My family and I recently spent the better part of a week in Virginia Beach, a lovely spot on the Atlantic Coast. Much as US cities remain a source of fascination and befuddlement for us Canadians, this particular destination offered what the Italians might call cosi fan tutti - a little something for everyone.
It's really my first beach vacation since I was a teenager and joined my parents and sibs on a trip to Cape Cod. I had my first taste of bourbon on that trip, so it wasn't a total loss.
This time, I drew some interesting conclusions about beach people.
For one thing, there are really only two types of people at a public beach: the beautiful and the comfortable. The beautiful are those whose bathing suits are their raisons d'ètre. It's not so much that they're showing off what they've got - though they are - as that they truly seem to believe that others enjoy watching them. And many of us do.
The comfortable, to paraphrase Woody Allen, are everyone else.
For the record, then, I offer this recount of some of the ups, downs and not-so-muches of Virginia Beach, c. July 2007:
The good: Apart from a few glaring exceptions, there was a relative dearth of chain stores and restaurants along the boardwalk. The outlying areas were replete with WalMarts and Targets and Cheesecake Factories. But the central tourist area was blissfully free of these usual suspects, apart from the exceptions noted (among them a handful of 7-11s, which is fine by me, being a big supporter of the Slurpee).
The bad: Smokers. Everywhere. In restaurants, at the beach, in hotels, shopping malls, parking lots, cars. You name it. I haven't seen this many smokers in one place since high school. In this day and age, it really didn't make a lot of sense to me. Restaurants still had smoking sections, for pete's sake. A number of them had proudly posted signs that they were going smoke free in the near future, but clearly, that meant they hadn't yet done so.
And so one day, as part of an idle conversation (about an errant cigarette butt, lighter, actually), a lifeguard at the beach offered this stunningly simple observation - Virginia is tobacco country. 'Nuff said. It's more than a pastime. It's a local staple.
The ugly: There was an outlaw undercurrent to the whole place. Lots of roadside signs, protesting everthing from new taxes to municipal incorporation. On a more micro level, Atlantic Avenue - the main drag along the boardwalk - was crawling with big, shiny black SUVs with blinged-out chrome and other accessories. And the night club near our hotel had bouncers at the door who clearly had their Harleys parked out back, and a sign on the front door basically admonishing against gang attire - no bandanas, no colours, no baggy clothes, and the like.
The trip also offered an eyeful of the US rust belt, and it ain't pretty. We travelled down through New York State and Pennsylvania, and back through Maryland, Delaware and back into Virginia. Pennsylvania and New York. While there's some might pretty country, especially in the rural areas and all along Chesapeake Bay, the industrial sections in many places had seen much better days. Many buildings were shuttered, and those still in operation had only a smattering of vehicles on their lots.
In my book, it also gave the lie, once and for all, to the myth of the megaproject. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Niagara Falls (on either side of the border). The area immediately around the casinos was bustling and full of activity. Five minutes out, and you're into a whole other universe - certainly not the one the casino proponents would want to promote.
As the Grateful Dead so aptly put it, "What a long, strange trip it's been."
