Upstairs, at Hazlewood, there’s a peephole in the wall. On the other side of the wall, as seen through this peephole, peculiar stuff is going on…

A sepia man? Burt Reynolds, perhaps? In an airline captain's suit? And a dashing mustache? Just standing there, looking quite manly, indeed? A common enough sight. BUT WAIT! Look closer…

YES! Women! Naked booby women! With mustaches! Adoring the mustache man! Worshiping him! Like their dark and dirty mustache king! Like their naughty mustache GOD! On the filthy floor! WHAT PRECISELY IS GOING ON HERE, Hazelwood?

I demand an answer. I demand an answer now.

I'm waiting.

(What’s "Hazlewood"? Good question. There is this remarkable little brown café in Amsterdam. The name I completely forget. It lives katty-corner (kitty-corner? whatever.) from Waterloo Flea Market, just across the train tracks. I’ve taken the looong train ride up those tracks from the Red Light District, where usually stay of course (across from a club called “The Cock Ring”—God bless Amsterdam), at least five or six times, because I fell in love with the place so hard the first time I saw it. It is small and shadowy and a little swank at first sight—shabby-chic chandeliers, taxidermy, velvet curtains—but upon closer inspection, the place is kind of just stapled together. Which makes it even better somehow. It has an able enough bar, it is rarely over-full, it’s always playing the perfect song at the perfect volume at the perfect moment, and its upstairs is an ideal place to find a private nook, stretch out, relax, sip cool drinks. Well, Hazlewood is exactly like that. Only not in Amsterdam. It’s in BALLARD. On Market Street. (2311 NW Market) So lucky me. Us. Whatever.)