Frans de Plakker – The brown bars of Utrecht were the first places where I was allowed to hang posters indoors. There are still a number of places where I come with my posters.
Some pubs still have a notice board or a wall where posters can be placed. Or like with De Vingerhoed, a board on which they pin the posters themselves.
But there are frames hanging in most pubs. Even in the famous Café Postillon. That fame probably came from Thomas, the previous owner. Perhaps the last pub owner to implement a no-smoking policy in his café.
After his death the café was taken over, but the atmosphere has remained the same. The poster wall has also remained, but there are now frames. Upon entering, the visitor will see six poster frames hanging on the right. When the door is open in nice weather, passers-by will see a wall with local culture in the entrance to the Postillon.
The brown cafés have their own kind of humor. As a young guy I was fooled by the men at the bar. In recent years I have also been the one who makes jokes more often, or encourages people to make jokes.
For example, if they don’t like a headline on a poster, I sometimes tell them that they can draw a mustache on it. With the arrival of the frames, I don’t say that anymore, because I think they will draw on the protective plastic.
Without me prompting them to do so, they found the solution in the Postillion. The student on the HKU Open Day poster has been given a nice stick-on moustache.
That humor is not just reserved for the brown cafés. On an HKU notice board I saw that they had pinned drawing pins to the nose for decoration, and the poster was more clownish.
When there were no more concert posters for the notice board of record store Dig It during corona, I was allowed to stick a musical museum poster there. Bert later adjusted the poster a little.
