hush collective spins for 3,000,000 plus @ pride NYC with I amsterdam!
Mother Tongue had the great opportunity to DJ a float with ‘I amsterdam’ for the 2009 New York City Pride Parade.
‘I amsterdam’ is the motto for the Amsterdam area. It is the city’s marketing initiative as a means for Amsterdam to profile itself assertively on the international arena.
The Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam, Carolien Gehrels, who is married to a woman, was among a delegation of officials from the Netherlands. They were all attending the NYC Pride Celebration to embrace efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in New York State.
The theme was Marriage Equality. The float had a huge wedding cake displayed, as well as over 50 people from Amsterdam and the U.S. dancing and cheering as it traveled down 5th Avenue to Greenich Village. The music for the float was provided by Mother Tongue’s John LoBello.
We travelled there with our three daughters. We found all informations on amsterdam.info. Amsterdam it is a very beautiful town and the museums are great. But with the exchange rate as it is, we found it very expensive. Some museums were closed for refurbishment, but the views of the canals and hi-lights such as the Anne Frank House and the Artis Zoo (an old-fashioned place with a great array of animals kept in somewhat cramped conditions) are very memorable. The food is awful unless you want to spend a great deal of money and there is a cynical attitude to tourists that is very out of date (e.g. tapas marinaded pork was one slice of fried bacon on 1/2 a bread roll). We stayed in the serviceable but expensive Singel Hotel which was okay but its close proximity to a red light area made going out with the children awkward and there really was nothing charming or liberated about hurrying past the ladies in the windows. The same is true of the legal dope selling ‘coffee houses’. The whole bicycle thing is interesting. It is almost, but not quite, the eco-city of the future. Some cyclists are quite anarchic and we spent a fair bit of time dodging pavement mounted bad-tempered riders. Overall verdict was we were glad we’d been but wouldn’t go again as it feels over priced, out of date and sleazy – not the cutting edge hip family friendly town it’s sold as.