King's Day- Managed Anarchy

Wednesday night, 23:03 (11:03pm; 5:03pm EST). The city trash trucks are in full swing. King's Day went out with nary a whimper. It just sort of faded out to the distant beeps of a large vehicle backing up.

For the uninitiated, earlier in the day it was orange anarchy in the streets. People everywhere; on the main streets, at neighborhood corners, at canal bridges, in front of apartments and shops, dancing to DJs and live music, checking out all kinds of stuff for sale on the street. Drinking, oh, the drinking.

One could juxtapose this with say the Starkville, MS Cotton District Spring Arts Festival, wherein you have the East/West/South Stages, the Beer area, food vendors, and the Arts and Crafts booths. Thats pretty much it.

There, you are more of an observer going from event to event. Here, everyone is participating and there is no clear separation between 'events'. You just flow from a music venue at an intersection with hundreds of people, past beer, wine and food vendors, past sidewalk sales of all kinds (Kings Day is also national yardsale day), past the chair in the middle of a street with a sign that says "Applause, 50 cents", past the fully decked out in orange guys with the leaf blowers, to the lady selling coffee and pastries from her open apartment window.

All this activity seems spontaneous, random and chaotic. Yet there is an underlying order. After all, Amsterdam is known for its large and efficient bureaucracy. 

Walking across a canal bridge you notice the barge that has blocked off a side canal so boats are forced down another canal, the one with continuous 'bumpers' on both sides to protect the houseboats from the crazy, drunken boaters. You notice the large number of portable 'open air' urinals, which I have learned are collecting all that pee to be recycled. You notice a lot of city employees from various divisions- police, traffic and transportation, waste, street patrol, bridges, waternet, etc- keeping an eye on things.

But its party on, at least until some predetermined time (by the aforementioned City) where everything starts to close down. By 21:00 (9:00pm) the loud music from various sources pretty much stops. By 22:00 street noise returns to its usual Wednesday evening level (people walking by, occasional bike or scooter). By 23:00 the trash trucks move in shortly followed by the vacuum and street sweeper vehicles. By midnight, its all gone.

Our brief sojourn was just through our local neighborhood. Multiply this craziness by hundreds of streets and neighborhoods throughout the city. And I can't imagine what was going on in the Red Light district. Multiply again by towns and cities across the Netherlands. National craziness! Our Fourth of July pales in comparison.