Thursday, January 29, 2004
The key story of the week in our town, not to mention every other town in the country, is that of demonstrative inactivity. We began Monday with a national holiday ‘Founders Day’ - in other words the celebration of the founding father of the country Juan Pablo Duarte. We all leapt back into action come Tuesday only to have our normal pattern dampened again on Wednesday and Thursday with two further days of national inactivity celebrated by those who choose to show their dissatisfaction with the current ‘economic situation’- largely read ‘governmental situation’- and withhold their labor in what is termed a ‘general strike’. The particularly worrying aspect is that it does happen around here that some people take the matter further than stating their position and add violence to their demonstrations. In November a forerunning national strike day was called for and held, and by the time burning tires, cars and general garbage had been cleared away there was also a count of eight fatalities in Santo Domingo. Wisely, various authorities have been calling for the need to demonstrate peacefully this time around and it would seem that the calls have helped, although the latest count of only one deceased in Santiago during yesterday’s strike was also accompanied by at least 32 wounded in skirmishes in different parts of the country.
Meanwhile, here in Boca Chica and Playa Vista we have mainly run counter to the national trend and been our usual active selves. Indeed there were comments around the bar yesterday noting how much more effective one could be paying bills and changing money because of a very rare situation: not the slightest sign of people waiting in line at the bank or the electricity company… although there were other inconveniences such as the fact that the water company workers had chosen to support the strike and even our pizza maker decided he would lay down his tools and rest his dough.
We would say that the mood in our immediate vicinity was busier though calm as people seemed to have chosen to sit out the general inactivity at good old Playa Vista.
We cannot help noticing though, that news of the situation here is rippling all the way up to the cold US north, because we had an ABC news camera crew doing interviews and taking footage from our terrazza… so you should be able to hear more of our comments on the subject as well as for once experience some shots in full color of Playa Vista and 50% of the management when they finally edit their program and transmit it sometime in February.
Posted by Playa Vista @ 05:02 PM CST
Thursday, January 22, 2004
We know that many of you have followed the exciting (nudge nudge) ups and downs of our parasol sagas with keen interest and pleasingly we are now able to give you an even more encouraging update than the last time. It was as long ago as October that we last touched on the subject and we had left the matter on quite an upbeat; in that Budweiser were able to provide within 24 hours of agreement, 3 brand new parasols - unfortunately not 6 as promised - for covering the sunnier parts of our Terrazza. The almost immediate consequence of this action did not come in the form of 3 more parasols from Budweiser but, in true market competitive fashion, 6 from the main beer company here, namely ‘Presidente’, who seemingly were only spurred into action, in spite of promising us a minimum of 12 parasols some 2 years previously, when we raised the Budweiser flag. All well and good, for Presidente that is, but a slight technical difficulty remained: appropriate bases in which to insert said parasols were not so immediately forthcoming, in fact it has taken the currently favored beer company since then until now to find enough for us to put up 4 of their parasols that we had kept, not very market competitively, neatly and tidily wrapped up in plastic in our storeroom all this time waiting for the right bases to show up for the unveiling to take place.
So now as you walk by on the beach and look up at our bar and Terrazza you will see all 6 standing proudly announcing that we do indeed sell, probably the Americas’ finest beer. We are looking forward however to how Budweiser or Coors or Guinness, for that matter, will respond and if they will keep the parasol supply rolling on and on in spite of Presidente’s belated comeback.
Posted by Playa Vista @ 06:30 PM CST
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
We have had our range of helpers here at Playa Vista since we first opened the bar hatches to the public more than 3 years ago and each of them, of course, carries a story. We can even think of good customers who get so much into the swing of the atmosphere around here that they too lend a helping hand when they can. From time to time they have helped serve behind the bar, bought fruit from the local store for us, raised the fairly heavy hatches of the bar in the morning and then closed them again in the evening. We remember Carlos from Boston for example who had a few minutes to kill before he set off to the airport and so promptly grabbed the broom and swept the entire terrazza area one particularly hot, sunny and therefore sweaty morning. Wouldn’t it be sweet if we could run the whole show like that?
Unfortunately there is always the reality of exchanging labor for money in the more traditional way and we have had a row of bar helpers and playeros (guys attending to customers on the beach) on that basis too, at times presenting difficulties but generally working out to everybody’s satisfaction in the end.
Recently though, we were presented with quite a drama around a lady working in the bar.
To cut what could be a long story short she became very upset when she, totally unfounded of course, “thought” that she was being accused of theft as a result of two small errors that we discovered on a customers tab. Regrettably the lady in question would not let go of this idea and even after repeated attempts to calm her frenzy down and merely explain the simple miscalculation, she just seemed to become totally deaf to simple communication and in inverse relation even more vocally as well as physically agitated. To bring proper calm to bear we thought we would have to call the police but she saved us this task by calling them herself.
Thankfully she did calm down in the presence of the uniforms, and when the incident was explained in depth to the police they even made their try at explaining to her the simple arithmetic error. However she did not let go of her fixed idea, and not for the first time it was explained, that if she really didn’t like helping out in Playa Vista in exchange for the generous amount of money we, via very lucrative special agreements in spite of her lacking basic skills, had offered… she could of course choose to go. At this point she fastened her bag, left the premises and worked no more that day or any day since for that matter… what we take as a sign of her resignation. There are quite a few sad aspects to this story that we will not bother our jolly reader with here, but one is that the error was no more than precisely 40 pesos, approximately one US dollar… quite a “cheap” drama, wouldn’t you say?
Anyway, sunny side up… good old friends of the house are for now joining in giving a helping hand or two which, if possible, makes the atmosphere at Playa Vista even better than before!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 07:07 PM CST
Monday, January 5, 2004
It wasn’t at Playa Vista and not even in Boca Chica, but not so many miles removed in the Avenida Mella branch of Banco Popular in Santo Domingo that this little piece of irreverence was experienced.
We were in line waiting our turn at the tellers’ counter when a poor disheveled middle- aged woman came shuffling up to the first person in line with her hand outstretched begging for money. She was for sure in the right place for getting money but she was clearly going about it the wrong way especially as she had her back turned to the counter itself. The first guy in the line stepped back a mere half a step to avoid her advances. The woman then turned around and went back more on the regular track by approaching the nearest teller although the technique was unfamiliar because she slumped over the counter as she made her request. Apart from anything else she had of course no bank book or withdrawal slip in her hand and especially as she was crowding in on the poor customer being attended to, the teller waved her back in our direction. At this point we, in self-defense looked around to see where the nearest security guard might be. Strangely, where there are usually several parading around bristling with intimidating weapons in almost every Dominican bank, there were none in this case. At this point somebody shouted out “watchi” which is a commonly used Dominican abbreviation of watchman or more realistically (should it be surrealistically) security guard. The “watchi” was sitting in the middle of the bank on a comfortable rotating chair enjoying a couple of half spins for good measure. Clearly the intrusive woman had passed right by him, because as the cordon of security he had naturally positioned himself between the tellers and the main entrance. Having now acknowledged the watchman’s presence we naturally assumed the matter would be quickly dealt with and calm and order secured.
The persistent woman returned to the line of waiting customers, as directed, and when one customer raised his arms claiming he “didn’t have any money for her” the woman immediately responded to his defenseless raised arm gesture by not only making a lunge for his private parts but triumphantly grabbing the bills in his hand claiming “Oh yes you do!”
She moved on to the next customer begging him for money in the same way. He had learned that raising the arms was an inadequate defense and so stepped well back out of reach. Meanwhile… what on earth had happened to the security guard who was only about 20 feet away spinning his way to the rescue, wasn’t he? Nope. Spinning he still was but not to any rescue. We called over for him to do his job i.e. watch and secure things but he remained steadfast… apart from the spinning that is. The woman carried on down the line to us without the slightest intervention from our spinning watchman or any other member of the bank staff. Enough was enough… so we went right over to the watchman to insist that he do his job. It seemed he thought his job was to carry on swiveling in the chair and direct the customers as to what they should be doing, “just get back in the line and wait your turn” he said. Did he mean for money or a private grabbing? The bucket of patience had now overflowed so we thanked Banco Popular for nothing and left the building. Fifteen minutes later we were graciously received by Scotia Bank which, at least on this occasion, to our great relief, did not sport any groping beggars or spinning watchmen.
Posted by Playa Vista @ 08:44 PM CST
