New business: Beach Dawgs, gourmet hot dogs! Add this place to your list of cheap-eats spots. Beach Dawgs is a build your own hot dog and nacho stand added by Colette, who recently opened the I Scream soft serve ice cream shop at Wharfside.  (Business 101: Diversify.)

Check out some of these toppings….pineapple, banana peppers, BBQ sauce, peanut butter, sour cream, baked beans…nearly two dozen different toppings for your dog (or your nachos.) Only the best weenies here…1/4 pound Hebrew Nationals…Build your own, or order off the menu, with choices like the Fire Dawg, the Hawaiian Dawg, or our favorite, the Bad Breath Dawg - sauerkraut, pickles, onions and steak sauce!

(Weenie Model: Rum Hut bartender “Bubba.”)

Queen Elizabeth has visited the British Virgin Islands twice. Once in 1966, as commemorated by this plaque at the Customs Office in Soper’s Hole. She visited Tortola a second time in 1977. And she needed a limo. As you can imagine, that’s a pretty tall order on a tiny Caribbean island. Slimman wasn’t in business back then. But the Queen got her ride. A white, 1966 Lincoln four door convertible, loaned to Her Majesty by a local who owned it. The car has survived all these years and, with a little effort, you can find it. Here it is today. After years under cover in a garage, it now sits under brush just off the beach at Smuggler’s Cove on Tortola. Its motorcade days are done.

America has voted, and the next Kenny Chesney lyricist is … ALI. I admit, I choked up over the heroic rescue stanza. ALI, email us. There’s a T-shirt with your name on it. Actually it’s a T-shirt with our name on it.

But there were others that didn’t get voted off the show ’til late in the season. Honorable mention to Augie for having the nerve to rhyme “sit and wait” with “junkyard bait.” Pat gets kudos for knowing the word “scow.” Dale Michael gets a nod for being the first person to ever put in writing the line “jealous of white fiberglass.” And finally, Rob. Rob made his own rules and we suspect that’s just the kind of guy Rob is. Nonetheless, his reference to the “Je ne sais quoi of Kenny’s most melodic of power ballads” shows he gets the music business.

Now, if Kenny would just return our emails…

There’s a magazine for everything and everybody, and one called Affordable Housing Finance Magazine has named St. John’s Bellevue Village one of 4 finalists in its Rural category for its annual winners of best affordable housing projects. (It’s up against new projects in Pennsylvania, Kansas and Minnesota.)

If you’ve never pulled in to Bellevue and driven around, you should. It’s pretty nice. (It’s off Gifft Hill Road, next to Gifft Hill School.) Some of those apartments, that rent for between $500 and $750 a month, have million dollar views. Bellevue, and how it got built, is a very interesting story.

We’d vote for it, but I think our subscription to Affordable Housing Finance Magazine ran out. Read a little about it here.

              Yum….tastes just like chicken.

Redbeard’s has been open for a coupla weeks now, and while we can’t tell you what kind of business they’re doing, we can tell you it is ICY COLD in this new place. It’s one of the few air conditioned watering holes in Cruz Bay and it might very well be the only one…with carpet. Red and black Las Vegas casino-style carpet. The pool room in back has a nifty outside patio too. Stop in and check it out.

Okay…there were some really great entries in the Write Kenny’s Next Hit entry. Too good for us to judge.  If you’ve got time to kill (of course you do, otherwise why are you here), go read through them and vote for your favorite. Most votes is the winner. We’ll forward your song on to Kenny and we’re pretty sure he’ll totally ignore our emails like he has all of the others. But you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing Kenny ignored you.  Click on comments and vote!

You’ve got 16 days left to get a good, Italian-inspired meal at Panini Beach restaurant. After almost 10 years on the beach, the owners are shutting down their restaurant and leaving the island. A dispute over terms with the landlord led to their decision. (It is none of our business, but this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about disgruntled Wharfside tenants.)“It’s a very emotional time,” says co-owner Janet Kleiner, who says they’re being forced out. “We have a cute lake house in Chicago that has gone unused for the last ten years, and we’ll probably go back there, chill out, and figure out what to do next,” she tells us.

This is really too bad. This was a great restaurant. The food was good, and the owners always went from table to table chatting with the crowd. Janet, a restaurateur who has cooked with the likes of Julia Child, and partner Joe Guarise bought the restaurant in 1998, after seeing an ad for it in the Chicago Tribune.

Panini Beach’s last day is August 17. (Today’s special: Seafood pasta with scallops, thyme and dill.)

Here’s an out-of-the-way beach that’s a lot easier to get to, now that more of the road is paved. There’s good snorkeling, very few people here and there’s a bathroom. A mostly rocky entrance gives way to smooth sand. Directions: Take a right when you get to Coral Bay, keep driving past Shipwreck Landing, past Concordia all the way to the end of the road. You’ll see signs. Check out Lameshur Bay, below…