Every surfer has his secret break and every beachcomber his secret beach. I suppose every habitue of the demi-monde wants his secret dive bar [I have three, actually]. Even if it's just metaphor, or some gross self-delusion, we tend to find that one place and try keep it to ourselves. Maybe it's not perfect, but it is as perfect as we need it to be and that's all that really matters.
I have encountered this before, in places like the West Coast and in Mexico, where hidden or unlikely surf spots are revealed. Or concealed. I've found beaches by accident that, while holding no waves of note, are quiet, still, and uninhabited. Generally, that happens in Oceania or once upon the time on the coast of Old Mexico, but not so much anymore.
One of those establishments was a tiny beer-only snack shed called The Kite, on the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The Kite is gone now, but it was always on the verge of collapse, anyway. Not that the building, which was really just a shack, was decrepit, it was anything but and always clean, it's just that it was on the side of a rather sheer cliff on the weather side of the island and, thus, always in danger from tempest and hurricane.
The Kite was so named because its owner/operator had stumbled upon an innovative marketing tool. Namely, a kite was perpetually flying off the rear deck and over the face of the cliff. If returning from Coral Bay to Cruz Bay, it was easily visible. The other piece of charm was that, when you sat with a Red Stripe at a rickety table on plastic patio chairs, the local chickens would cluck around under your table.
The year that I discovered The Kite, it was also discovered by a travel writer from the Los Angeles Times, who offered these observations:
The Kite is my favorite hangout on St. John. It’s a clean roadside shack with a tiny bar and a deck that hangs above a pair of turquoise bays and powder-white beaches.Victor Hall, The Kite's owner/operator, who was also known as the Bush Tea Man, for whatever reason, was the soul of the place. Even after The Kite suffered hurricane damage, even after it caught fire and burned down, even after the real estate in the area was seized by an environmentally-aware politician who, despite his concern about the climate, cleared away the jungle and built himself yet another mansion, Hall still would always claim to be working on The Kite II, so that the spirit of the original place would continue.
At the Kite a laid-back, personable St. Johnian named Victor Hall serves his delicious version of the pina colada and strums a 12-string guitar to the accompaniment of an electronic rhythm box as he sings.
Boats sail by while board sailors do their fancy stuff in Cinnamon Bay below. And suddenly you’re part of Hall’s band, playing whatever you grab from behind the bar--from drums and congas to tambourines and maracas
He would die in 2011, but such was his vision, and its hold on the imaginations of locals and visitors, that there are always those willing to resurrect the notion of the place. However, their notions tend towards the affected as they have their eye on a chain of The Kite locations across the USA. Sigh.
The reason it came to mind is because, in the process of planning the annual autumn surfing safari, I began to realize how many places that I used to frequent have been removed, displaced, or otherwise "disappeared" by an ever-growing industry that seeks to create artificial charm and inauthentic experience at the expense of organic industry and involvement.
For example, there used to be, in a south Jersey town known for its terrific winter waves, a small, really old, hamburger stand on the edge of a parking lot by the designated surf beach. It had no name, just a hand-painted sign that said "Burgers and Shakes". It was run by a fellow who still wore one of those paper hats that looked like the garrison model I was issued by Uncle Government once upon a time. He made the best, and cheapest, cheeseburgers in town, offered fountain birch beer made with real syrup, and the two stools and curb around his shack were always loaded with surfers at the end of the day's session.
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| RIP, Burger Dude |
One summer, upon our return to the waves, we discovered that the shack was gone, replaced by "Uncle Dan's Cowabunga Grille" or some such nonsense, that sought to recreate the notion of the original, while offering prepped food at supernaturally-high prices. It even featured a cartoon logo depicting every cliché about surfers that are understood mostly by those who cannot swim. Needless to say, cowabunga or not, no surfer was to be found on the premises.
There are surf breaks, too, that have been surrendered to progress. While only the addle-minded expect the climate of the Earth, a planet that is an organic, ever-shifting cosmo-geologic formation, to never, ever, ever change or else it means doom, despair, and death, sentient people understand that the climate is in perpetual cycle of syncopation. Surf breaks and beaches will appear; others will vanish, and all part of the natural rhythm of the spheres.
However, there is this human-made issue of which I do despair. For example, what happened, say, on the remote island of Male in the Maldives; an island that once boasted one of the best waves in the world and one that was on my "to do" list. Suffice it to say, the island has changed somewhat:
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| RIP, Male |
While I watched the tourists in Granada, Malaga, and Barcelona this past spring, not to mention those in Morocco, take photo after photo, not of the grand sites of Europe and Africa, but of themselves posed in front of those sites that were barely visible beyond the photographer's corpulence, I realized that it isn't the superficial progress of building and marketing that's changed, it is the importance that nowadays is placed on the appearance of experience, rather than its reality.
I doubt that any of those taking "selfies" [stupid word, by the way] were at all aware of the history and culture of that in front of which they were posing; it was just another backdrop to feature the holy ME.
So, when I think of The Kite, it's not so much a precariously-placed shack with oddly prehistoric-appearing chickens that I miss, as much as it is the shrinking opportunities for true, real, and sometimes dangerous, experience. Trying to turn the world into Disneyland doesn't improve the world, or the person; it just creates another layer of dystopic decoupage that diminishes us.
Well, that escalated quickly, didn't it? Anyway, as long as there are still places for discovery, however shrinking, and people willing to seek them, The Kite of attitude, if not of physical location, will always be present somewhere.