En route back to the States today from Amsterdam, where we spent the last four days entertaining ourselves in multiple ways, all leading up to the Tuesday night grand finale (and the entire reason for our trip): Goldie Boutilier kicking off her first solo headlining Euro/UK tour.
We met up with 1,298 of our closest friends at the legendary Paradiso, a former church that's been a public performance venue since 1968. Goldie took the main stage at 8:30pm sharp, and proceeded to absolutely seduce and shred the room with her voice and magnetic stage presence. If you’re not familiar with her music, you’re going to want to change that… NOW. And while you’re at it, get on board her Substack train because this phenomenon is a gifted storyteller across multiple mediums.
Last night in between songs, Goldie shared a bit about her journey to stay true to her calling, and said, “Sometimes the greatest act of rebellion is believing in yourself... sometimes you gotta go a little punk rock, sometimes you gotta say fuck it and do the damn thing.”
Yes to this energy, always. And the perfect send-off to a long weekend filled with moody skies doing their best impersonation of the Pacific Northwest, iconic works from Van Gogh to Banksy, hot-off-the-iron (literally) stroopwafels made to order by three generations and filled with gooey cinnamon buttery syrup goodness, slender (and alarmingly leaning) 17th-century merchant houses intentionally kept narrow so as to avoid large taxes, fresh-off-the-farm (literally) wheels and wedges of young and aged Edam and Gouda that make any cheese you’ve ever had in the past seem like Kraft Singles, over 100 kilometers of concentric canals, and approximately 12,478 bikes going gazillion miles per hour and stopping for absolutely no one. The selection of snapshots below (from a gonna max out my phone storage batch) don’t do it justice.
Toedeledokie, Amsterdam. 🇳🇱 💗
XO,
SG
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