The Cruz Bay park looks like it will have a kind of Mongoose Junction feel to it with meandering stone walls that are replacing the green concrete curbs.

The countdown to Carnival/Festival has begun and that remains the target for finishing this project. That’s about six weeks from now.

Ask around and there are two polar opposite opinions on whether this will be done by early July: “No way,” and “They have to be.”

Which camp are you in?

On-StJohn.com reader and local Pia points us to a page 8 story in one of the local papers quoting Sen. Craig Barshinger who says he was told by Public Works boss Darryl Smalls that the new Enighed parking lot is open, even if there has been no official fanfare saying so.

Not that anybody is parking there.  It’s almost empty. And…it’s enormous. 150 spaces, probably doubling what there is available for free and for pay in Cruz Bay, but so far hardly anyone is taking advantage. (Filled for Carnival probably.)

Above, preparations for paving a half dozen or so spaces for handicapped parking, ADA compliant and all, for whomever will actually push their wheelchair-bound friend up the hill.

Since it’s so new, the thick gravel is a little tire-spinning.  Take a drive with us around the huge, empty Enighed parking lot, below!

Is rain really news? Sure, when there hasn’t been much, and what there’s been has mostly missed the South side, Chocolate Hole at least.

The South Shore got a blast of happy hour rain Saturday.  From our undisclosed location, that looks like about 2.5 inches from 4:45 to 6 p.m.  More might be coming.  We’ll keep the weather station on stand-by.

From our own Russ Rader’s collection, President Harry S. Truman, in Life Magazine, with then Governor William Hastie, enjoying the view above St. Thomas’ Magens Bay in 1948.

In 1946, Truman  appointed  Hastie Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, the first African American to hold the post. (Elected governors didn’t come until the 1960s.)

Truman visited St. Thomas to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the end of slavery in the Danish West Indies.

It was quite a junket! Read about it. There are some great predictions from Truman about the future of USVI tourism.

Trivia: Truman’s Secret Service detail on the trip included Roy Kellerman, who years later would be in President Kennedy’s limousine the day he was assassinated in Dallas.

Magens Bay, from the same spot today…below.

Didn’t we hear that the brand new parking lot would open up “any day now” many any days ago?

It’s supposed to open soon, despite its ongoing shortcomings.

A few folks have asked how far it really is from this new parking lot by the tennis courts to town. The answer is not far at all. A short walk up a hill. Deep breath. A short walk down a hill.

We’ll introduce a new feature this weekend: Flip-Flop Cam.  And its first installment will be the new parking lot to…say…Woody’s. We hear they’ve got some new specials!

On-StJohn.com reader and St. John regular Margo Gripp had her 15 minutes of floating fame recently, and maybe so can you.

But you’ve got to be available on short notice, and you’ve got to be flexible.

St. John photographer and videographer Steve Simonsen is currently working on two videos – one for Gallows Point and a summer-long project for a St. John snorkeling guide. And he needs snorkelers.

“Finding models on St. John is both easy and difficult. There are always people on island happy to be part of a photo shoot, but much of what I do happens at the spur of the moment because of weather or my schedule,” says Steve. “We got Margo, one of our biggest Facebook followers, for a shoot off Gallows because we went to a Cinco de Mayo party at her house the night before the shoot and she was happy to make herself available the next morning.”

Steve’s looking for snorkel models all summer long. He’s also repeating a snorkel around the entire island that he did years ago as part of a magazine article, which also showed up in his coffee table book “Living Art.”

If you live on island, you can always contact Steve, but if you’re visiting St. John this spring or summer, and want to seek out some floating fame of your own,  take a stab at his schedule. You just might fit right in. Drop him a line and tell him when you’ll be on island and ready for your close-up, here!.

(Margo, left, model snorkeling for Steve, right. Trust us. It is.)

Fatty Crab’s first few months – they opened in February – have been a success by all measures, except maybe one.

The price of entry has been too high for some to consider. The trade off, say that who’ve sampled the food, is you get what you pay for. Most reviews have been very flattering.

Now you can sample what’s getting those rave reviews at a discount: A happy hour menu.

“We’ve been serving a late night menu with smaller specialty dishes that aren’t on our regular menu, like Fatty Sliders and our house made Bahn Mi sausage,” says Fatty’s Jenny Grondin. “We decided we’d offer these specials from 5 to 7 p.m. everyday too, and we’re discounting bottles of wine by 20 percent as well.”

Happy hour food menu, 8 to 12 bucks.

And if that’s still a problem for your budget, say so. They’re listening.

“Every night, we talk to just about every table, and the feedback is very important to us,” Jenny says.

That said, there is a place to eat for every taste and budget on St. John, even very inexpensive ones.  Jenny’s favorite cheap spot?

“Nella’s Place, across from the BVI ferry. The best chicken wings on St. John,” she says.

Villa taxes affecting both owners and renters are going up a bit.

The gross receipts tax, paid by owners on rental income in excess of $9,000 a month, is now 4.5 percent effective May 1, up from 3.5 percent.

And the Virgin Islands hotel tax, paid by renters, will go from 8 percent to 10 percent as of January 1, 2012.

Not that we’d like to give the Governor any ideas, but that’s still a relatively low hotel tax. (DC: 14.5 percent, Chicago: 15.4 percent, Honolulu: 14 percent.)

“These are difficult times, and the tourism industry is certainly on the front lines of our territory’s economic challenges,” Governor John deJongh told hotel operators recently.

The territory will also raise the per passenger tax it collects from cruise ships by another $1 after the first of the year.

Our mascot Maddie and her caretakers have taken a weekend sailing trip to Puerto Rico, and Maddie sends us this beautiful sunset over Isla Palominos.

Lucky Maddie.

Meet Bill Etter and Olivia White, the new owners of the soon come Café Livin’.

Bill ran Mojo Café for about three years, up until last November, and now Bill and Olivia, who met on St. John a few years ago and are soon to be married, are back in charge and hope to reopen sometime next week.

“We’re keeping old favorites on the menu, but we’re adding some new things,” says Olivia. “I’m not going to say what, but I will say we’re going to be serving up some things that no one else is right now.”

Bill and Olivia also say they’re looking forward to getting back into the Wharfside groove and seeing their friends. It’s the social water cooler of Cruz Bay, they say.

The new Café Livin’ will be open for breakfast and lunch, and Olivia says, like Mojo Café, the prices will be very reasonable.

So what’s with the name Café Livin’? There’s a double meaning to it.

“Livin’ is a laid back way of describing life on the island, but it’s also my nickname. My close friends don’t call me Olivia…the call me Livin’, so it was Bill’s way of naming the business after me,” she says.

Businesses come, and they go on St. John. It’s particularly sad when it is a well-established business like Palm Jewelers, shuttered for a couple of weeks now. We asked around, but got no answer as to what happened.

And the taco stand, just off the street, is close down now too.

But reports of at least one Wharfside Village mainstay’s demise are premature, and it reopens with a new name and familiar owners this week.  We’ll tell you who tomorrow…if we can get them to pose for a picture.

If you want to see the extension cord that plugs St. John into St. Thomas, just go to Frank Bay. You can see the gigantic conduit that carries a WAPA power line there.

You can also see some abandoned cables and pipes, and now what’s left of an unsightly and unused transformer station.

When some concerned residents heard WAPA wanted to lay an additional cable, they petitioned the utility to use this as an opportunity to get rid of some of the ugly, unused infrastructure.

WAPA agreed, and the area is already being cleaned up and old structures removed in advance of the additional cable being laid.  Sometimes things do get done.

If you’ve never been to Frank Bay, take a beach break there…and see the power lines for yourself…below!