Death of a city?

In the real world I never had much love lost for Amsterdam. I was born in the rival city of Rotterdam; we like to think Amsterdam is just an open air museum with hookers and junkies as an added attraction. But still… it is a fascinating place, for all it’s faults.

The Amsterdam of Second Life was a caricature of my first life ideas about the city. The Royal Palace was a sex club, and on a seedy corner between a grubby hotel and an even grubbier porn cinema the hookers were competing for a spot. Behind them the famous red velvet windows were waiting for those who wished to perform a dance or take a shower in full view of any passer-by. I hated the city - a great build ruined by that caricature of cheap whores and cannabis, with not an inch of the rich culture of our capital - like the Van Gogh Museum or the Anne Frank House - to be found anywhere. But I loved the city, too, when I was a newbie. It tickled my senses in ways you don’t want to admit are possible.

After the place was sold by Stroker Serpentine for a ridiculous sum of money I never went back. Until yesterday. And while the real city is trying to clean up it’s famous red light district, the Second Life version is already past that. The windows are there but the poseballs are gone. The seedy hotel is there, but the furniture is gone. And the cinema is a work in progress, just like the once utterly nasty public lavatories in the other corner. All that’s left of Stroker’s Amsterdam, it seems, is the drugs trade.

All the rest is changed or changing. The Nieuwe Kerk or New Church has been transformed, just like in real life, from an empty hulk to a museum. Currently they are showing works by Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, but a living artist with a Second Life presence is on the agenda. Culture at last!

Outside there’s even a little café with a terrace, oddly enough sponsored by Dutch weather site buienradar.nl. And where formerly hardly anyone ever went - the southern neighbour sim now called Amsterdam 2 - there is the beginning of a sanitized and regulated new Red Light District, with a row of identical pole dancing windows and a dance club.

Yet… in a sim which used to be filled to capacity on a regular basis, I found myself visiting with three other people. The place is brimming with For Rent signs. It seems that if you sanitize this city, you take the life out of it. Mayor Job Cohen had better take notice.

Damrak, Amsterdam - eerily empty [SLurl here]