Lane 8 presents This Never Happened,
chauffeured.
The phones-away night in a Noord shipbuilding hall. This Never Happened asks the room to put its phones away for the night, and the room largely does. It produces one of the more genuinely absorbed crowds of the week, and a very sudden return to the twenty-first century at the end of it.
Friday 23 October, at the Kromhouthal.
The heaviest night on paper. Day programmes and night programmes overlap, several rooms run double bills, and crossing town between them is the whole art of it.
This Never Happened asks the room to put its phones away for the night, and the room largely does. It produces one of the more genuinely absorbed crowds of the week, and a very sudden return to the twenty-first century at the end of it.
Which is a practical argument as much as a romantic one: a night with your phone in your pocket is a bad night to be relying on an app in an industrial street in Noord afterwards.
The IJtunnel and the Johan van Hasseltweg, ten minutes from the centre, or the Coentunnel from the west. The Gedempt Hamerkanaal has room in front of the hall for an unhurried drop-off.
Booked in advance, nothing about the ride home needs your phone at all: the car is on the street outside at the time you agreed, and a single message is enough if the set runs long.
Gedempt Hamerkanaal, Amsterdam-Noord.
The Kromhouthal is an old shipbuilding hall on the Gedempt Hamerkanaal in Noord, reached through the IJtunnel and along the Johan van Hasseltweg. From the west of the city the Coentunnel is the better door.
Cars stop on the Gedempt Hamerkanaal in front of the hall. The street is wide and the walk is short, but it is an industrial strip with little else around it, which is exactly why hailing anything here at five in the morning is a problem.
The Kromhouthal is an old shipbuilding hall on the Gedempt Hamerkanaal in Noord, reached through the IJtunnel and along the Johan van Hasseltweg. From the west of the city the Coentunnel is the better door. Your chauffeur checks the roads before setting off rather than when he arrives, and the price is fixed when you book, whatever the traffic does.
Cars stop on the Gedempt Hamerkanaal in front of the hall. The street is wide and the walk is short, but it is an industrial strip with little else around it, which is exactly why hailing anything here at five in the morning is a problem.
Yes, and on this night it is the sensible way to do it. Booked in advance, nothing about the ride home needs your phone at all: the car is on the street outside at the time you agreed, and a single message is enough if the set runs long. Book the return at the same time as the outward ride, or keep one car and chauffeur for the whole night by the hour, from €65 an hour in Business Class with a two-hour minimum.
Schiphol to any address in Amsterdam is a fixed €90 in Business Class, €125 in the seven-seat Van Class and €140 in First Class — taxes included, per car, with the flight tracked and a chauffeur waiting inside the arrivals hall. Going back to Schiphol the fixed prices are €80, €85 and €90.
The Van Class takes up to seven passengers and seven bags in one car, with captain chairs and walk-in headroom. For a larger party dispatch stages several cars to arrive together at Kromhouthal, with one contact for the whole group rather than a separate booking per car.
Message dispatch on WhatsApp and the pickup time moves. It is one number, answered around the clock in English, and once a chauffeur is assigned you have his line too. There is no surge pricing at four in the morning — the fare was agreed when you booked.