The Corner Hashish Joint : Amsterdam’s ‘Cannabis Cafe’ Habitues Sip Espresso, Nibble Pastries and Openly Smoke Potent Dope

AMSTERDAM —  One of the great pastimes for many of the people who inhabit or visit this picturesque city of tranquil canals and 17th-Century architecture is to linger in a coffeehouse with a cappuccino , a pastry and a big, fat joint stuffed with supercharged dope.

In hundreds of establishments, patrons can casually order up an espresso, a chunk of Nepalese hashish and a side order of rolling papers. Just say “Sensimilla,” and you get a little packet of marijuana that the purveyor promises will enliven the conversation at your table.

Marijuana and hashish are generally sold right next to the drinks and snacks in the city’s extensive network of “coffeeshops” or “cannabis cafes,” as they’re also known. Sometimes the drugs are available at the counter; sometimes they’re sold by a guy sitting over in the corner. There’s always a menu specifying type, quantity and price, making comparison shopping easy.

“It’s just like going to a bar to have a drink,” says Sue Medeiros, an American belly dancer who has lived in Amsterdam for 17 years. “You go into a coffeeshop to have a smoke. I don’t do it myself, but I’m not opposed to it. I think it’s much better that it’s all aboveboard.”

Indeed, coffeehouses offering “soft” drugs have become so pervasive and popular in Amsterdam that they’ve even splintered into sub-categories that cater to different sorts of customers, like American bars.

At a dimly lit place called De Tweede Kamer (The Second Room), for example, the atmosphere is reminiscent of a sports bar, with a noisy all-male crowd sitting around smoking dope while watching Dutch baseball on a TV affixed to the ceiling.

Chocolade has built its reputation around desserts such as homemade cakes, fudge, chocolates and, for true snack connoisseurs, Rice Krispies. The Otherside, decorated in high-tech modern, is considered the best gay coffeehouse in Amsterdam and features 20 kinds of milk and yogurt shakes, along with the full array of coffees. The extensive drug menu is handwritten on a chalkboard at the front counter.

In many respects, Amsterdam’s circuit of coffeeshops is similar to the burgeoning coffeehouse scene in Los Angeles, offering a place for people--mostly youngish--to relax, hang out with friends, listen to music and consume something other than alcohol.

But where denizens of L.A.’s pik-me-up or Bourgeois Pig might contemplate whether to get decadent and drop a couple of cubes of sugar into their double-decaf capps, Amsterdam’s coffeehouse habitues consider whether they’re in the mood for blond hash (a giddy high) or dark hash (a serious zonking).

Although it’s only 5 feet, 9 inches from floor to ceiling in this stark basement room, the sign reading “Mind Your Head” is not necessarily about avoiding a bump on the noggin.

This is the cellar of the Grasshopper coffeeshop, but not the part where you buy coffee. This is where you buy the stuff to smoke upstairs with your caffe latte and Earl Grey tea. Unlike most of its counterparts, the Grasshopper has created a separate space for drug sales.

The menu is distinctive: Push a button, and a wall-mounted display case lights up, showing neatly organized little packets of cannabis, each accompanied by the standard consumer information blurb.

There are 14 types of hashish, including “Kashmir,” “Lebanon” and “Zero-Zero,” and a similar number of marijuana packets with names such as “Grasshopper Special,” “Skunk,” “Purple Sensi” and “Thai.” (Most of the goods cost less than $10 a gram. As one police officer notes, “It’s cheap.”)

An inflatable globe inside the Grasshopper’s display case emphasizes the international dimensions of the trade.

Over in the corner, behind a glass window like a bank teller, is the friendly house drug dealer, Sander.

“I’ve got a secret for you,” he says, smiling. He pulls out a rectangular Tupperware container, which surely would have stored yesterday’s tuna casserole under different ownership, and opens the lid to expose moist clumps of marijuana.

“You want a blast in your head?” he asks. “Just take a couple hits, and in 10 minutes you won’t know what you’re doing.”

The name of this off-the-menu special?

“Holland’s Hope,” Sander says.

Clearly, not everyone is enamored by this flagrant consumption of cannabis, and many consider Amsterdam a sister city of Sodom and Gomorrah. But finding critics within Amsterdam itself isn’t easy.

“It’s rather accepted in our culture,” says Kurt Van Es, who reports on the drug trade for the Dutch newspaper Het Parool. “When there is opposition, it’s aimed at hard drugs, or too much noise, or other criminal activity.”

Both the Dutch Ministry of Justice and the Amsterdam Police Department proudly point to the coffeehouse scene as a social system that has reduced drug-related crime and limited the number of people who abuse hard drugs, such as cocaine and heroin.

“We see no harm in possessing or using soft drugs,” says Ministry of Justice spokeswoman Jannie Pols. Government research has shown that “most of the people who use soft drugs don’t use hard drugs,” she adds. “And they stop (smoking marijuana and hashish) after a certain age. We know that.”

With those conclusions and stats in mind, the government set out to discourage cannabis users from getting entangled in the world of hard drugs.

“We want to separate the market,” says Pols. “That’s why the coffeeshops are tolerated. We hope people who want to try soft drugs don’t go to people selling hard drugs.”

Toleration is an important word here, because none of this is legal. Under the current drug law, the 1976 Opium Act, the importing, trafficking and possession of cannabis are illegal. But possession and selling of amounts less than 30 grams are classified as misdemeanors and given minimal--read: zilch --policing priority.

That’s not to say that anarchy prevails. The police strictly enforce rules against selling hard drugs, selling cannabis to minors and advertising. And complaints from neighbors can shut down a coffeeshop.

Police also have struck back at attempts to exceed the boundaries of their tolerance. A factory producing something called “Space Cakes” was raided and closed, as was an enterprising dope-to-your-door delivery outfit called Blow Home Courier Service.

Between 20 and 30 coffeeshops are shuttered by police each year for one reason or another, says Klaas Wilting, spokesman for the Amsterdam police.

Ironically, the illegality of the drug business means that cannabis cafes cannot be licensed, so anyone can open one and little is known about how many there are and how much they earn.

Wilting guesses there are 200 coffeehouses in Amsterdam, “maybe more.” Journalist Van Es believes there may be as many as 400 and cites Dutch government figures estimating the nationwide value of the soft-drug trade at 650 million guilders a year, or about $400 million.

How does all that dope get to all those coffeehouses?

Don’t everybody raise your hand at once.

“I don’t know,” says police spokesman Wilting.

“I can’t tell you that,” giggles Sander, the dealer at the Grasshopper.

The Bulldog is credited as the oldest cannabis cafe in Amsterdam, starting up in 1975, a year before the current drug laws were enacted. It also appears to be the big success story of the coffeehouse scene, with three outlets around Amsterdam, including one in the main entertainment plaza, the Leidseplein. There’s also a Bulldog cocktail bar, a Bulldog bicycle rental service and a Bulldog souvenir shop that sells T-shirts, denim jackets, caps, ashtrays, lighters, rolling papers and shelves of other items, all emblazoned with the company logo of a cartoon bulldog with a studded collar.

At the main Bulldog on the Leidseplein, right next to a giant Burger King, the “house rules” are spelled out over the entrance in Dutch, French, German and English. “No alcohol--No hard drugs--No aggression. By not following the rules, you will be thrown out.”

Inside, it is dark, crowded and vibrant, with rock videos blasting out of the TV and customers chatting and passing joints. There doesn’t appear to be a nonsmoking section.

At the front counter are two young guys from Zurich. One sips his coffee while the other rolls a joint in a fairly complicated manner that involves twisting the cigarette paper into a cone and clipping off a protruding edge.

“They are tolerant of drugs in Zurich,” says one of the guys. “But not like this.”

It is not immediately clear where the drug sales take place in here. But closer scrutiny reveals a man with a long black ponytail sitting discreetly in the corner alongside a counter with three drawers. A printed drug menu is on the wall above him.

The dealer, who says his name is Rowdy, doesn’t want to talk much about himself or his livelihood but is willing to give a few insights during a lull in sales. He is 34, he’s been dealing drugs for 15 years, and he’s part of a dealers’ cooperative that rents the counter space from the Bulldog. Sensimilla, a particularly potent strain of marijuana, is the most popular item on the menu.

Rowdy doesn’t want to discuss much else. But he would like to get in a plug for the Bulldog.

“High quality and atmosphere,” he says, sounding like a TV commercial. “In Amsterdam, we’re still the first and best.”