Looking for St. Johan (1): From The Bijlmermeer to De Meer

In the heart of the Biljmer is the stadium they used to call Ajax Arena, shown here in context:

Source:  Wikipedia

It has a new name now:

Source: ANP

When Johan Cruyff (anglicized spelling) passed in 2016, I wondered how the Dutch would manage his memory.  Cruyff was still alive went I first visited the arena's museum, and he was one of many featured players, not given special treatment.

Can you really do that to Mozart?  Well, they did.  But now...as I walked past this weekend, I saw a banner:

It looks like now he has been fast-tracked for immortality.  I've wandered around Amsterdam a fair bit over the years, and I've never seen anything like this.  I feel for the young Albanian who might ask "is this your dictator?" and they say no, he was just a really good forward.

And that's not all:  statues are going up.  In Amsterdam a collective effort (of course) raised 75,000 Euros to put one here.  They are putting one up in Barcelona as well, and Barcelona are building a new stadium for their youth team, and guess whose name is going on that.

Johan, three years after you left, you've arrived.

But...what the hell?  Cruyff only ever registered on my consciousness in 2014, and my dominant thought then was - "why doesn't everyone in the world know about this guy?"  Well, if the Dutch and Catalans have their way, now everyone will.

One thing that has happened since his death has been the rise of nationalism, extremism, fascism - all the shitty -isms.  Maybe this brings him up in people's consciousness because Johan was having none of that.

He:

- Was Dutch.
- Said he'd never play for Madrid because of the association with Franco.
- Came from East Amsterdam, played for "Jewish" Ajax, had Jewish relatives, and visited the Holocaust Memorial in Israel.


All statements about Cruyff are contestable and have been contested, but people who argue about this aspect are full of shit.  Let me give you the full flavor of it, from The Jewish Chronicle piece linked above:

Frits Barend, a Jewish sports journalist who was a friend of Cruyff's for 48 years, was not yet born when his brother and parents had to flee their home during the German invasion in 1940. 

They were hidden by a local farmer called Frits, whom he was named after. Four decades later, with Cruyff due to attend a Netherlands game 15 miles from the farm, Barend saw a way to repay his namesake.

"I took the man who saved our lives - an old, sick farmer who could only wear wooden shoes because his feet hurt - to see Johan. 

"And I said to Johan: 'This is the guy I told you about, who gave shelter to my family in the war,' and he said: 'Oh, of course - you are the guy who saved the lives of Frits's family. I'm proud of you. How nice to meet you."' 

"While others laughed at the old man for wearing wooden shoes, Johan talked to him for five minutes. The farmer died three months later but, before that, he could tell his friends: 'I met Johan Cruyff. He's a good guy.'" 

So I went out to find St. Johan.  His statue will be at the Arena, but his soul - his soul has to be at De Meer.  You see, Cruyff never played in the place that now bears his name, it went up long after he retired.  His home pitch - literally - was De Meer, a small grounds in East Amsterdam where Ajax played most of its matches, a few blocks from where he lived and went to school.

So let's walk over there.  My hotel is at the Arena, and there's a big pedestrian mall there, drably modernist but decorated with trees and flowers (more on this: 'When Modern Was Green'), and full of small but good restaurants.  Guys on electric scooters zip by, delivering food to folks in the nearby apartment buildings.

This whole section of Amsterdam is built on early modernist principles, which means pedestrians get the ground level while car traffic runs a level above.  This keeps vehicle noise and exhaust away from the daily life of the neighborhood.  We turn left and there at the end of the block, steps go up:

Time to level up:

This is the transit level.  Cars, bus stops, and a few store fronts, but not many.

Crossing the street and going back down we're in a new neighborhood.  Very basic structures.

Andre Sakharov Street.  Fleerde is the neighborhood - I think they knocked down a 1970-vintage high rise near here in the early 90s and replaced it with some lower profile buildings.  These might be some of those - a lot of this part of Amsterdam has been de-built:

A little further down the road, and some nicer buildings.  As the country developed after the war the Dutch climbed up the hierarchy of needs, gradually returning to their longtime aesthetic preoccupation structure and land/waterscape.  They are good at this:

Across the bridge, a pedestrian path up to a somewhat isolated group of modernist buildings.

I hear a loud family argument from somewhere, a pretty girl walking her dog gives a wave.  Everyone I see is black - I'm guessing Surinamese.  When Surinam declared its independence in the 1970s there was a wave of immigration to The Netherlands, and many black and mixed race families ended up in this part of town.

Out back, a little bit of Johan - a game of football.  

One problem with multi-level modernism is that the separation of humans from traffic is not always desirable.  Here you have a crossing that might be safer at night on the same level as the street.  So they are planning to redesign some areas to remedy this.

Crossing through, a park strip shields high-volume highways on the left, and the footpath follows a canal to the right.

Old bridge fallen down.  You see cranes everywhere in Amsterdam now.  The world is awash in capital looking for a home, the British are taking themselves out of the game, and friendly global Amsterdam is in full expansion/renovation mode.

Cool: grey heron, just hanging out.

Past a school, and now a more ambitious project, a block of flats with balconies.  Neighbors leaning out and talking to each other.  A courtyard out front where people are gathered talking.  An example of what Dwell magazine has called 'Nice Modernism'.

Down the street a couple of bridges over canals.

Nice modernism!

And finally, we cross the Johan Cruyff bridge, and arrive at De Meer, which looks suspiciously like a residential neighborhood:



The old grounds was demolished in 1998 and replaced with nice apartment buildings.  Streets are named after other soccer venues (although the 'Wembley' sign has been unaccountably defaced...on both sides).

The bridges are named for Ajax legends of old, like "Piet Keizerbrug".  As every schoolchild knows, Piet Keizer was "widely considered one of the greatest players in Dutch football history. Dutch writer Nico Scheepmaker once said: 'Cruyff is the best, but Keizer is the better one.'" (Wikipedia)

Or "Sjaak Swartbrug", named for the man they call "Mr. Ajax".  Swart is Jewish, spent his childhood hiding from the Germans, was one of the 25% of Dutch Jews who survived the war.  He holds the record for most matches played for Ajax, over six hundred.

Sjaak Swart has to be the best sidekick name ever, even better when covered with mud (St. Johan to the right):

Somewhere around here there is another one of those giant pictures of Cruyff, but no time to find it - it is starting to rain and I have no umbrella.  I move on briskly, out to a pastoral lane through an adjacent park...

...then up a level as fast as I can.  As the rain arrives I see nothing but bleak, faceless modernism,

and, fortunately, Maslow Cafe at the first door.  They have soup, samosas, cheese sandwiches, cappuccino, and a girl at the cash register with a pretty smile.  The room is warm and people are talking, the tables filling up as we damp stragglers come in.