March 22, 2007: Cheeseburger in Paradise (Saint-Barthélémy)
I know I'm going back in time here with these next two posts, but I wanted to give you some of my impressions from my first month aboard. So without further ado...
I don't know what it is about this place that I love so much, but it's my favourite place to be in the Caribbean. Actually, that's not true, I know exactly what I love about this place: it's Frenchness. Take any island in the Caribbean: beautiful beaches, water the colour of gemstones, palm trees, sunshine, and locals that live by the steady but slow pace of nature: the sun, the moon, the tides, the rain that comes and goes. Paradise, right? But something's missing. Now make that island French, and suddenly it's a different world. Infrastructure development, all mod-cons, socialized medicine, and cuisine.
But St-Barts is different from all the other French islands. Thanks to the some savvy municipal planner who decided to keep St-Barts' status as a free port when the Swedes handed it back to the French over a hundred years ago, It's like the Disneyworld of the French Antilles: French culture on steroids. Wealth is so ubiquitous here it's like an invisible fog, as permeating as the mid-day heat. Everyone here has money, or else creates the illusion of it: spot more of the latest runway trends more on the backs of cafe and bistro patrons than in boutique windows; late-model cars bursting through narrow intersections; and all those in the know flocking to the newest "in" eatery for lunch (dinner is so passé). The tourists look out of place here with their baseball caps, baggy souvenir t-shirts and paunches. St-Bartians (it that's what they're really called, but it can't be: it sounds too much like Martians, it's just too gauche) all wear movie-star sunglasses; their hair is long and straight and glossy, or short and tousled for that bed-head-that's-not-really-bed-head look; their expensive clothes always hang or cling in just the right way, showing the perfect amount of perfectly tanned leg or delt or midriff. The women all pout in that perfectly sexy, distracted way while the men pretend to be having important conversations on cell phones while drinking blonde beers on open-air terraces so they can survey the people on sidewalks with slow, obvious gazes, only pausing to light cigarettes that their elegant hands absently fondle — just another fashion accessory.
You'd think it was all a veneer, this perfect chiqueness, a thin gloss, superficial and superflous — wasteful even, the showy displays for no reason other than because they can. But that's where the French are misunderstood: it's not superficial at all. I say it's rooted deep in their philosophy, a part of the culture. It has nothing to do with being ostentatious and everything to do with simply appreciating all the pleasures that life has to offer. Why not strive to eat the best foods, drink the best drinks, cover yourself in the best fabrics, enjoy as much as you can - food, sex, love, art, beauty. After all, what else is there to do in this life? And, with it's sheltered port, bustling city, pristine beaches and sleepy hillsides, what better place on Earth is there to live life as it should be lived? And who but the French would have seen it this way, and had the fortitude to withstand the constant demands of Western capitalism — bigger, better, faster, more — and the attitude to keep the American cultural invasion at bay? To slow down and take advantage of such a wonderful playground? No one but the French deserves St-Barts. And as a result, they've got the hottest place in the islands, where anyone who's anyone comes to play and where everyone else comes to bask in the tepid glow of second-hand fame. Sure, the French are haughty, but why shouldn't they be?
As an aside, St-Barts is also the place where Jimmy Buffet, that perennial favourite of Windjammer passengers (yes, most "Jammer-heads" are also "Parrot-heads") supposedly wrote "Cheeseburger in Paradise." Although there are many burger joints in the Caribbean that lay claim to that particular honour, Le Select in St-Barts probably has the strongest case. Anyway, whether or not he actually wrote the song there, Buffet — along with a good number of other celebrities — does dine at Le Select on his not-infrequent visits to St-Barts (either he or his yacht was spotted by passengers every time we were in port). That isn't where I was the night that Nicole Kidman decided to join our party, though; that was some other bar. Okay, she didn't really join our party. We were waaay too underdressed. To be honest, I wouldn't have even recognized her if someone else hadn't pointed her out to me. She's tiny. I'd say she looked like an anorexic teenager if it didn't sound so mean, but damn, it must be true about the camera adding 20 pounds. Anyway, that's my St. Barts celebrity story. I feel so blessed.
I don't know what it is about this place that I love so much, but it's my favourite place to be in the Caribbean. Actually, that's not true, I know exactly what I love about this place: it's Frenchness. Take any island in the Caribbean: beautiful beaches, water the colour of gemstones, palm trees, sunshine, and locals that live by the steady but slow pace of nature: the sun, the moon, the tides, the rain that comes and goes. Paradise, right? But something's missing. Now make that island French, and suddenly it's a different world. Infrastructure development, all mod-cons, socialized medicine, and cuisine.
But St-Barts is different from all the other French islands. Thanks to the some savvy municipal planner who decided to keep St-Barts' status as a free port when the Swedes handed it back to the French over a hundred years ago, It's like the Disneyworld of the French Antilles: French culture on steroids. Wealth is so ubiquitous here it's like an invisible fog, as permeating as the mid-day heat. Everyone here has money, or else creates the illusion of it: spot more of the latest runway trends more on the backs of cafe and bistro patrons than in boutique windows; late-model cars bursting through narrow intersections; and all those in the know flocking to the newest "in" eatery for lunch (dinner is so passé). The tourists look out of place here with their baseball caps, baggy souvenir t-shirts and paunches. St-Bartians (it that's what they're really called, but it can't be: it sounds too much like Martians, it's just too gauche) all wear movie-star sunglasses; their hair is long and straight and glossy, or short and tousled for that bed-head-that's-not-really-bed-head look; their expensive clothes always hang or cling in just the right way, showing the perfect amount of perfectly tanned leg or delt or midriff. The women all pout in that perfectly sexy, distracted way while the men pretend to be having important conversations on cell phones while drinking blonde beers on open-air terraces so they can survey the people on sidewalks with slow, obvious gazes, only pausing to light cigarettes that their elegant hands absently fondle — just another fashion accessory.
You'd think it was all a veneer, this perfect chiqueness, a thin gloss, superficial and superflous — wasteful even, the showy displays for no reason other than because they can. But that's where the French are misunderstood: it's not superficial at all. I say it's rooted deep in their philosophy, a part of the culture. It has nothing to do with being ostentatious and everything to do with simply appreciating all the pleasures that life has to offer. Why not strive to eat the best foods, drink the best drinks, cover yourself in the best fabrics, enjoy as much as you can - food, sex, love, art, beauty. After all, what else is there to do in this life? And, with it's sheltered port, bustling city, pristine beaches and sleepy hillsides, what better place on Earth is there to live life as it should be lived? And who but the French would have seen it this way, and had the fortitude to withstand the constant demands of Western capitalism — bigger, better, faster, more — and the attitude to keep the American cultural invasion at bay? To slow down and take advantage of such a wonderful playground? No one but the French deserves St-Barts. And as a result, they've got the hottest place in the islands, where anyone who's anyone comes to play and where everyone else comes to bask in the tepid glow of second-hand fame. Sure, the French are haughty, but why shouldn't they be?
As an aside, St-Barts is also the place where Jimmy Buffet, that perennial favourite of Windjammer passengers (yes, most "Jammer-heads" are also "Parrot-heads") supposedly wrote "Cheeseburger in Paradise." Although there are many burger joints in the Caribbean that lay claim to that particular honour, Le Select in St-Barts probably has the strongest case. Anyway, whether or not he actually wrote the song there, Buffet — along with a good number of other celebrities — does dine at Le Select on his not-infrequent visits to St-Barts (either he or his yacht was spotted by passengers every time we were in port). That isn't where I was the night that Nicole Kidman decided to join our party, though; that was some other bar. Okay, she didn't really join our party. We were waaay too underdressed. To be honest, I wouldn't have even recognized her if someone else hadn't pointed her out to me. She's tiny. I'd say she looked like an anorexic teenager if it didn't sound so mean, but damn, it must be true about the camera adding 20 pounds. Anyway, that's my St. Barts celebrity story. I feel so blessed.
posted by Unknown at
10:53 a.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home