The whole month of August, I will be doing an intensive course. I will be in Amsterdam from Monday to Friday, so Rihanna Gaga and me will have our weekly beach breakfasts on Saturday, starting this Saturday.
Scheveningen beach on a Saturday morning in the midst of the summer season is completely different from Scheveningen beach on a Monday morning. There are people everywhere - there are especially German people everywhere, even though the weather is not very sunny. In fact, the clouds look quite threatening as we make our way to the beach. The day is not the only thing that is different today. Whereas we normally walk to the beach, with Rihanna Gaga in her stroller, today we bicycle. And we are joined by my girlfriend.
Unlike on earlier Monday mornings when we visited the northern beach, the more hip and trendy, party-oriented beach clubs around here are open today. Well, actually not all of them. Two - Woosah and De Karavaan - were recently closed because police found patrons carrying large quantities of drugs on their premises. It's a bit of a catastrophe - these large beach clubs employ many people who are now without a job and especially Woosah is an important part of the northern beach scene. One wonders if they will survive the significant loss of income. We are visiting Boomerang Beach Beachclub and Lounge today, which is next to De Karavaan. Normally one of the livelier beach clubs, it is now a sorry sight, surrounded by fences and with a large part of its interior already stripped down. It will not open again this summer and will probably soon be taken down. The closing of these clubs is the talk of the town in Scheveningen. I must say that, even though I understand that club owners must be in some way accountable for what goes on on their premises, it seems hardly fair to destroy businesses this way simply because patrons misbehave. The beachclubs are such an important part of the Scheveningen economy, that it somehow feels misguided to crack down so strongly on these clubs.
Boomerang looks brilliant - in fact, it would be a serious contender for the first place in a Scheveningen contest for beach club design. Beautifully executed in dark green, lime green and white, the most striking aspect of Boomerang's design is the outer wall of the beach club itself: this is made up entirely of what look like irregular book shelves, like an enormous IKEA-construction made by someone who got the instructions mixed up and then painted the entire thing green. The shelves are filled with dried flowers, bottles, shells and other bits and pieces. The terrace is divided in larger areas and smaller, private parts.
Not only does Boomerang look great, their ethnically flavoured lounge music buys them some serious beach life kudos too. Laidback and upbeat at the same time, the music they play is literally the soundtrack of a long, hot, lazy summer - palmtrees, bikinis, cocktails, summernight clubbing and drunken late night skinnydipping in the sea turned into sound. Rihanna Gaga very much approves of this and starts dancing right away. I notice she is not shaking randombly to music anymore, as she did when she just started to move to sounds, but rocking to the beat. At moments, when she's standing up and holding on to the edge of the lounge couches on which we've settled, she is actually swinging her hips.
As can be expected from a place like this, Boomerang Beach's staff is made up of pretty girls and handsome boys - the type of people who, if they don't look dashingly beautiful, know how to fake it to the point where it becomes impossible to tell the two apart. The same goes for the crowd that bide their time here: it's made up of the hip and trendy and those who'd like to think of themselves as hip and trendy and it's no use to try and tell who is who (although those who are really hip and trendy probably could sharply distinguish between the two).
It takes a while before we manage to get the attention of one of the waitresses. Boomerang does not have a set breakfast, but an excellent breakfast menu, of which I choose the omelet with salmon and spinach for a reasonable €8,50. My girlfriend orders a wrap and then takes Rihanna Gaga to the beach to play in the sand.
When our food arrives, the omelet is huge and a bit heavy on the stomach. Probably good hangover food after overloading on cocktails in the same place on the previous night. I forgot to bring Rihanna Gaga's mashed fruits, so we feed her the bits of strawberry and apple that went with our smoothie. She enjoys those, as well as the cucumber and tomatoes that were served with my omelette.
By now, the sun is shining. It's still cloudy, but the sun manages to break through every once and a while. More and more people are filling up the beaches, but after a short visit to the surf - Rihanna Gaga doesn't like the water washing over her feet - we move in the opposite direction, back home again.
Scheveningen beach on a Saturday morning in the midst of the summer season is completely different from Scheveningen beach on a Monday morning. There are people everywhere - there are especially German people everywhere, even though the weather is not very sunny. In fact, the clouds look quite threatening as we make our way to the beach. The day is not the only thing that is different today. Whereas we normally walk to the beach, with Rihanna Gaga in her stroller, today we bicycle. And we are joined by my girlfriend.
Unlike on earlier Monday mornings when we visited the northern beach, the more hip and trendy, party-oriented beach clubs around here are open today. Well, actually not all of them. Two - Woosah and De Karavaan - were recently closed because police found patrons carrying large quantities of drugs on their premises. It's a bit of a catastrophe - these large beach clubs employ many people who are now without a job and especially Woosah is an important part of the northern beach scene. One wonders if they will survive the significant loss of income. We are visiting Boomerang Beach Beachclub and Lounge today, which is next to De Karavaan. Normally one of the livelier beach clubs, it is now a sorry sight, surrounded by fences and with a large part of its interior already stripped down. It will not open again this summer and will probably soon be taken down. The closing of these clubs is the talk of the town in Scheveningen. I must say that, even though I understand that club owners must be in some way accountable for what goes on on their premises, it seems hardly fair to destroy businesses this way simply because patrons misbehave. The beachclubs are such an important part of the Scheveningen economy, that it somehow feels misguided to crack down so strongly on these clubs.
Boomerang looks brilliant - in fact, it would be a serious contender for the first place in a Scheveningen contest for beach club design. Beautifully executed in dark green, lime green and white, the most striking aspect of Boomerang's design is the outer wall of the beach club itself: this is made up entirely of what look like irregular book shelves, like an enormous IKEA-construction made by someone who got the instructions mixed up and then painted the entire thing green. The shelves are filled with dried flowers, bottles, shells and other bits and pieces. The terrace is divided in larger areas and smaller, private parts.
Not only does Boomerang look great, their ethnically flavoured lounge music buys them some serious beach life kudos too. Laidback and upbeat at the same time, the music they play is literally the soundtrack of a long, hot, lazy summer - palmtrees, bikinis, cocktails, summernight clubbing and drunken late night skinnydipping in the sea turned into sound. Rihanna Gaga very much approves of this and starts dancing right away. I notice she is not shaking randombly to music anymore, as she did when she just started to move to sounds, but rocking to the beat. At moments, when she's standing up and holding on to the edge of the lounge couches on which we've settled, she is actually swinging her hips.As can be expected from a place like this, Boomerang Beach's staff is made up of pretty girls and handsome boys - the type of people who, if they don't look dashingly beautiful, know how to fake it to the point where it becomes impossible to tell the two apart. The same goes for the crowd that bide their time here: it's made up of the hip and trendy and those who'd like to think of themselves as hip and trendy and it's no use to try and tell who is who (although those who are really hip and trendy probably could sharply distinguish between the two).
It takes a while before we manage to get the attention of one of the waitresses. Boomerang does not have a set breakfast, but an excellent breakfast menu, of which I choose the omelet with salmon and spinach for a reasonable €8,50. My girlfriend orders a wrap and then takes Rihanna Gaga to the beach to play in the sand.
When our food arrives, the omelet is huge and a bit heavy on the stomach. Probably good hangover food after overloading on cocktails in the same place on the previous night. I forgot to bring Rihanna Gaga's mashed fruits, so we feed her the bits of strawberry and apple that went with our smoothie. She enjoys those, as well as the cucumber and tomatoes that were served with my omelette.
By now, the sun is shining. It's still cloudy, but the sun manages to break through every once and a while. More and more people are filling up the beaches, but after a short visit to the surf - Rihanna Gaga doesn't like the water washing over her feet - we move in the opposite direction, back home again.
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