We grew up on house parties. One room, everyone you know, nobody looking at their phone to see how late it is. Then you get older and nights out get bigger, and something about them gets colder.
Club Tineke is named after a grandmother of ours. She was Jordaan to the bone: loud, curious, an opinion on everything, and she could take a joke as well as she made one. Sit down next to her and you were in a conversation whether you had planned on one or not.
That was the whole neighbourhood. Nobody walked past without a word, everybody was somebody's business, and there was always someone getting wound up about nothing. That way of being around each other is fading, and most people our age in this city never got to see it up close. It's too good to let go of quietly, so we throw parties.
That is what a Tineke night is. You walk in and you already know half the room, and the half you don't you will by the end. People shouting across the bar at each other, somebody yelling along to a song they didn't know they knew, the same jokes going round that went round last time.
A whole restaurant to ourselves, a hundred of us, pub quiz first and the tables shoved aside after. Or a club packed to the back wall. The room keeps getting bigger and it keeps feeling small.