Yab Yum and ice cream
We are in school and the teacher, Edna, has a question for little Johnny. So she goes … “Johnny, you see 4 birds on a wire. Someone shoots 2 birds. Now, how many birds are left?” Johnny replies “None, because the other 2 birds are sure to fly away.” Edna replies “It is not the answer I was looking for but I like your way of thinking.” Now Johnny goes “I have a question for you … There are three women eating ice cream. The first one is licking her ice cream cone, the second one is sort of sucking on it and the third one is putting her teeth into it, biting big chucks at a time. Now … how do you know which one is married?” Edna is not sure but replies “The one sucking her ice cream?” Johnny replies “No, the one with the wedding band but … I like your way of thinking!” … What is happening to this world? …
What comes to mind when you think of Holland? In the answer there is probably something with wooden shoes, tulips, windmills, drugs and the red light district. Pick one … OK, the last one it is.
In the paper this week: “Yab Yum out of business” What’s this, the most exclusive (in)famous brothel in Holland is to close it’s doors? Yes, the license has been revoked as a result of “alleged” criminal activity. I didn’t know that alleged criminal activity is the standard for revoking licenses. Back in the old days there was something that you are innocent until proven guilty. With the same breath one could muster “The difference between being guilty or innocent is a great lawyer”, so wait and see … In reading the motivation for closing Yab Yum it is clear that this establishment did attract a number of gentlemen with a smutch or two on their name. In the list we find big time drug trafficker Klaas Bruinsma and his associate Roy Adkins. Adkins was assassinated in 1990, Bruinsma received similar treatment in 1991. After Bruinsma’s death Sam Klepper and John Mieremet, associates of Bruinsma, took over Yab Yum, so the story goes. There were more gangster type figures involved over the years but this has never been “officially” confirmed. In 2000 Klepper was murdered. Having survived an assassination attempt in 2002, Mieremet was … murdered in 2005. Somewhere in all this there is an honorable mention regarding the Dutch Hells Angels. Next to that Yab Yum has also been mentioned in connection to various corruption affairs. Allegedly various civil servants were bribed with visits to Yab Yum plus insider information for stock deals was supposedly obtained from big shot executives who frequented Yab Yum at the expense of various “sponsors.”
One might argue that the club is/was very much self cleansing, all the bad guys have a tendency to end up very dead. Also, did someone revoke a “get in for free pass” issued to a civil servant in charge of the licensing because it took about two decades of mafia activity to figure out that this was hardly a “decent” brothel.
Here is a suggestion: make it into a museum and sell off the majority of the inventory on e-bay. People are selling chestnuts from the tree in front of the Anne Frank house on e-bay for EURO 1,700.-. Just imagine what a bottle of original Yab Yum Chateau Migraine will do! There is money to be made here. Another option … sell the business to a foreign investor. The name alone is worth something. It has a high “Cocktails and dreams” ring to it. I can see a franchise in this: “Dutch export of know-how of the finer things in life.” We sell banks, steel works, energy companies, shipping companies so why not Yab Yum?
When someone comes up to me with “Don’t I know you from somewhere” and an innocent joke is appropriate I might reply by saying “Cell block B” or “I guess Yab Yum last week, right?” It is the running gag. So much for that. I have to go find me another one. What I am really mad about is that nobody ever tried to bribe me with a visit to Yab Yum! No field trip, no nothing, I have to read about all this in the paper!
In case you are wondering what Yab Yum means: it is the symbol of the tantric union of male and female in Tibetan Buddhism.