In Goldmember, the 2002 installment of the Austin Powers series, one character says (without a hint of irony), “There’s only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.” The Dutch have a magnificent cultural heritage, but Amsterdam and the local Occupy Amsterdam protesters have a custom that no Dutch master would paint: open-air urinals.
In a blog post about her recent visit to Amsterdam, Bess Weatherby provided some photos that show the Occupiers there have a sense of irony. For instance, they’ve hung a banner over their encampment, “Share Square,” which they joke was “made possible by” a series of corporations. “This is sarcasm,” the protesters wrote to explain their joke. (If they’re anything like the Occupy DC crowd, though, the Occupiers probably do depend on corporations.)
Weatherby observes one un-ironic aspect of the camp that reveals “just how progressive the Dutch really are . . . a public, open-air urinal.”
Apparently, they have those in Amsterdam, where public urination happens a bit too much. Open-air urinals can also be found in Sydney, Australia, where reportedly “Sydney’s center apparently is so plagued by public urination that the local council claims it faces a yearly clean-up bill of $7 million, and it’s desperate to stem the tide.”
You can read Weatherby’s full post, and see more photos, here.
