[conspire] Argh! The Dutch!

[Ruben Safir]

On Mon, Jun 08, 2020 at 01:11:06PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):
> 
> > yeah.. I like the Dutch.  I think it helps that I have lived most of my
> > life in a Dutch influenced city.
> 
> In all of the many times I've been in NYC, although I see countless
> historical reminders of the Dutch founding in names of streets and other
> things, I never found more than the faintest residual whiffs of Dutch
> cultural content or influence (beyond those placenames).
> 
> NYC is even less Dutch, in my experience, than Calgary is British.[1]

I can't speak much of Calgary but Brooklyn entirely has a Dutch
character from the street layouts to the generally tolerant attitude and
buiness.  Immediately, as soon as I got to Amsterdam, I could see in the
rail station and the trolley depot a distinctly New York rhythm in the
people who were scurying through the station, trying to make trains.

It was quite evident and firmly different than Madrid, London, Paris,
Bordauex, or San Fransico, or even Chicago.  It is tight, and wound up, 
and full of oppurtunity.  It's is a hustling city.



> 
> I happened to have been feeling nostalgic for the British Hong Kong of
> my youth, when Deirdre and I went to Calgary (Alberta) for the Westercon
> ('Due North'), held at the Westin Calgary, downtown.  So, I searched
> high and low for even a particle of residual British culture.  Nope.
> Culturally speaking, Calgary is Denver with a slightly different accent,
> a big oil and gas drilling industry, and national health insurance.
> Texas with better weather and better manners.
> 
> On our second-to-law day, I happened to visit historic Fort Calgary,
> established in 1875 as Fort Brisebois by the newly formed Dominion of
> Canada.  Finally, if you closed your eyes and enabled your imagination
> enough that you smelled tea brewing, you could pick up some homeopathic
> trace of the UK.  And then the whiff fades away, and... Denver.
> 
> The experience of standing looking at the Wallabout Market in Brooklyn
> and imagine it being Dutch (it never was; the only remaining building
> from New Amsterdam, The Rigging House at 120 William Street in lower
> Manhattan, was demolished in 1854), in other words, not satisfactory.
> The Wallabout Market is merely Dutch Colonial _Revival_ architecture.
> 
> [1] Or even less Dutch than San Francisco is Spanish.
>

The Dutch are still here, although more in Jersey,  The Lots, Wyckoffs,
Stricklands, Vanderbuilts etc... are all still fully represented.

https://buttonagreement.blogspot.com/2014/11/all-dutch-houses-in-brooklyn-plus-three.html

http://www.brooklynonline.com/bol/history/

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