Island Nights and Island Rhythms

We arrived too late for much of anything on St. Croix. The cities were dark and pulsing with the underground rhythms of an island awaiting emancipation. Work and responsibility and catering to tourists were things of yesterday, and tonight was a night for beaches and fires and reggae and heat.

After checking in to our villa, a small and sticky but open concrete building complete with lounge chairs, geckos and a composting toilet, at Northside Valley, we slipped back into Frederiksted to search for food and, most importantly, cold beer. We found Rhythms, an appropriately named open-air beach bar at Rainbow Beach, one of the popular ex-pat hangouts on the island. One corner for beach, one corner for a band, and two corners for sultry nights of sweat and booze and salty air. "A Bronx Tale" reflected curiously off of a white bedsheet hung on the wall, faces of actors and the sounds of Holywood fading in and out between a low Egyptian cotton thread count, a makeshift movie theater on a makeshift island, and a lonely game of Connect Four sat shoved into a dusty shadow around the backside of the bar. The bartender cajoled with the locals, a rough crowd of unshaven tour guides, SCUBA bums, and organic farmers, Statesiders looking for something a little less Stateside, a little less refined, perhaps a little less real.

The night was tired and thick and heavy, the air closing in around us and our cold beers, threatening to overcome our sensibilities as soon as the draught ran dry. The food was hot and cheap and smelled of charcoal and island apathy, and the breezes, almost insignificant in the wake of the stifling wet heat, kicked sand into our teeth and eyes and noses.

Herman Wouk described it as Hell with palm trees, but like the wayward Norman Paperman, I saw nothing but a white man's fantasy complete with Hellish heat.

Taken from our porch at Northside Valley; a 30-second exposure taken in the dead of night during the light breeze that so fickly avoided our windows. Notice the stars in the sky!