Dutch residents threaten to egg Bezos yacht if historic bridge is dismantled

Residents of the Dutch port city of Rotterdam have vowed to throw eggs at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s new superyacht if a plans to dismantle a historic bridge to let it pass proceed.

As of Monday, at least 16,000 people have indicated they are “interested” in attending a Facebook event titled, “Throwing eggs at superyacht Jeff Bezos.” 4,700 more have confirmed their attendance.

"Calling all Rotterdammers, take a box of rotten eggs with you and let's throw them en masse at Jeff's superyacht when it sails through the Hef in Rotterdam," organizer Pablo Strörmann wrote in now-viral event.

Bezos’s $485 million 417-foot-long superyacht is being built in a Dutch shipyard but will not fit under the historic Koningshavenbrug Bridge on its way to sea.

Local authorities have considered temporarily dismantling the bridge to let it pass, but were met with local backlash because the city council had promised never to dismantle it following a major renovation in 2017.

"Normally it’s the other way around: If your ship doesn’t fit under a bridge, you make it smaller. But when you happen to be the richest person on Earth, you just ask a municipality to dismantle a monument. That’s ridiculous," Strörmann told the NL Times.

Strörmann also said that the event started as a joke, but “quickly struck a nerve.”

Dutch News reported that Bezos would pay for the deconstruction, but local authorities responded that no decision has yet been made.

“I find the turmoil quite peculiar. No decision has yet been taken, not even an application for a permit,” Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb reportedly said.

The Koningshavenbrug bridge was originally built in 1878, then reconstructed after being bombed by Nazi Germany in 1940 during World War II.