WHERE: The Rise of the Unsafe House: The American Election WATCH PARTY, Amsterdam (NL)
DATE: 5 & 6 November, 2024.
LOVE: YES
The Unsafe Election Night
OMG, I think I was at the coolest place in Amsterdam, even if just for a few intense hours!
To be honest, I haven’t had this feeling in a long time.
Tuesday Night – Wednesday Morning, November 5th & 6th: Somewhere in a shady neighborhood near the famous Bajes—formerly an Amsterdam prison, where I gave a concert when I was 18, with the now-infamous Harm on piano.
Ok, forget the prison and harm—they’re history. The prison closed years ago, Harm moved to the countryside, and the place is now a kind of concentration camp for the underperforming creative class of Amsterdam, as I mentioned before.
But the Wenckebachweg? Sorry, I have to drop a hint for the culture police dogs, so they can catch a whiff of where this real creative scent is coming from. The Wenckebachlaan was the place to be that night. It’s a long street, though, and you’d need a strong nose to pick up the “art drops” sprinkled in the fresh autumn air of Amsterdam.
Enough rambling! I wanted to go incognito. I had a bit of an eye ache, so I wore these nighttime sunglasses to protect me from the ultra-bright film studio lights. But I took them off again because Mr. Sina Khani, the “Main Creep from the Middle East,” walked up and offered me a beer.
There was a strange mix of people in this “Unsafe House.” Mr. Khani seemed to be part of the place’s interior design—he could easily have posed for one of the creepy paintings by Mr. Tarik Sadouma himself, because we were in the domain of the informal “Night Mayor” (or should I say Nightmare) of Amsterdam.
The cast was impressive. As I’m always on the lookout for talent, I was thrilled by this concentration of inventiveness.
Steven Bos, also part of “The Creeps,” was hosting the event, sitting in a comfortable armchair from 1880, next to the couch where Mr. Sadouma reigned as the current “King of Art” in Amsterdam (sorry, Papa Adama, times are changing).
Steven Bos also invited Edo Blaauw to join on the couch, and, man, he became my favorite comedian of the night—even when he was rooting for Kamala Harris as his favorite presidential candidate.
That’s why we were there, in the end—the American Election Night had come to Amsterdam, to the Unsafe House. Edo Blaauw tried to poll the room to see how many were pro-Kamala, but not many wanted to back her, even before her defeat—maybe a sign of things to come.
Earlier today, I watched a very funny AI video of a cursing Kamala and Trump putting everyone down even ruder than he does in reality. Will future presidential candidates be as crudely Bronx-slanged as I saw on that Twitch channel? I missed the “real” election night in the USA because what was happening on the couch was far more exciting. Honestly, I forgot about Trump and Kamala right away.
Sina Khani opened, after a few jokes—though he still claims not to be funny and just a “Sina Songwriter”—with “Let’s Not Hate the Americans” on guitar. The song was almost forgotten by Khani himself, but it’s still a famous underground anthem. I even wrote another song inspired by it during those surreal COVID months in 2020.
Then, things moved quickly. Sadouma leapt off the couch as new guests took his place. Salima El Muslima, whom I’d seen before, brought an award sculpture and began “canceling” a Dutch artist she accused of mistreating her. I had heard his name before, Himmelbach, but apparently, he hadn’t left much of an impression on me. Salima accused Himmelbach of threatening her Ukrainian friend Jelena, who suffers from psychosis, and of manipulating her into stealing the award sculpture he made, only to pressure her to give it back under threat of calling the police. Jelena almost relapsed into psychosis, triggering her trauma. “These fake artists,” Salima said, “offering a woke award only to demand it back, are all about subsidy money. That’s what art is about these days: money!”
Another woman, Sharkurtala, took a seat on the couch (this is starting to sound very Freudian) and launched into a tirade against Steven Ruitenbeek (from KIRAC), “who nominated a racist for the award.” The atmosphere in the Unsafe “Garage” turned decidedly feminist. Himmelbach and Ruitenbeek “blocked her,” and she responded, “You can talk to my lawyer later!” (The crowd cheered.)
Younes Bouadi showed up, a former campaigner in the US and now a consultant in the Netherlands. He started his career in 2004, working for a voting activation program to increase voter turnout. “You can only do this by pretending to care and be interested,” he said. Edo Blaauw jumped in: “Do you really care?”
The discussion took a more serious turn until Sina Khani asked the audience, “Who wants to see my penis?” Steven Bos ordered him and Blaauw off the stage. Blaauw refused to surrender the mic, but Bos finally succeeded, and he invited Salima El Musalima, Amsterdam’s first female imam!
During the break, Sina Khani came up to me while I was streaming the entire event on the Radio Neverno Instagram and apologized LIVE to the audience for making “racist remarks—it’s a comedy show!”
I got a strong Moscow Mule (vodka, ginger beer, lemon, gin) and got tipsy. After the break, they asked me to join them on the couch myself, but that’s another story…