Amsterdam’s red-light district without a condom? Not for a million, says Foxxy Angel

“If they don’t agree to using a condom, I kick them out,” says Foxxy Angel, a 47-year-old platinum blonde sex worker, sporting some fearsome tattoos, in Amsterdam’s notorious red light district.

The Netherlands’ biggest city is almost synonymous with the sex shops, brothels and prostitutes huddled in the narrow streets close to the main railway station, drawing perhaps even more tourists than they do clientele.

Some of the city’s quaint narrow houses serve as brothels with their characteristic bay windows on the ground floor, where the sex workers sit under red lights awaiting the next customer.

It is no coincidence that the organisers of this year’s International Aids Conference, which starts on Monday, chose to hold it in Europe’s city of sin.

“When we chose Amsterdam, it was very much with the idea of shining a light on the most vulnerable people exposed to HIV,” the human immunodeficiency virus that causes Aids, says Linda-Gail Bekker, president of the International Aids Society.

“If we pay no attention to these people, then we will lose the fight against Aids,” she said on a visit to the red light district on Saturday.