You Can't Have a Mohawk if You're Male-Pattern Balding

I went to the Concertgebouw today for a free concert; the symphony sometimes opens its rehearsals to the public. It only lasted about 20 minutes, which I assume means that the orchestra is pretty ready for opening night. Ninety percent of the audience consisted of retired ladies and gentlemen and small children and their keepers. The children here are clearly very well immersed in the world of music: the ones who were not miming violin bowing or piano playing [there were no keyboards in the orchestra] were air-conducting with all the vigor of college guys listening to Van Halen.

Amsterdam—its buildings, its events, and its people—is full of style and culture. Well-preserved relics of the VOC's Golden Age line the canals in the form of gorgeous gabled houses; acclaimed museums and unique festivals draw visitors from around the world; the most well-put-together and fashion-conscious bikers in Europe swerve in and out of little cobbled streets. The tourists, of course, bring down the chic a bit with their comfortable shoes and wrinkle-free pants (Horrible side note: I saw a woman with a denim fanny pack which was the same shade as her jeans. This resulted in a double take in which the first glance made me certain she had a bizarrely saggy pot belly, and the second made my eyes burn just a little bit.), but on the whole, Amsterdam is stylish.

And then, every once in a while, there's a dude wearing something so egregious that I'm sure he must be from Berlin.

Such was the case with the dude in too-tight cargo pants (cargo pants, like Manny Ramierez's uniform, are intended to bag as much as possible) and 20% of a mohawk. If I had had my camera with me, and I am now kicking myself for this failure, I would have evidence; as it is, you'll just have to belive me. This man, probably around 35 or 40, had the sides of his head shaved to about 2 or 3mm, leaving a mohawk-like strip of hair about three inches wide and maybe 1cm long running from his neck to his forehead.

Only his forehead started in the general vicinity of the central sulcus. And he had a generous bare patch right at the yarmulke region. Surely this man must know about the depopulation up on his scalp; even if he's never done the two-mirror trick to see the back of his head, he can't help but notice that his hairline has retreated from his eyebrows like the French from a Panzer.

So I'm left wondering: if you're determind to be hip in spite of what havoc Nature is wreaking on your follicles, punk-dude, why not be cutting edge and go for a reverse mohawk? That would effect the Bruce-Willis statement of "I didn't want this hair anyway," while still achieving the original aim, which as I understand it is to expose approximately half of your lumpy head so that we might marvel at your extreme, anti-establishment sentiment.

In Berlin, I probably would never have noticed this guy. In the same way that here, I have stopped noticing the women who incongruously bike around in stiletto boots and miniskirts, or the men who smoke while jogging.