The Country That Wants to ‘Be Average’ vs. Jeff Bezos and His $500 Million Yacht

Why did Rotterdam stand between one of the world’s richest men and his boat? The furious response is rooted in Dutch values.

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — The image would have been a social media phenomenon: a few thousand citizens of the Netherlands’ second-largest city, standing beside a river and hurling eggs at the gleaming, new 417-foot sailing yacht built for Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and one of the world’s richest men. By the time the boat passed the crowd, it would have been spattered with bright orange yolk, plus at least one very bright spot of red.

“I would have thrown a tomato,” said Stefan Lewis, a former City Council member. “I eat mostly vegan.”

One recent afternoon, Mr. Lewis was standing near the Hef, as the Koningshaven Bridge is affectionately known, and explaining the anger that Mr. Bezos and Oceanco, the maker of the three-masted, $500 million schooner, inspired after making what may have sounded like a fairly benign request. The company asked the local government to briefly dismantle the elevated middle span of the Hef, which is 230 feet tall at its highest point, allowing the vessel to sail down the King’s Harbor channel and out to sea. The whole process would have taken a day or two and Oceanco would have covered the costs.

Also worth noting: The bridge, a lattice of moss-green steel in the shape of a hulking “H,” is not actually used by anyone. It served as a railroad bridge for decades until it was replaced by a tunnel and decommissioned in the early 1990s. It’s been idle ever since.

In sum, the operation would have been fast, free and disrupted nothing. So why the fuss?

“There’s a principle at stake,” said Mr. Lewis, a tall, bearded 37-year-old who was leaning against his bike and toggling during an interview between wry humor and indignation. He then framed the principle with a series of questions. “What can you buy if you have unlimited cash? Can you bend every rule? Can you take apart monuments?”

In late June, the city’s vice mayor reported that Oceanco had withdrawn its request to dismantle the Hef, a retreat that was portrayed as a victory of the masses over a billionaire, though it was much more than that. It was an opportunity to see Dutch and American values in a fiery, head-on collision. The more you know about the Netherlands — with its preference for modesty over extravagance, for the community over the individual, for fitting in rather than standing out — the more it seems as though this kerfuffle was scripted by someone whose goal was to drive people here out of their minds.