BULLSEYE

Boomgaard Logo?The keen eye of BULLSEYE “groupie” Scott Thinnes alerted me to the following comment posted on Greg Kowalski’s “Today’s Concerns” . As Scott said, “Can you make 'this' stuff up?” Not in a million years, brother…not in a million years.

Unfettered Candor wrote:

It’s too bad I did not get an email reply from my Dutch friend from Amsterdam before the public comment site for the Boomgaard District expired. Several days ago I mentioned the crazy Boomgaard controversy and how there was such a public outcry in opposition to this title.

Today I learned that there is a district in Amsterdam that has been dubbed the “Boomgaard District” as well. It is a homosexual red light district. He said the title “Boomgaard” [fruit orchard] was a lampoon of that area .

Now I hope that this title is adopted. It will be entertaining to see how the prophecies of some promoters of the Zizzo group will unravel if this title is adopted. One promoter made a flimsy statement, “ the corridor will promote itself no matter what it is called.”

Yowzer…let the fun begin. If Zizzo’s “fruit orchard” name is adopted, the floodgates will open with information about the “Boomgaard District” in Amsterdam and that might change a lot of things on South 27 Street!!!

May 4, 2008 12:52 AM

That warrants further investigation, wouldn't you say?

I found some answers in an article entitled “Gay Amsterdam: Last Vestige of the Sixties?”

Since the “Boomgaard Brotherhood” and the Zizzo Group are into history, maybe they could use some of this in Boomgaard’s Grand Opening press release.

Amsterdam's gay world came into full blossom in the 1960s. The city afforded an example of tolerance and of pleasure for people all around the world. During the Golden Age of the seventeenth century the city was already famous for religious toleration when other religions were permitted alongside the Dutch Reformed Church. Many dissidents from other parts of Europe sought refuge in the city.

So far, so good.

By the eighteenth century Amsterdam was considered a centre for the distribution of pornography, especially libertine writings in French. That tradition continued to the present for kiddy and bestial porn that elsewhere in the western world is more strictly controlled.

D’OH!  continuing… 

This reputation of tolerance is not always well deserved.

Whew! Thank goodness!

During the eighteenth century the Dutch Republic, including Amsterdam, was the location of the largest persecutions of sodomy of the age with at least 800 men persecuted and 200 capital punishments. Even in the 1990s a majority of the urban population and of the municipal authorities would like to see an end to Amsterdam's reputation as a place where sex and drugs are easily available. The city government enforced stricter rules on activities that denote hedonism outside the bounds of the capitalist marketplace (van Naerssen 1987).

Sodomy! Heavens!

… The first recorded execution by fire for sodomy in the Northern part of the Netherlands concerned two men in Egmont, not far from Amsterdam on Holland's coast, in 1321 (Noordam 1995: 22-24). The first known court case in Amsterdam for "crimine pessimo", probably sodomy, was in 1534 of a priest and a Franciscan but the sentence is not known (Boomgaard 1992: 276).

Oops, there it is! Oops, there it is!

During the seventeenth century there were some convictions in 1632 and 1641 of women who married or had sex with one another. The later concerned Hendrikje van der Schuur who had served as a soldier and had a passionate relation with a woman named Trijntje. The case attracted attention because the Amsterdam physician Nicolaas Tulp discussed their case in his Observationes (1641). He attributed the masculine sexuality of Hendrikje to her large clitoris. Click to continue reading this sordid tale…

Have you ever heard people say “don't sweat the details”? Well, they're wrong: sweat the details. There’s a name for people who sweat the details: millionaires.