Most people take pictures on their vacation. Eric LeVasseur and Patrick Davidson make cartoons about their trips.
The California natives, now living in Costa Rica, run PodComics Studio, which produces The Traveling Gringos, an animated Web series that follows the travel stories of Eric and Pat.
“We started Traveling Gringos in February, and it is the world’s first animated daily Web series,” Eric says. We’ve got a small but loyal following but our goal is to get a following as large as South Park or Family Guy.”
Eric says he lived on St. Thomas from 1988 to 2000 and ran a t-shirt sikscreening business there. One of his customers was the Soggy Dollar Bar.
The Traveling Gringos have been many places. They’ve run into Sir Richard on Necker Island, partied at the Bomba Shack, and….had some greenies at Soggy Dollar….
The soon-to-open casino at Wharfside Village will have big, electronic versions of a Black Jack table and a Roulette table, complete with virtual dealers. Not quite the real thing. It will also have 70 video slot machines. The casino, to be called The Parrot Club, is now hiring for bartenders, floor hostesses and “cashiers with banking experience.” (The house intends to win.)
It includes a full bar and an arrangement with close-by restaurants for some kind of food service.
It’s also got fancy, Vegas-style carpeting, a dozen or so surveillance cams in the ceilings, and will employ its own security detail.
Look for the Parrot Club to open sometime in early to mid-August. The machines are being put in place and plugged in as we speak.
Stop in if you’re interested. Walk right on by if you’re not. That simple. It’s not going to change the social fabric of St. John, which - just a quick reminder - is hardly an Amish village anyway. Lighten up panic people.
After a hiatus, the free rum and happy tourism greeters have returned to the St. Thomas airport. Now the Cruz Bay ferry dock will soon get something similar. The Tourism Department plans to roll out a mobile greeting station this fall that will be staffed every day by greeters handing out free flavored rum samples. It is also looking to fill those greeter jobs right now. Applications available at Tourism Department offices. (Job requirements: Good people skills, big smile, steady pouring hand, knowledge of location of nearest public restrooms.)
There is food back on the menu at the recently-reopened Island Blues. Chef Curtis Sorensen, previously of Miss Lucy’s, is in charge. A dozen or so choices, from mozzarella sticks to penne pasta and a daily special or two. (If the asparagus soup is on the menu, order it.) And of course, there is a handful of an island burger.
The 11 o’clock parade started, um, somewhere around 1:30 on July 4th, so we don’t feel all that guilty about giving some highlights to you a couple of days late.
It was a GREAT parade though. And it was a really long parade. Island time parade.
That’s a lot of No going on there, the most important of which is No Gas. Double check the gas gauge before heading to Coral Bay. The Domino station was empty Monday. As for prices? Seem reasonable (all things considered) to us. What do you think?
The release date for Gene Hamilton: Water Dancing has been set. You will enjoy 11 original songs, and you will learn a new dance. Before long, people all across St. John will be doing The Squid. Release date: July 20!
Like our parents waiting for the Captain Midnight decoder ring, we have been checking the box for weeks waiting for our Soggy Dollar Painkiller membership kit. It just arrived! We are truly special people now. We have a special “Club Member” card that gets us 10% off at the Soggy Dollar store, a Soggy Dollar bumper sticker, some literature reminding us that we’re Soggy Dollar members, a Soggy Dollar Lance Armstrong-like wrist band that says Soggy Dollar Bar on it, some more stuff that says Soggy Dollar all over it, and… get this…free use of the tanning facilities! It says so. Right there in the brochure. We are truly Soggy. Jealous? Well, okay. Here.
