Still back in Amsterdam, we tried to find the perfect place where gamblers, prostitutes, visitors, voyeurs, tourists, locals and apparently me come together. In one of the side alleys across the windows of the prostitutes and close to the gambling house there was this place, the HONNY BAR. The place is run by a man around sixty from Turkey, who is looking forward to his retirement. After he lived for in Tyrol (Austria) before, Amsterdam seemed to worn him out. He was tired of the location.
Georg Simmel, a German sociologist called prostitution a “transnational survival strategy”(1978). Prostitution has become a central metaphor for the choices people make and the pressure they face in moving across borders in search of better lives. Is this not also what the old man is doing?
In the Netherlands prostitution is legal and nobody hopefully is forced to do this job. For more information see also www.pic-amsterdam.com
Currently confronted with the computer game “second life” it came into my mind, that the gambler, spending his day in the playhouse, the prostitute not recognized by her father passing her window is also a form of second (secret) life. And every other form of dressing up like Carnival as well.
The origin of Chinatowns outside China was a self supporting ghetto for Chinese people in order to survive abroad. Isn’t this a transnational survival strategy, what Simmel was talking about, as well? Today Chinatowns all over the world turned into a promotion of commercial Chinese goods, but it still has the notion of hidden places and powers in twilight.
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trafficing seems to be as common here as any other place. do you remember i told you bout 'the loverboys'. organised trafficers that convince women into prostitution with their amoruous skills.
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