WITTE DE WITHSTRAAT (29 october 2004)
If you ask me if there is one street in Amsterdam, of which I don't have very fond memories, it will probably be the Witte De Withstraat. Don't be afraid, if you can't repeat this name tomorrow, I won't hold it against you.
It was in 1968 that I lived in the Witte De Withstraat. I was relatively young: twenty-six. And I lived the kind of life that many people of my age used to live: I smoked cigarettes, which I don't do any longer -- so don't worry about my health. And I sometimes mixed the tobacco with substances which were then forbidden in The Netherlands. If you really want to know, I don't smoke that any more either.
I sometimes allowed friends to stay the night at my place. One of those friends was Jos. Jos was an artist. He made paintings like the one you see here:
Jos smoked hasheesh too, and one day, the police caught Jos with some of it. He was asked where he stayed in Amsterdam. At first, Jos refused to tell them -- which made them even more curious -- but eventually he told them he stayed at my address.
The police immediately rushed to my place -- where they told my landlord they suspected me of dealing drugs. The landlord admitted them to my quarters, where the detectives found a piece of hasheesh not much bigger than a pinhead.
The policemen told my landlord they'd found drugs and gave him the impression I was a drug dealer and large quantities of drugs had been found. Thank you very much, smart police!
Of course, the landlord responded stereotypically: I had to find another place within a week.
Maybe, you can now understand I'm very not fond of the Witte De Withstraat. And you'll probably understand too how heartily I agreed when I later read that a newspaper considered the Witte De Withstraat the ugliest street of Amsterdam.
