Well, as it turns out, the city provides more than adequate sparkle, and I have no need of chemical augmentation.

Imagine the Castro Street Fair covering a quarter of San Francisco.

Just as in SF, vehicular traffic is banned from the thronged streets, and there is a double row of street vendors. People drink anything they wish freely in the streets, and there is a lot of well-amplified music, not only from bands but also from upper apartments with speakers in the windows. Some street vendors are selling food, of course, and there are others selling arts and crafts. Most restaurants have some kind of booth in front from which they sell a few items.

And then the differences begin. Here, there are vendors selling flea market items, pretty much everything. And in the residential areas, the great majority of the houses feature garage sales with the entire household out there, and the focus seems to be less on the commercial aspect than on the social.

And then there are the canals. They are full of boats ranging from barely more than rowboats with an outboard motor to giant canal boats full of tourists, but most especially there are flat boats on which there are powerful amplifiers blasting music to which a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd dances, rather like a float in a parade.

At least this is what it's like in the Jordaan, where Rafaël and I go at noon. We join the crowd on the streets, which seem to consist mostly of couples although there are small groups and a fair number of kids with one or both parents.

Seeing the young couples hand-in-hand makes me think of Allen's friend Laura, who had this boyfriend who was as gorgeous as he was studly, but who, if she had to pick a flaw, wasn't as demonstrative as she might have liked. This changed immediately when she moved into the Castro. When they went out in the neighborhood, in which in the early eighties the pedestrians were overwhelmingly gay men, he started keeping at least one hand somewhere on her at all times...and encouraged her to do likewise. Alas, as she said, it was too good to last.

But anyhow, Rafaël and I are out with the idea of strolling down Raadhuisstraat and then drifting over across Prinsengracht to the Duende so we can see Rita's group of flamenco singers perform. Raadhuisstraat is a hoot, and you see wonderful culture-clash sights....like the Peruvian Indian woman playing on that South American panpipe a haunting melody which after a few moments I realize is "The House of the Rising Sun." That scores three continents and maybe twice that many cultures.

Unfortunately, I'm having such fun strolling along Raadhuisstraat that I neglect to steer us right onto the Prinsengracht, which ended up complicating the journey quite a bit. I didn't really notice this, but at Prinsengracht Raadhuisstraat takes a bend of which, to quote Gertrude Stein, the asperity is subtle. This has the effect of pretty much doubling the distance between the grachts.

So when we come to Lijnbaansgracht and I realize that I've overshot Prinsengracht, I'm not concerned because I know that all I have to do is turn right on Lijnbaansgracht and then make another right on any of the next few streets, and we'll run right back down to Prinsengracht.

The increased distances, though, cause Rafaël to experience a loss of confidence, or perhaps I could more accurately say that he senses my own loss of confidence and articulates it...repeatedly. But we eventually get back onto Prinsengracht and are much relieved when we go past Els and Rene's bar and Rene reassures me that the Duende is where I think it is. Neither of us knows the name of the street it's on, but we have it pretty well triangulated. No prob. Well, no prob except for the increasingly packed streets where simply moving forward has become a contact sport.

The canals, likewise, are jammed:

We make it, though, and enjoy the spectacle of Rina and friends singing flamenco to celebrate the Dutch queen's inauguration. I think she should have held out for a bullfight.

Afterwards, we swing wide a bit to avoid the worst of the body-crush and soak up a lot of joy as we work our way back home. After a pit stop, we set out again east and discover a wildly different scene.

No families. Few couples. Many groups consisting wholly of young men. Still, an atmosphere of fun, and we drift over across the Damrak at the Bijenkorf and down Warmoestraat and end up sitting in on a bench watching the crowd in front of what used to be Het Korbeel but is now a sports bar. I'd drunk a Heineken while we'd made our four-hour journey to the west, but I go ahead and get really wild and drink a second beer there on the bench.

After which, I've had enough and head home, stopping as I cross the Damrak to get some Vlaamse frites at that stand there where they're always just perfect. (I've gone native in several ways, but I don't think I'll ever want to eat mayonnaise on my french fries.) As I nibble them I walk back home along the route I took every day in 2001 between EasyEverything and Spuistraat 72, but tonight as I approach the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, the demographics take an abrupt turn.

Suddenly, in the Nieuwezijds Kolk, in the open space between the hotels, the crowd grows dense; and equally suddenly it becomes exclusively late teens/early twenties and only halfheartedly dancing to the music blasting from all sides. More like just waiting for the action to start. About a thousand of them, overwhelmingly men.

I feel very out of place and move carefully through the slightly sparser edge of the crowd until I get to the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, just as a troup of mounted police is cantering past. Things get ugly fast. The cops up their speed, and instantly the air is full of bottles flying at them, all or virtually all plastic, but still....

I notice two middle-aged couples who are, like me, moving purposefully to get across the street and away from this crowd while the getting is good. Groups of young people are shouting and running in both directions on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal while I dive into Korte Kolksteeg, the little street north of my usual Lijnbaanssteeg, so as to get over to the presumed safety of Spuistraat before the cavalry charges. Even though I can walk well now, I can't run fast or far, and I want to get a corner between me and this scene....ideally two corners.

But even on Spuistraat there is an edge, and I feel a distinct sense of relief when I gain my doorstep.

After another rest I go out for a final loop to the west, guzzling my third beer for the day, but by this time the only folks left on the streets are younger and rowdier and all the vendors are closing down. The party is definitely over for most people, especially those over thirty.

So strange, the difference between the great, loose fun of the Jordaan during the day, like San Francisco street fairs but maybe even better, and the increasingly ugly vibes to the east as the day goes on. And yes, to be fair, I've seen bad behavior in The Castro on New Year's Eve after midnight....and well, yes, seriously ugly incidents on Halloween from isolated troublemakers.

What I hadn't seen is whole barrels of apples eager for a chance to go rotten.