Coconut Coast Studios owner and artist Elaine Estern resumes here weekly sunset cocktail parties Wednesday, November 12 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Elaine has been hosting them every Wednesday from mid-November through April for about six years now.

The sunset almost always cooperates. And there’s always nice, live music, usually from Rich Greengold and Katha Ricciardi, who play classical flute duets.

And it’s also a great opportunity for Elaine to show off her latest works.

“The month of November will showcase some of my travels over the past year, then in the month of December, out come the originals for the 2009 calendar,” says Elaine. “I save them for December to make a big impact, all in one showing. It is a years worth of work and I always put into print only my best work.”

There is plenty of parking. It’s free. And it is really a beautiful little spot.

“Every morning and every evening, I tell myself that I must be one of the luckiest people in the world. Should I not remember, people are coming in to remind me every day,” she says.

The Lime Inn is open for lunch and dinner again, and there’s lots of local fish on the menu.

“The fish are running right now, and the fishermen are calling, says Lime Inn’s Chris Meyer. “Lots of local mahi and tuna.”

No real changes to the Lime Inn menu this season. Wednesday is still All You Can Eat shrimp night, and they’re making sure they’ve got lots of fresh lobster. New this year, but not on the menu…Alaskan king crab legs.

So what’s the outlook for high season in this lousy economy?

“We’ve been here for 25 years and we do our best to keep our loyal customers coming back, both tourists and locals,” Chris tells us. “We’re not pessimistic about the season at all.”

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The Visitor’s Connection information booth in Cruz Bay, and two others in Mongoose Junction and Red Hook, have been closed. The booths were great resources for information about activities and restaurants, but they also served as marketing tools for the Westin’s timeshare business.

Starwood has decided to suspend staffing of the locations for now and concentrate resources on marketing timeshares to hotel guests, although it is still paying rent on the three locations and may use them for other marketing programs in the future.

“St. John is one of the most profitable sites within Starwood vacation management and we will most certainly continue to market our St. John timeshares,” says Dave Whaley, senior marketing manager for Starwood Vacation Ownership at the Westin St. John. “But we have decided to focus more strategically on our in-house guests. As we work through this economic cycle, we need to focus on the engines that bring us the most profitable results.”

Four happy faces were let go as part of the decision. We understand tough decisions in a down economy, but it raises a serious question.

How will day trip visitors find the Cruz Bay public restrooms now?

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Amy Dupont hopes her new business venture becomes a St. John-specific Craig’s List. But that’s gonna take some participation.

Amy, who got married on Hawksnest in 1998 and moved to St. John a couple of years ago, has launched ClassifiedVI.com, an online classified listings site aimed at both St. John residents and folks planning on moving to the island, or even just researching the possibility.

Text ads are free. Those with a photo, video or links are as little as 5 bucks. There are a few dozen items listed already (villas, real estate, security systems, bunk beds), but the site really needs hundreds of listings to gain traction.

St. John needs something like this. There just needs to be a site that becomes the de facto classified listing destination.

This one looks pretty good to us.

To help get the site seeded, Amy says all listings, even those with links, photos, video, etc, are free for awhile.

Read a little about Amy, and her plans for ClassifiedVI.com, here!

(Amy, celebrating anniversary number 10, at Hawksnest, below.)

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