speaking world, let me give you some back ground: a tournament size snooker table is a huge thing. It is 6 foot wide, 12 foot long and about 4 foot high. It weighs about 3000 pounds and as I was discussing the matter with the manager of the other snooker hall, he told me that it takes a team of 4 professional snooker table builders at least 2 hours to put one together or take one apart. Mind you, that is 4 experienced professionals who actually know what they are doing, in broad daylight, with all the professional tools that are specific to the snooker table building trade. And that is for 1 table (one).

In Theo’s story, however, a goon squad of villains had broken into his establishment, allegedly somewhere after 2am, when he said he had closed the bar. They had consequently disassembled no less than 6 tournament size snooker tables, put all the parts in a truck or whatever and ran off with it. All of this happened in the time window between 2am and dawn and without anybody noticing a thing even though the pool hall was on the corner of the 2 busiest streets in the area.

The story of Theo’s stolen snooker tables has gone down in local folklore as one of the most ridiculous stories of all time.

Consider this; it is simply physically impossible to even take apart 6 snooker tables in a 4 hour time frame, let alone load everything in a truck and get away with the lot. Then on top of that, 4 of the 6 tables were on the first floor, which made the whole operation even more complicated. And then on top of that, all of the heavy and big parts that make up a snooker table (including the big slabs of stone that make up the playing surface) had been shipped out through a single front door. This all combined makes this claim so outrageous that I happily award Theo with the first prize for the most ridiculous theft of all times.

The story later got out that Theo was in dire need of money because of a huge tax claim that the revenue service had levelled at him for not paying any taxes in the previous 10 or 12 years. Consequently, he ‘most likely’ staged this outrageous operation with the idea of cashing in on his insurance policy. The insurance company, despite it being ridiculously obvious that this was an inside job, could not exactly prove that the tables had NOT been stolen, and eventually threw out his claim on a technicallity (no alarm had gone off and no alert had come in at the security centre during the night the tables were stolen, rendering his claim void).

I have not seen Theo ever since. I would guess that he fled the country and now runs a pool hall in Thailand.