usvi-on-line
Any news about the new Kite?
Any news about the new Kite?
It has another name but in my mind will probably remain The New Kite. I read elsewhere that Victor's doing a pig roast with Inner Visions playing. It'll never be the same, but sometimes I do long for yesterday.
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VICTOR HALL
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:29 pm
- Location: Coral Bay St John
THE KITE BAR /ST JOHN BAR AND RESTAURANT CORAL BAY
Hi all! It seems only proper to respond to all the queries about the KITE and THE ST JOHN BAR and RESTAURANT. Well here it is: I am soooooooooooooooo glad you all remember THE KITE on North Shore, I remember it well also fondly....... and you all too, because really, you,actually made it all happen, all of you......
You all entertained me also, as well as yourselves.
Anyway, here we are now, I am MANAGER of THE ST JOHN BAR and RESTAURANT, and if it's successful < it will be renamed THE KITE , and I will be the owner, so come all of you and drink and eat up and make it happen, and soon...ok?
Meanwhile: NEW YEARS EVE is coming and we have Carl Freeman playing live STEEL PAN melodies of reggae, POP, soul, and Soca.... thursday from 10 pm into 2010! I hope to see ya then! By the way, Carl is really good!
and thank you for remebering me, and I remember you also..... so if you want to see the KITE reappear, click your heels together and make it over to Coral Bay St John soon....... victor
You all entertained me also, as well as yourselves.
Anyway, here we are now, I am MANAGER of THE ST JOHN BAR and RESTAURANT, and if it's successful < it will be renamed THE KITE , and I will be the owner, so come all of you and drink and eat up and make it happen, and soon...ok?
Meanwhile: NEW YEARS EVE is coming and we have Carl Freeman playing live STEEL PAN melodies of reggae, POP, soul, and Soca.... thursday from 10 pm into 2010! I hope to see ya then! By the way, Carl is really good!
and thank you for remebering me, and I remember you also..... so if you want to see the KITE reappear, click your heels together and make it over to Coral Bay St John soon....... victor
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VICTOR HALL
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:29 pm
- Location: Coral Bay St John
ST JOHN BAR AND RESTAURANT AKA THE KITE
Hi again! I forgot to give you all the phone number, here it is: ST JOHN BAR AND RESTAURANT in Coral Bay St John 340 777 7373 victor
Haaaaaaaaay Victor,
It's about time!!!!!!!! My buddies and I have great memories from the early 80's at the Kite. Where is it located exactly? Will you have some instruments? I still don't know how to play anything, but it never stopped me from trying back then
you took a guitar away from me once and gave me a stick and the wooden fish looking thing to keep me amused,or maybe it was to keep me from scaring away customers 
I have to dig through some photo's....I think one is of your dog? I'll bring copies of what I have.
Great news and see you soon,
Budman
It's about time!!!!!!!! My buddies and I have great memories from the early 80's at the Kite. Where is it located exactly? Will you have some instruments? I still don't know how to play anything, but it never stopped me from trying back then
you took a guitar away from me once and gave me a stick and the wooden fish looking thing to keep me amused,or maybe it was to keep me from scaring away customers I have to dig through some photo's....I think one is of your dog? I'll bring copies of what I have.Great news and see you soon,
Budman
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VICTOR HALL
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:29 pm
- Location: Coral Bay St John
hi! Nice to hear from you and your memories;) you can email me photos at: bushtea@excite.com
if i took the guitar away from you, I must have had a good reason
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 
by the way, THE ST JOHN BAR and RESTAURANT IS LOCATED on the east end of ST JOHN Virgin Islands..... about 8 miles..take route 20 , turn right at the intersection before the Moravian church on route 108 and it's BEFORE the DOMINO GAS STATION on the right side of the road on the WATERFRONT of CORAL BAY .... you'll see us.. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
telephone 340 777 7373
yes, we'll save some maracas for you to play.
if i took the guitar away from you, I must have had a good reason
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! by the way, THE ST JOHN BAR and RESTAURANT IS LOCATED on the east end of ST JOHN Virgin Islands..... about 8 miles..take route 20 , turn right at the intersection before the Moravian church on route 108 and it's BEFORE the DOMINO GAS STATION on the right side of the road on the WATERFRONT of CORAL BAY .... you'll see us.. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
telephone 340 777 7373
yes, we'll save some maracas for you to play.
Hey Gromit,
Victor will have to give you the real story behind the name, but it was perched high above Cinnamon Bay right on the road. Can you picture a kite that has lost its wind and zig zags back and forth often righting itself and then suddenly drops to the ground nose first? well that pretty much describes me and my friends heading back to our camp each night from there, ROOKIES! Think I still have scars from falling in the stone gutters, come to think about it....the gutters were a better target than the opposite side of the road
Victor will have to give you the real story behind the name, but it was perched high above Cinnamon Bay right on the road. Can you picture a kite that has lost its wind and zig zags back and forth often righting itself and then suddenly drops to the ground nose first? well that pretty much describes me and my friends heading back to our camp each night from there, ROOKIES! Think I still have scars from falling in the stone gutters, come to think about it....the gutters were a better target than the opposite side of the road
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VICTOR HALL
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:29 pm
- Location: Coral Bay St John
HOW THE KITE GOT IT'S NAME
Hi Grommit. Well, i learned to sail at Saphire Bay with their sunfish sailboats they had there. friends of mine were member of some club there and I got to go sailing with them. In the Beginning, besides having BYOB parties on the beach of Peter Bay, a friend bought a sunfish and left it there for me to use. Anyway, people stopped bringing their own bottles to drink, and i got tired of almost everyone drinking my booze, I got a drinks license. Well, soon people wanted to rent the sailboat, so I got a license `to rent boats and gave it the name THE KITE DRINKSTAND AND SAILBOAT RENTALS. My drinkstand was placed high up the mountain on the road, and with the image of the sunfish sail fluttering in the breeze, I thought it was appropriate.
Soon after that I bought several beach PRINDLE catamarans and with all the sails fluttering in the breeze it was a magnificant sight to see! just thought i'd clarify things for you all. victor
Soon after that I bought several beach PRINDLE catamarans and with all the sails fluttering in the breeze it was a magnificant sight to see! just thought i'd clarify things for you all. victor
Jeez Victor
The nostalgia is washing over me in waves. I don't think I've actually seen you since The Kite, but I've enjoyed hearing of where you've been seen or having you pop up on the various forums. End of year, end of decade. Things change and sometimes I really long for yesterday. Also, we were young then (at least younger, a lot younger).
The Kite was my first stop and you were the first St Johnian I met on my first trip to STJ. The old airport was still on STT and there weren't any buildings on the ferry dock in Cruz Bay. I was coming for 5-6 weeks to hang out/help/work for friends at Maho who'd been spending time on STJ for a few years. 5-6 weeks!! My life was so much simpler then. So much more time, so much less money. They met me at the ferry then we stopped at The Kite on the way out to Maho. I have a memory of sitting there and recognizing that I was in heaven. I was perfectly content. There was nothing that I would change. Nothing that I could add or remove from that moment to improve it. It was perfect. All was perfect. It was heaven, not like heaven, but actually heaven. And the grace came in that I was able to recognize it at the moment so that I could savor it, no just think back on it after it had passed. I'd only been on the island for maybe an hour and I had 5 or 6 weeks to go. "2000 miles from reality" seemed accurate.
We went back to The Kite numerous times during that first trip. Sundays there were among the best times in most people's lives. I remember one Sunday Kid Creole and Winston Grennan showed up. And we just missed the New Riders of the Purple Sage being on island. Wednesday nights were in Cruz Bay wandering back and forth between Fred's where Inner Visions played and World Headquarters, which is now Morgans Mango. It was a bar then and Kid Creole and company played there one of the Wednesdays. I remember a memorable dinner that the woman who became my wife and I had up on the roof at Miss Maeda's. In Coral Bay, Skinny's was still Redbeard's and Sweet Plantains was still the Sailview, home to Coral Bay pirates. The Sputnik looked much as it does (and maybe always will). Vie, of course, was out in East End, as she has always been.
Another year I remember being at The Kite and hearing Paul Simon's Graceland album for the first time. It was all that Victor wanted to play. I remember one night he stopped serving because he wanted to jam along with the record. It was that kind of place and that's how Victor ran it. I also remember a patron once asking Victor for a virgin pina colada. He apologized, saying that he didn't make them. The patron offered to pay full price for the drink even though there would be no liquor. And again Victor apologized, simply saying by way of explanation that he didn't make them. It was a magnificently beautiful location and it was a different time on the island.
There was a stretch of a few years when we didn't get back to STJ at all. When we did, The Kite had burned and a lot seemed to have gone with it. The Peter Bay of Victor Hall had begun turning into what it is today and the island was changing in many ways. Money was coming. The concrete monstrosities were starting to deface the hillsides. The West Indian population and culture were beginning to become increasingly peripheral, being supplanted by a kind of island lifestyle developed by continentals. The Americanization and gentrification was gearing up. It's never really been the same for us. There's less and less of what we fell in love with on STJ and more of the things that we were glad weren't there. Some of the people who like STJ now really wouldn't have liked it 25 years ago and some people who fell in love with it then are saddened by it now.Of course we met people on our first trip who told us that we should have gotten there ten years earlier---before all the changes came.
So Victor---thanks for your part in my memories. I remember asking you once on another forum if you had any photos of The Kite that you'd consider posting. It kind of amazes me that I never took any. But you said that everything like that had burned along with the drinkstand. So I rely on my memories. Someone had a single photo that they posted a while back. I'd really like to see some pics, but I don't know if they'd come close to my memories of your place. I doubt that photographs of heaven can ever do it justice.
I do enjoy hearing of you periodically and I hope this new place works out well. (Was Pickles something else before it was Pickles? I don't have any memory of it being anything else). We'll definitely come by if we get to STJ again. We were on Virgin Gorda for our last Caribbean trip, but I do have in mind that I'd like to get back to Maho again before they roll up the tents---if that's the way it's going to go.
Take care. Happy new year, happy new decade.
The nostalgia is washing over me in waves. I don't think I've actually seen you since The Kite, but I've enjoyed hearing of where you've been seen or having you pop up on the various forums. End of year, end of decade. Things change and sometimes I really long for yesterday. Also, we were young then (at least younger, a lot younger).
The Kite was my first stop and you were the first St Johnian I met on my first trip to STJ. The old airport was still on STT and there weren't any buildings on the ferry dock in Cruz Bay. I was coming for 5-6 weeks to hang out/help/work for friends at Maho who'd been spending time on STJ for a few years. 5-6 weeks!! My life was so much simpler then. So much more time, so much less money. They met me at the ferry then we stopped at The Kite on the way out to Maho. I have a memory of sitting there and recognizing that I was in heaven. I was perfectly content. There was nothing that I would change. Nothing that I could add or remove from that moment to improve it. It was perfect. All was perfect. It was heaven, not like heaven, but actually heaven. And the grace came in that I was able to recognize it at the moment so that I could savor it, no just think back on it after it had passed. I'd only been on the island for maybe an hour and I had 5 or 6 weeks to go. "2000 miles from reality" seemed accurate.
We went back to The Kite numerous times during that first trip. Sundays there were among the best times in most people's lives. I remember one Sunday Kid Creole and Winston Grennan showed up. And we just missed the New Riders of the Purple Sage being on island. Wednesday nights were in Cruz Bay wandering back and forth between Fred's where Inner Visions played and World Headquarters, which is now Morgans Mango. It was a bar then and Kid Creole and company played there one of the Wednesdays. I remember a memorable dinner that the woman who became my wife and I had up on the roof at Miss Maeda's. In Coral Bay, Skinny's was still Redbeard's and Sweet Plantains was still the Sailview, home to Coral Bay pirates. The Sputnik looked much as it does (and maybe always will). Vie, of course, was out in East End, as she has always been.
Another year I remember being at The Kite and hearing Paul Simon's Graceland album for the first time. It was all that Victor wanted to play. I remember one night he stopped serving because he wanted to jam along with the record. It was that kind of place and that's how Victor ran it. I also remember a patron once asking Victor for a virgin pina colada. He apologized, saying that he didn't make them. The patron offered to pay full price for the drink even though there would be no liquor. And again Victor apologized, simply saying by way of explanation that he didn't make them. It was a magnificently beautiful location and it was a different time on the island.
There was a stretch of a few years when we didn't get back to STJ at all. When we did, The Kite had burned and a lot seemed to have gone with it. The Peter Bay of Victor Hall had begun turning into what it is today and the island was changing in many ways. Money was coming. The concrete monstrosities were starting to deface the hillsides. The West Indian population and culture were beginning to become increasingly peripheral, being supplanted by a kind of island lifestyle developed by continentals. The Americanization and gentrification was gearing up. It's never really been the same for us. There's less and less of what we fell in love with on STJ and more of the things that we were glad weren't there. Some of the people who like STJ now really wouldn't have liked it 25 years ago and some people who fell in love with it then are saddened by it now.Of course we met people on our first trip who told us that we should have gotten there ten years earlier---before all the changes came.
So Victor---thanks for your part in my memories. I remember asking you once on another forum if you had any photos of The Kite that you'd consider posting. It kind of amazes me that I never took any. But you said that everything like that had burned along with the drinkstand. So I rely on my memories. Someone had a single photo that they posted a while back. I'd really like to see some pics, but I don't know if they'd come close to my memories of your place. I doubt that photographs of heaven can ever do it justice.
I do enjoy hearing of you periodically and I hope this new place works out well. (Was Pickles something else before it was Pickles? I don't have any memory of it being anything else). We'll definitely come by if we get to STJ again. We were on Virgin Gorda for our last Caribbean trip, but I do have in mind that I'd like to get back to Maho again before they roll up the tents---if that's the way it's going to go.
Take care. Happy new year, happy new decade.
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VICTOR HALL
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:29 pm
- Location: Coral Bay St John
hello all
Anyone looking for info on what I am up to lately can look for me on FACEBOOK
http://www.facebook.com/people/Victor-H ... ref=search
Contact Info
Email: bushtea@excite.com
Current Address: Victor hall box 15619 Lower carolina Coral bay St John US Virgin Islands 00830
http://www.facebook.com/people/Victor-H ... ref=search
Contact Info
Email: bushtea@excite.com
Current Address: Victor hall box 15619 Lower carolina Coral bay St John US Virgin Islands 00830
Hey Lex - there are some of us that love STJ now that would have loved it whenever we were lucky enough to be introduced to her.
As time goes by there are changes that we don't care for that strip away a little more of what once was - such is life.
I hope that the memory of what used to be doesn't completely ruin for you what is still a great place.
As time goes by there are changes that we don't care for that strip away a little more of what once was - such is life.
I hope that the memory of what used to be doesn't completely ruin for you what is still a great place.
Come see us!