A couple of St. John restaurants are mentioned in a huge, five page New York Times feature today called Affordable Caribbean. The St. John Waterfront Bistro gets a mention for affordable dining, but only if you know when to go, says the paper.

“To save money, eat early; lunch is about three times cheaper than dinner, despite similar dishes like the rigatoni with grilled squash and roasted tomatoes ($11), and fresh mahi-mahi tacos ($13),” says Travel writer David G. Allan. If you haven’t eaten there, here are the Bistro’s menus.

Also mentioned as affordable is the Sun Dog Café at Mongoose Junction. “The menu is impressive for a kitchen the size of a Volkswagen Beetle,” Allan says, calling the 10 inch artichoke pizza ($10) a satisfying meal.

Got an opinion on these two places? Comment away. We’re sure the owners would love the feedback.

Sometimes you see things on St. John and forget to notice how totally out of the ordinary they are. I am quite sure the fresh herb section at Whole Foods or Wegman’s doesn’t have Bush Tea. (Starfish Market does.)

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Yes, that is a blow up, full sized male party doll, affectionately named Pedro, and Pedro gets around.

An OSJ reader, who requests anonymity, tells the story of a married friend visiting St. John without her husband. She brought her date, Pedro in his place.

“Pedro had lots of fun with us that week, diving off balconies into the pool, hiding in closets and dressing for dinner, but with all his rough adventures, he developed a slow leak,” says anonymous reader. “We decided Pedro must go to the dump, so we packaged him carefully in his original box and put him in the dumpster at Love City Mini Mart, and went to Island Blues for lunch. Not 10 minutes later, a Coral Bay lady came in, proudly displaying her dumpster find and proceeded to blow him up. I am sure Pedro had many more adventures on St. John after that,” she says.

Sadly, we hear after a series of failed construction, retail and bartending jobs, Pedro spiraled into inevitable alcoholism before his parents finally sent him a one-way ticket home.

When St. John Spice installed a new Webcam pointed at the ferry dock, owners Ruth Ernst and Ron Piccinin had no way of knowing how hugely popular it would become.

Check out these numbers. The camera gets an average of 2,100 unique visitors a day, who spend (are you ready for this?) an average of 59 minutes per visit. Good golly, there are very few Websites in the world that keep people around for an hour at a time.

Viewers are heavily concentrated in the Northeast, followed by Florida and there is even a handful every day of folks right on St. John looking.

More stats: Tuesday and Wednesday are the busiest days. 10 am and 4 pm are the busiest hours. There are 581,000 images viewed per week. That’s incredible. This camera is seriously eroding worker productivity in America.

“Travelers to St. John are not your average tourists,” says Ben Chill who installed the equipment for St. John Spice. “They devour anything St. John and Ruth is delivering a live piece of Cruz Bay to get them through the times they have to sit at a desk and dream.”

The StJohnSpiceCam also made EarthCam’s Top 10 list this week.

“At least a half dozen people a day come into the store and tell us how much they enjoy the Webcam, and we get several emails a day,” says Ruth.

This is an upgrade from the previous ferry dock Webcam, which was also installed on the St. John Spice building but not controlled by Ruth and Ron. The greatly improved image also refreshes much more frequently, every 20 seconds.

“You get to see all sorts on that camera,” says Ruth. “Brides and grooms, tourists waving to their families, and my favorite, a guy one day that just decided the dock was a good place for a nap.”

The Polaris buggy sitting in Cruz Bay at the scooter rental stand gets lots of looks. But that’s about all you can do is look.

Owner Richard Lerea, whose main scooter rental location is up the street at The Lumberyard, says the St. John DMV is fighting him. “They’re not crazy about giving me the registration,” he tells us. “You can’t go off-roading on St. John, but it’s an excellent vehicle for driving around on the roads.”

Should Richard win the battle, he says he wants to become a Polaris dealer on St. John.

You CAN rent the motorcycles. The 2009 Kawasaki 250s go for $95 per day. A motorcycle license endorsement is required. The scooters are $65 a day… and you do see people renting them.

On a dry day, at a measured pace, if you have experience and know what you’re doing and if you stick to sensible routes, it looks fun. On a rainy day, after a few painkillers, for someone who has never been on a scooter and who wants to run around the East End, not so much.

Captain John Brandi takes us to Carvel Rock for stories of battleships and canon fire!

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