I amsterdam - Best Cross-Dressing Festival

It’s a late summer weekend, and you’re strolling along the Zeedijk. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a ‘lady’—strapping shouldered, lantern jawed, and with distinctly hairy legs—dashing into one of the many bars that line the street. And another. ‘Fair enough,’ you think—after all, colourful characters are what give this neighbourhood on the fringes of the Red Light District its rich heritage. Then you glance into another bar, and see that it’s staffed by a girl with more facial fuzz than Tom Selleck, and that her six-foot four colleague’s impressive embonpoint appears to be made from two pink balloons.

Welcome to Hartjesdag—‘hearts’ day’—the festival where the Lords of Misrule take over and declare that gender must be turned on its head, so that girls will be boys and boys will be girls for an entire weekend.

Ancient Origins
The origins of the festival are hazy—which may well have something to do with the beer-drinking contests which took place at earlier incarnations of festivals. It probably stems back to a hunting festival called ‘harts' day’, when, on the third Monday in August, the common people had an annual right to stalk and roast deer, presumably with much mead consumed. Somewhere along the line it turned into the boozy free-for-all that it remains to this day.

Dressing Up
Just how this mutated into an excuse for every node on the Kinsey Scale to doll-up in drag and clatter along the Zeedijk in heels or fake beard is again something that’s not certain; one version of events claims that cross-dressing was an outpouring of the feelings of freedom that came from the hunt for the hart. Another one says that people were so poor that they had no money for fancy dress, so just swapped clothes with the opposite sex and: voila! Instant costumes!

Working Class Fun
The celebrations always took place in working-class parts of town: the Jordaan and Haarlemmerplein were also popular spots, but by the 19^th century, festivities centred on the rough-and-tumble sailors’ district (where it was adopted with gusto by Amsterdam’s burgeoning gay scene, which met there, particularly at Café ‘t Mandje). The festival thrived until the Nazi occupiers expressly forbade Hartjesdag in 1943, and it seemed it was gone for good.

A Colourful Rebirth
It wasn't until 1997 that a group of bar and café-owners on the street decided it was time to reinstate the gender bending fun to its proper place, and declare the Zeedjk (a place that had developed a bit of a grubby reputation) an official fun zone again. It moved to the third weekend in August (more time to drink, more time to recover and to try and take off the blusher before heading to the office) where it’s been going from strength to strength for a decade.

2007
This year, there are stages dotted all around the area on both Saturday and Sunday. Highlights include a parade of all the cross-dressers (who assemble at Podium Prins Hendrikkade 15.30, departing 16.00), followed by the crowning of the Queen of Hartjesdag (Sunday, 19.00, Podium Prins Hendrikkade). Go on: unleash your inner drag king or queen!

Additional Information
When: 18/19 August 2007
Where: Zeedijk, Amsterdam