The Bulldog The First

That’s how I feel about The Bulldog. It started on 17 December 1975, in a former sex shop on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal. Henk de Vries had taken over his father’s shop, cleared out the toys and turned it into a living room for smokers. It wasn’t the first place to sell cannabis over a counter. Utrecht and Mellow Yellow were earlier. But The Bulldog was the first to understand something the rest of the industry needed decades to learn: this is a brand business. The bulldog went on every door, every lighter, every T-shirt. Long before anyone in cannabis talked about branding, Henk was doing it. He spent a lot of nights in the police station on Leidseplein in those years. In the early eighties, when the building came up for sale, he bought it. That building became the Palace, and it’s still my favourite. You choose your smoke downstairs in the old cellar, then go up to the bar for a drink. Few places in Amsterdam still let you combine the two this easily, and none in a building with that kind of story. Years later, in Barcelona, I sat down with Henk to talk about working together. I asked what he would need to make our place a Bulldog collaboration. He thought about it for a moment. Cowhide on the bar stools, he said, and a bulldog behind the counter. That was it. He knew exactly what made his brand his, and he didn’t need more. That clarity built an empire. Today the hard part is keeping up. Cannabis consumers know what they want now, and they want it more and more specifically. The Bulldog is getting there. The edibles are good, and the menu improves every year. But you can tell they’re still working out what lands and what doesn’t. They paved the way. That alone earns them a visit.