Insider chanced upon a very casual bar on St. Croix's north
coast.
So casual, in fact, that the dress code was spelled out on an
old wooden surfboard hanging above a mural near the bar: No Shoes
... No Shirt ... No Problem.
This was a nice variation on the petulant signs seen at
establishments in many a mainland U.S. beach town, such as No Shoes
... No Shirt ... No Service (or ... No Thank You).
The beach goddess illustrated in the bar's wall mural did have
on the briefest of bikinis, as did many of the local female patrons
gathered round the bar.
No one -- male or female -- wore shoes of any kind.
And no one appeared to have any problems, either.
Minibar surprise
It seems today's hotel guests expect a lot more from their
minibars than just peanuts, pretzels and soft drinks.
Case in point: the San Francisco-based Kimpton Hotel and
Restaurant Group, which operates hotels and restaurants in San
Francisco; Portland, Ore.; Seattle and Tacoma, Wash.; Chicago;
Denver; Salt Lake City, and Vancouver.
According to Kimpton, at least one-third of its hotel guests
partake of minibar items, which include everything from a $3 yo-yo
at the Hotel Monaco Chicago to a $30 Did You Forget kit with
toiletries, panty hose and a contact lens case at the Juliana Hotel
in San Francisco.
Kimpton, in fact, likes to boast that the 33% of guests who raid
its minibars is 7% above the industry average, according to Club
MiniBar Inc., the San Francisco-based honor bar distributor.
Could it be that the $5 Intimacy Kit at San Francisco's Hotel
Palomar has something to do with the success of Kimpton's minibars?
It includes -- among other things -- two prophylactics.
BallastAir
Small planes have weight problems.
Often the balance between passengers and cargo is so delicate
that passengers are shifted to the right side of the plane to
compensate for suitcases in the left side of the cargo hold.
Then there are those passengers whose own body weight dictates
whether or not they can actually board certain flights.
Sacks of potatoes or mail or cases of bottled water frequently
take priority over two adults and their luggage.
This is especially true in the Caribbean, where interisland
puddle-jumper flights are tied to stringent weight
restrictions.
There, the preboarding routine often includes an embarrassing
weigh-in on a literally large scale in full view of one's fellow
travelers.
The only saving grace is that in the islands, the scales
register in kilograms, not pounds.
If you're lucky, no one except the gate agent will be able to
make the conversion.
Love in the morning
It was during Travel Weekly's Technology Conference 2000 in
Chicago when the "I Love You" virus hit.
Travel Weekly's journalists learned of the virus during the
early morning general session. One of the newspaper's editors cut
short the last part of the session to announce the existence of the
virus to the 1,000 or so delegates in attendance.
He said the general session would come to a close so that
delegates could call their offices, if they so desired, before the
raft of seminars began about a half-hour later.
As soon as the microphone was turned off, nearly all of the
1,000 people in the Sheraton ballroom pulled out their cell phones
and began dialing.
They couldn't have done better if the scene had been
rehearsed.