On warm evenings the door stood open here and Dutch music carried across the water, sung along by a room full of people. On 27 August 1964 Adje van Besouw opened the Amstel Taveerne on this corner of the Amstel and the Halvemaansteeg, and with its schlagers it became the prototype of the Dutch gay café. Many people still believe it was the oldest in the city.
In 1972 Manfred Langer came from Vienna to Amsterdam, ended up in this bar as a customer and started working there. Six years later he opened his own café, Chez Manfred, in the Halvemaansteeg, the alley running off beside the door, where he was among the first to introduce a happy hour with two drinks for the price of one. In 1989 he opened the disco iT around the corner on the Amstelstraat, with drag shows and parties that became known far beyond the city. At the iT a great deal was possible, if not everything, as he put it himself.
When Langer died in 1994 at the age of forty-two, five thousand people came to say goodbye, and the funeral procession passed Chez Manfred and the iT. The café on this corner was called Amstel Fifty Four from 2007 and closed in the summer of 2024, a few months short of its sixtieth birthday.
One of our walks through Amsterdam will take you past more corners where the city keeps its own history.
Sources. Story: IHLIA LGBTI Heritage, With Pride, on Manfred Langer; Gaykrant (2019), De horecazaken van Manfred Langer; homohoreca.amsterdam, Amstel Taveerne
