Yes, that’s the Beach Bar. And no, there is not one Red Stripe, Painkiller, Bushwacker or Lime & Coconut anywhere on that bar. The Virgin Islands celebrates every Good Friday with seven hours of sobriety. No booze sales at bars and restaurants from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Favorite bartender Boo is busy serving up bottled water today instead. (Watch Boo make a Lime & Coconut here!) 

Cruz Bay is now a two convenience store town. Bayside Mini Mart, located in Meada’s Plaza, has rolled open its shutters for business. It occupies the spaces on either side of the walkthrough entrance to Rhumblines restaurant. The store is run by Sammy Mustafa, whose family owns other businesses like gift shop Fantasia and the Fashion Palace store. You’ll find lots of wine and beer, frozen chicken, produce, everything you’d need for a villa dinner and drinks. And it’s in a great location.

How does Sammy feel about First Stop, the competition just down the street that only recently opened itself? “I’m a guy of faith and I’m doing my own thing,” he tells us. “I’m not watching the competition.”

Bayside Mini Mart is open ‘til 11 pm (which is a whole lot later than we’re ever open.)

North Shore beaches have been a sliver of themselves the last couple of days after a weather thingy pushed through the islands, leaving unusually high waves in its wake. Great Cruz Bay is even catching some of it. This is the mouth of Great Cruz Bay, where the rockin’ got so bad that our friend Maddie, the liveaboard lab, and lots of other boaters moved as far in as they could so as not to loose their lunch. If this keeps up, Virgin Grande Estates can start marketing itself as Beachfront Property.

Supposed to subside this weekend.

Personal opinion, there is no better pizza on the island, maybe anywhere, than Café Roma. So… we’re sitting there a couple of nights ago getting one to go (the new 9 incher, instead of the ‘feed us twice” large) and we spy Joshlynn Crosley, the owner, who is almost always there. So this time we just ask. “Joshlynn! Why are you trying to sell this place?” A teenage daughter, an aging mother and something called permaculture were the answers. Read our quick Q&A with Joshlynn, here!

After 25 years running the Catered To villa management company, owner Eileen Duffy has a succession plan in place. Tyler Andersen, who moved to St. John last year from Los Angeles with wife, and new St. John Sun Times publisher Eloise, is the heir apparent to the business, through what they term a buy in plan. (Tyler came on board as general manager last year.) Although neither would say how long the transition will take, both say customers and villa owners won’t notice a difference. And Eileen’s not going anywhere right away anyway. (Not counting plans for a really long vacation.) Read our quick Q&A with Eileen and Tyler here.

Below: Eileen, Chris, Eloise and Tyler in a rare moment of them all having nothing to do for one minute at the exact same time. (You have a better chance of photographing Big Foot than catching the four of them all at once.)

The brand new St. John Waterfront Bistro is now open for lunch. Everybody is raving about how beautiful it is and how nice it is to have a high-end restaurant on the beach, but we haven’t heard much about the food. Admittedly, we haven’t been much closer than this picture since the place opened. We walk by and feel underdressed.

Anyway, lunch is now served every day from 11 am to 2 pm.

We can at least look at the menu in our backwards ball caps. Lunch menu ranges from a $7 French onion soup to an $18 grilled yellowfin tuna salad.

Have you eaten there yet? By all means! Share your review!

This guy looks like he’s had a little too much carrot juice and rum, doesn’t he? Half inflated bunnies are scattered all over Marketplace, we guess they’re Easter decorations. Better than last week, when some of them were hung from trees in the back lot from ropes, looking not drunk but, well, hung. The bunnies can best be described as …disturbing.

We don’t think we’ll write about the old metal boat for awhile. It’s gone legal. Our folk hero, Michael now has a lawyer, and still contends he’s the rightful owner. Another person has the boat and contends it’s his. And that’s where it ended up going on that trailer. (Spy photo of boat at undisclosed location.) Next chapter may be court. Beings possession is nine-tenths of the law, Michael may have an uphill battle in his fight for the boat. It’s all about a piece of paper that says “it’s mine” right now, and both sides say they have one. If we can get Party Two to talk to us, we’ll post an update. There are always two sides to a story. Sometimes more on St. John.

Ackley Communications, which runs the Surf VI Internet service, has sold it to St. Croix’s Broadband VI. Ackley, which also owns Pirate Radio, says the deal will mean faster connections for its customers and redundant backup for service. Gordon Ackley joins Broadband VI as its “chief technical officer.”

Meantime, East End artist Terry McKoy, aka Sloop Jones, has started moonlighting as the St. John distributor of Dish TV and Hughesnet Internet service. “The service is excellent, but pointing the dish is a bit tedious. You have to hit a sweet spot 26,000 miles away, says Terry.

We keep suggesting he should paint the dishes, Sloop Jones-style. (He thinks it would interfere with reception.) Oh! There’s a Webcam at the Sloop Jones studio now. Check it out here.

Fun how fast you can become part of it all on St. John. The folks who moved themselves and a Unimog to the island just a few months ago, helped lead Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade through Cruz Bay. Big hit. And usvi-on-line.com forumites might recognize a face or two. (Nice Sloop, Rick!)

While Cruz Bay paraded around in shamrocks and Lucky Charms, Coral Bay played host to another Flotilla benefit for the Guy Benjamin School Saturday. Something to put on your to-do list for next year. The event is sponsored by the Coral Bay Yacht Club and sailboats, big and little, take anybody who has sea legs sailing to Miss Vie’s beach for lunch and then back. How much raised this year? Counting the till soon come. Coral Bay time.

Longtime Cruz Bay restaurant Sosa’s is closed. The West Indian restaurant, run for years by a Dominican Republic clan, was well-known for inexpensive and what fans called very tasty dishes like salt fish and goat stew, and for its late night salsa music blaring through Cruz Bay. Nobody can tell us why it closed. (We hear it was the Health Department that shut it down.)
Here’s something we were just told. Sosa’s landlord… is Lindy. Lindy, the Cruz Bay fixture a lot of people think is just a friendly, skinny homeless guy, is a Donald Trump of real estate it turns out. (We’re also told he has a loving family that cares very well for his affairs.) Don’t judge a book by its cover. ESPECIALLY on St. John.

Note: We have been admonished before about writing about some of the Cruz Bay characters, and are reminded that we should always say they are, for the most part, loved, taken care of and left to be who they are. We got no problem with that. (Unless they spit on us.)