Check your morals at the door and lock the kids in the hotel room, it’s Amsterdam time! Soft drugs! Government sanctioned prostitution! Live sex shows! More sin than you can shake a bong at! This place makes Las Vegas look like Iowa City . . .

But first, a few words about Amsterdam’s rich 700 year history. In the 13th century some fishermen built a dam across the Amstel River and soon after the city was... Naw, I’m messing with you! On with the debauchery . . .

People come to Amsterdam from all over the world for the sole purpose of pureeing their brains into a soft, drug-addled paste. Hash, mushrooms and other soft drugs are easier to get than a decent ice cream cone. While drugs are not in fact 100% legal, they are tolerated more than a regular cigarette is in the U.S. these days. While owning and using soft drugs is worry-free, don’t plan on collecting a duffel bag worth of psychotropic substances and opening your own Kool-Aid-style booth on the corner. If you get busted with more than five grams of gear (the amount that authorities have deemed an acceptable sized stash for personal use) you will indeed get tossed into prison. There’s no need to worry about hoarding a personal inventory though. Coffee Shops, the code name for hash bars, which are the only acceptable soft drug merchants in Amsterdam, are more numerous than Starbucks in Seattle. There are several in each neighborhood and in places like the over-saturated city center, a modest, second-hand buzz can very nearly be attained by simply loitering on one of the busier streets.

It goes without saying that any tourist stopping in Amsterdam for more than a couple days has an agenda that includes many, many hours, slouched in a stupor in the back of a hash bar. There’s also a repellent presence of permanent resident, drugs fatalities staggering around Amsterdam. These are people who probably arrived in the city anywhere from 5 to 20 years ago, decided to stay a while, never left and eventually spiraled down into a serious, hard drug habit.

While Amsterdamers are generally indifferent to soft drugs, they have no patience for the harder stuff. Nearly every hash establishment has huge signs announcing that hard drugs are not tolerated on the premises, so people seeking the harder stuff are forced to hide out in alleys and under bridges. In a few, disagreeable parts of Amsterdam, particularly in the vicinity of Zeedijk street, leading to Nieuwmarkt, it is impossible to walk 10 steps without encountering a dope fiend hitting you up for change, putting on a free, drug-fueled song and dance show or just tripping so hard that they can’t figure out how to zip their pants back up after reliving themselves on one of their buddies. In most cases you can laugh this off as part of the entertainment value of Amsterdam, but sometimes these spectacles can be disturbing enough for even a hardened local to stop and stare at the sight of a raw, depraved, drug addict passed out in the bushes with only their legs visible, sprawled out on the sidewalk. These people are so far removed from reality that they are completely unaware of their degeneracy. Typical tell-tale characteristics include a stick-thin body, five foot long dreads, inch long, yellow fingernails, wearing clothes that have clearly not been washed in months and permeated with an aroma that could knock a buzzard off a garbage truck. While I can empathize with the argument for legalizing soft drugs, it is impossible to spend an afternoon in Amsterdam and not think twice about the path that starts with innocent soft drug use and leads to a wretched, pathetic life.

The Red Light District is a whole other matter. While hash has it’s specific cross-eyed demographic, the Red Light District in comparison almost resembles a family theme park atmosphere. The area takes up about six square blocks and every street is packed with happy tourists walking up and down, admiring the scenery as if they were in a nature preserve. But instead of birds and flowers they get to survey huge pictures of anatomically correct dildos and graphically depicted sex acts displayed outside the copious sex shops.

Whole families routinely make the tour through the District with mom, dad, bug-eyed Joe junior and little, horrified Ashley getting the uninvited education of a lifetime and wondering how long it’ll be before she gets her boobies and how long after that before they get fondled by a disheveled guy wearing sunglasses, camouflage boxer-shorts and combat boots. Live sex theaters line the streets with humungous, color, pornographic photos. Then there are the infamous crimson-adorned hooker windows where scantly clad women and women-formerly-known-as-men flirt and pose for passersby, hoping to score a customer. By and large, these hookers are about as appealing as a three finger prostate exam. Once in a great while, during peak times, you can find an attractive woman that you might consider for something more than a foot rub, but this is rare.

So whatever your choice of perversion (well, out of drugs and sex) make your way to Amsterdam . . . but leave Grandma and the kids at home!

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