The early days of the coffeeshops.

[Sailor59]

Reading through the travelogues brought back a few memories of the late 70s, and one in particular. The ship was berthed where the big cruise ships tie up now. Just up a bit from Voyagers. Two of us took three days station leave and hit the RLD making sure we were quite anonymous wherever possible. The first couple of days were more or less buy n fly back to the hotel and get wrecked. On the third day we were sat at the back of a coffeeshop on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal and got talking to an American GI on leave from Germany. He said he did frequent trips to stock up for his buddies and showed us a 100g slab of blueish hash he had bought. He built a couple up and it was excellent gear. It was what I would know now as a sativa hash. Dreamy but energetically trippy. He said it cost him 400 guilders which was about £100 (decent amount of cash then). I had to get hooked up to a bit of that so he introduced us and soon I was the owner of the same.

There would be no problem getting it back onto the ship or back out of Plymouth dockyard so I stowed it in my holdall well wrapped up. Almost straight away I got a message to report to my officer. I was shitting it big time. He took me into his cabin, sat me down and proceeded to tell me my sister was dangerously ill with peritonitis and to go and pack some kit and get back to him. Getting back to him he handed me an airline ticket, two weeks pay (no bank accounts then) and a leave pass for two weeks. It was only on the flight I remembered the hash in the bag. I was shitting it again big time but walked through customs accompanied by a customs officer who directed me to a Naval driver who was to take me to the hospital.

Getting to the hospital sister was well on the road to recovery so after seeing she was well supplied with magazines and fruit got home to the lads and 14 days of indulgence. It got that I had to find some black hash, not easy then, to get some good sleep.

More innocent times then.

[dude65]

Wow! The sailor's life

There was a time in my life when I would routinely buy hash in 100g "slablets". Fairly thin, about 7mm or so, but probably 10cm by 15cm. But it wasn't any magic stuff, just average maroccan hash.

It was just the cheapest and most convenient way to get the stuff. This was around 1988 ...

[Old Fart]

What a great story...thanks for posting it.

[Smirks]

We used to call it slate. £500 or so for a nine-bar circa 1990, which was two full slabs plus just over a half of a third one.

[TwoCanucks]

Great little yarn, I could listen to tales like this all day. different time indeed. thanks for posting

[bleak]

Very interesting!! Post more stories if you have em

If only I had a time machine, I would love to see how Amsterdam has changed since the 70's (and also how it hasn't changed at all!)

[Rusty Shackleford]

I enjoyed that Sailor

Makes me wish I had took my aul Da`s advice and joined the Navy

[Sailor59]

Thanks people. Will try and post another later. Thinking back, its a wonder I'm still here.

[spidergawd]

Thinking back, its a wonder I'm still here.

You and me too Sailor, I can remember coming off the gangway dodging across Prins Hendrikade straight into the RLD and all up those wicked little lanes off the Damrak, which then was a busy commercial waterway. I first visited in the mid 60's before coffeeshops, but bars like De kuil (420) were the early places for a toke .

I was in the Royal Navy right through the 60's but I'm happy to say that drugs terminated that career and I was able to join the Mercheant Navy where on a lot of ships in those days Captains preffered a stoned crew to a bunch piss artists. I finished up the sea in 1984, I had a young family then and I missed them.

But happy (mostly) dayz. Keep on truckin old timer. .

[Sailor59]

Not Amsterdam but this one sticks out as particularly memorable.

The tattoo, the haircut and copulating frogs.

We were in Fiji for a week in '79 and the smoke was desperately difficult to find so my toking friend and I went for a few beers. He wanted a tattoo, I needed a haircut. Wandering about Suva we stumbled across a barbershop that also happened to be a tattooists as well. A bit surreal but he got his tattoo as I got my hair cut. I asked the barber where, if anywhere, I could get something to smoke. He asked if I meant cigarettes, I said no. He set us up with a small bag of something or other for not a lot of money. We decided to get a bus the next day to Pacific Harbour beach and have a bit of a session.

Well, a slow 20 odd mile bus journey landed us at the beach. Grabbing a few cold beers we headed for a remote part of the beach up by the treeline and got going on the weed. A few Js and beers later the sun was getting us a bit tired and we must have crashed for a while. I woke up, sparked up a half spliff that was there and looked over at the mate. He was still fast asleep and on his chest were two frogs the size of teaplates very obviously shagging away. I got the giggles big time and he woke up. Focussing on the frogs he froze in a stoned fear and started shaking and dribbling. This was too much for me and I am ashamed to say I just sat there howling in laughter while trying to roll another. Eventually he got his act together and pushed the bloody things off his chest still locked in coitus.

I was the biggest bastard under the sun apparently as he kept telling me on the bus back to the barbers for a re-stock. He couldn't accompany me back to the beach a few days later as he developed quite a rash on his chest where the frogs had been. I bet that took a bit of explaining to the Doc. Me, I kept away from the trees.