the BackStory to:   Amsterdam Lunch Counter Crime Spree series *Amsterdam, Holland -- 2008

                    Nearly every workday that I find myself roaming the streets of Amsterdam Centraal -- generally enjoying myself and trolling for streetphotos -- I end up stopping at my favorite sandwich shop tucked into the dark and narrow Zoutsteeg alley off Damrock (street) near Dam Square.  I've been eating at that joint ever since I stumbled onto it and found out how good (and cheap!) it was on my fifth visit to Amsterdam in 1990. It's a tiny, tiny little deli with a big case of delicious meats, fishes, and cheeses and only five seats to dine at, and it has one of the more consistently unpleasant proprietors I've ever encountered in all my travels.

          I can't tell you what his name is, although I've surely ordered his freshly sliced roast beef sandwich on a Keiser roll with butter and a couple of quarter-liter cartons of low fat milk at least a hundred times.  He's so reliably dour and glum, this proprietor, and so impatient with dawdlers and sometimes nearly nasty -- that he eventually reminded me of a character on the popular US television show Seinfeld, and I quietly began referring to him around my wife and Dutch friends as the "Brodjie Nazi."

          Brodjie?
         That's the word for bread shop (sandwiches) in the Netherlands, and although traditionally topped with haring or other fish of the season, on more than 100 occasions I've ordered my regular roast beef meal with butter and milk from that Brodjie Nazi. And the most I'd ever gotten from him in return aside from the expertly made and tasty cheap meal was a grunt of recognition for being a semi-regular patron and a feebly forced half smirk, half smile.

          Despite himself, I like the brodjie Nazi. And I like his little tucked-in deli off the little Zoutsteeg alley off the Dam.

          And I especially like getting to sit in the window seat, where I can both eat my little brodjie meal and continue to make streetphotos at the same time.  I use the sandwich shop sign painted on the window as a foreground color splash, and I try to capture close-up pedestrians as they flash past down the narrow alley -- generally head-and-feet-chopped-off photographs I like to call Blow-By Streetphotos.

          Over the years I've gotten that window seat about 30 times and during all those shoots (lunches) I'd managed to collect exactly zero noteworthy images for my portfolio.

          Zero!

          But that hardly mattered to me, really.

          I love the Brodjie Nazi's little roast beef meals, I always love being in Amsterdam, and I always love making streetphotos -- even at places where I never seem to score ... ... ...

          And so there I was at my dinner break one afternoon in the winter 0f 2008 -- fortunate enough to have gotten the window seat -- and elbow deep in buttered bread, rare paper-thin-sliced roast beef, and low fat milk ... ... ... and suddenly I heard heavy frantic footsteps pounding toward me down the alley from the Damrock to my left ... ... ... and I quickly dropped the brodjie and swung the pre-aligned camera up and pushed the trigger ... ... ... "I think it was cops," I remember thinking ... ... ... and then another policeman (security guard?) came whizzing past and I captured him as well ... ... ... and then it got quiet.
 

          I lowered the camera and picked the crumbling brodjie back up and took a bite. Then, the fellow sitting next to me in one of the other four seats in the place eating his lunch giggled and I paused mid-bite and looked over at him. He smiled and said in Dutch, "Nice shot!  I smiled back at him and said thanks and we struck up a conversation that was a minute or two old -- chatting about the current level of crime in Amsterdam and why I was taking pictures through the window ... ... ... when I sensed movement coming up the alley from the right and I stopped talking, dropped what was left of the sandwich onto the plate, raised the still pre-aligned camera and comfortably captured the last of my little Amsterdam crime spree drama series (it was one of the uniforms who'd ran past the minute before, bum-rushing a suspect back toward her destiny) from the window seat at the Brodjie Nazi deli off the Zoutsteeg Alley off the Dam ...

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