the limping messenger

See also first post about this subject on May 25 on this blog...

On May 23 a bicycle bar serving eleven ladies  went down a slope in the northern part of town miscalculating the height of the mobile bar and an underpass that laid ahead. The impact of the cycle bar (bierfiets) on the roof of the traffic tunnel was such that three ladies landed in the hospital, two with neck fractures one lady lost a finger bone. This kind of absurd incident put the phenomenon of the combined sport of cycling, beer drinking and shouting once again in in unfavorable light. Today I had the pleasure of getting an answer of one of the members of the local city council for the Green Left party, on my request to stop the bicycle beer bars in Amsterdam. The city councillor had asked the alderman (local minister) for traffic affairs if this accident combined with a ban in several areas of the inner town on the bicycle bar because of of complaints about shouting, would not necessitate more stringent measures against this display of public drunkenness. The city authorities may want to wait  till a foreseeable future accident with a whole cycle café plunging in a canal after attempting to take one of the sharp and steep corners typical of the Amsterdam inner city bridges and I can assure you our ‘grachten’ are not yet filled with beer . It could be the cycle café will survive after all, with swimming vests and safety helmets…