Former Mascot and Stijl cafes become homes: never again rush hour with a touch of Strauss

However, none of them lasted long. This year, the well-known passage as a place of nightlife will definitely come to an end: the two now vacant businesses will be converted into four rental units. These houses will be completed by the end of the year. Reason enough to look back on the glory years with Dijkhuizen.

600 cups of coffee

Dijkhuizen took over De Mascot from the Vinke family in 1978. “Back then it was nothing more than a cafe bar and ice cream parlor. Later we turned it into a small restaurant.” The case went like a train, he recalls. “Of course, we had a lot of visitors, mostly thanks to the proximity to the zoo. Some mornings we chased 600 cups of coffee.”

Nine years later, Dijkhuizen added a part, which would later become the cellar, to his company. “During those years we moved on to a multi-purpose restaurant business and started serving alcohol. All of the construction workers who visited us also wanted a beer with their fries. So we applied for the permit.

Peak hour

In the mid-1980s, Dijkhuizen decided to develop his own business by adding the cellar to his business. “I first used this space as a space for small parties. You couldn’t do much more with those sixty square meters.” But it has become a favorite place. “A regular guest shouted that he wanted to come back the following Saturday and take a hundred men with him. If you can, I’ll have a rush hour, I promised.

No sooner said than done, rush hour – a beer for a guilder – subsequently became a well-known phenomenon in the nightlife of Emmen. As a regular starter, Dijkhuizen always played a Strauss tune to signal walkers that the time was about to begin. “Beer was not available then,” he laughs.

“After Strauss, orders flew around our ears. Ten beers! Twenty beers! Thirty beers!” Says Dijkhuizen, describing how it went. The full barley glasses on the trays hissed like flying saucers above the heads of the nocturnal crowd, he remembers well. Was it the space or the rush hour itself that made the winery so unprecedentedly popular? According to Dijkhuizen, the answer is very simple. “Friendliness, I think.”

In 1990, Dijkhuizen again expanded its activity with the purchase of the adjoining building which housed the electronics company Crescendo. He renamed it De Stijl: a cafe built in the 1930s. Including a regular one-meter-long table and classic billiards that date back to this period.

Catering establishments are becoming real hotspots for high school students. Every Friday afternoon, the bikes are almost crammed for the passage. “Absenteeism has happened more than once, but sometimes it was handled very well. One day a teacher from the public school came here looking for missing students, whom he naturally found here. . So boys, are you here? Willem, just put twelve cups of coffee. I’ll teach here. “

Musketeersgevoel

In 2004 he sold both companies and, together with his wife Rolanda, he concentrated on the management of Horecacentrum Rietplas in Rietlanden. He visited his successors a few times, but not often. “I sometimes think back to the days of old, but I don’t really miss it, no.”

Many regulars have found the two pubs a permanent port. It brought together and how, “says Rolanda.” I remember once a pipeline jumped onto the Weiert and the company was empty. We went to the Big Fun nightclub to ask for help from our regulars. They all helped clean up the place. “

Willem remembers, during the harsh winter of 1979, how everyone helped put pieces on the walls. “Bam! It was all done in an hour.” People even got married in De Mascot. “In a pub, please,” Rolanda laughs. “How often does this happen?” According to her, it has everything to do with a feeling of musketeer hanging around the two things. “It was always for one,” Rolanda said. Willem: “We knew how many sugar cubes people had in their coffee shops and which newspaper they preferred to read at the regulars table. People just felt at home with us.”