Showing posts with label Port Royal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Port Royal. Show all posts

Thursday, September 22, 2016

National Affairs: Can Kingston [ever] Become the City it's meant to Be?

As a boy of a bout 9 or 10, I used to often accompany my mother to her weekday workplace of Worker's Bank (now defunct) on Tower Street, named, I'm guessing, for the towers of the infamous prison at the eastern end.
Whilst I had little interest in the intricacies of commercial banking, I cherished these trips for exposing the heart of the capital city, and in particular, the waterfront area, as fine an example of a port city as exists in this hemisphere.
Even then, 40 years ago, there was repeated talk about expansion and renewal of the city, of making it into an even greater urban centre - of rehabilitating the blighted settlements ringing the city centre to the north, east and west. Of expanding the harbour, of fostering culture an entertainment.
Four decades, and several political regimes later, there is again talk from Government about "renewal" and the usual committees have been formed, and there was news just this week of a "point man" of sorts to oversee this latest round of toing and froing.
This latest iteration of renewal has seen Cabinet approve the expansion of the downtown Kingston Urban Renewal project to boost investment in the area.
    
Daryl Vaz, Minister with responsibility for Investment, says the expanded development area will include sections of Kingston and Port Royal.
Yeaahhh.....right. I could do a whole other article on the many grand plans to capitalize on the undeniably rich history of the former pirate capital, but with Disney already way ahead of us on that score, and also four "Pirates of the Caribbean" already funnelling revenues from the Port Royal story into foreign hands (a fifth is reportedly due next year), I may be forgiven for not being too hopeful on that score.
    
What is being heavily touted on this go-round is something called the Urban Renewal Tax Incentive Programme. Under this (latest) proposal, investors will benefit from urban renewal bonds, investment tax credit, tax parental income and exemption from transferred tax and stamp duty among other things

In the official spiel, The Tax Incentive Programme for Urban Renewal was first introduced to downtown Kingston in 1995 and was subsequently extended to Port Royal in 1996, Montego Bay in 2000 and Spanish Town in 2008.
The Tax Incentive Programme is managed by the UDC, on behalf of the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service and aims to garner the support of the private sector in arresting urban decay by encouraging the redevelopment of property in blighted areas.
The programme accomplishes this by enabling persons who either own or lease property in areas defined as special development areas to access incentives to redevelop the properties under the Urban Renewal (Tax Relief) Act which was established in 1995. A special development area is one which is declared by the minister responsible for urban development for the purpose of urban renewal.
Under the Tax Incentive Programme, tax relief is offered to companies or individuals undertaking capital investments in either land or buildings.  These can be residential or commercial holdings. Tax Incentives are offered to both owners and lessees of property in the Special Development Areas.
The four incentives offered are Urban Renewal Bonds, Investment Tax Credit, Tax Free Rental Income and Exemption from Transfer Tax. Organizations such as GraceKennedy Limited, Guardsman Group, NEM Insurance Company Ltd and Courts are among beneficiaries of this programme
The Government is also dreaming of a return of cruise shipping to Kingston, in the manner that presently obtains forthe ports of Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Falmouth. This, the PM and the developmment Minister say,  involves the construction of a cruise ship pier and a dramatic revitalisation and restoration of Kingston's downtown and harbour front areas, along with existing places of interest.

Well, if the kind of work that has been done, and is continuing, in Falmouth could be replicated in Kingston, then i would - notwithstanding environmental and sociological concerns, be among the first to cheer.

But much of the Jamaican Government modus operandi (both Parties) over te past 40 years or so  leaves me less than optimistic.

For instance, it remains impossible to have the streets of downtown Kingston kept in any semblance of order, much less attractiveness. I'm not expecting them to be pristine, but the truly anarchic sprawl of   economically desperate coupled with the outcomes of official neglect - effluent sewage, uncollected garbage, blighted landmarks - is gonna require far more than  grand pronouncements.

The preservation and restoration of national heritage sites such as the Ward Theatre, for example, is urgent, more so now that the gleaming PetroCaribe-funded Bolivar Centre stands almost right nextto it in mocking splendour.

the area in front of the once great theatre is now an informal depot for route taxis and, yes, staging area for individuals selling everything from snacks to basic school supplies to bootleg DVDs to weed.

One of the great city centres and portsides arguably in the world, and certainly in this hemisphere, remains essentiall untamed.

this is partly (you might, depending on your perspective, say largely or entirely) due to the complex and even confusing divisions and overlaps that have been allowed to spring up and fester by uncaring politicians on both sides in their unbridled lust for power. Today, while those "borderlines" and greay areas are not enforced with the quasi-military intensity of the 70s and 80s, they still work against one of the key ingredients of successful urban renewal: standardization.

Each new "plan"   -  Former World Bank country representative, Giorgio Valentini, highlighted in July 2014 that "there are 10 or 15 different plans" which have all "been done in isolation" - arrives with its own baggage of myopia in deference to undrawn but implicit power lines. Until we decode and get past this legacy, then we'll easy slip through another 40 or 50- year time warp with nothing fundamentally changing

One of the things I'd like to see Kingston renewal plans really take into account (no patronising) is what UNESCO has recognised by designating the capital as one of 10 Creative Cities for Music. The designation, made late last year, is long over sue recognition for the symbiotic relationship between the city and its sounds - sounds which now reverberate across the globe.

When we truly give music and the creative arts - all of them - pride of place in the schematic of redevelopment, only then will Kingston truly come to life and attract global interest. This has already been proven on a smaller but no less impressive scale by the courageous work of the Kingston On the Edge (KOTE) conceptualisers. the annual festival has, against the odds, deftly showcased the nuanced riches of the city and drawn growing international attention.

if there was a KOTE every week or or even every month then, trust me, the rest of the officialand economic master plan would be a proverbial snap; visitors would flock, investors would eaglerly sniff and global media would come trotting in eager to capture, explore and share 9albeit not in equal proportion) .

This is obvious to every person who's ever gone to Rae Town, marvelled at the Roktowa and other creative stands during KOTE, or even massed at Half way Tree or Parade (downtown square) to witness our track athletes best the world during the Olympics or World Championships. Simply, Kingston is more than the waterfront and the few stratified and overrun city blocks - it is Dub Club on the precipice of Skyline Drive every bit as much as it is the National Gallery auditorium on last Sundays or the Edna Manley College Amphitheatre every last Tuesday for Poetry Jam.

These are the assets  that Governments have thus far grossly undervalued. But i for one, remain stubbornly (defiantly?) optimistic that the pace of change will move from glacial to something more discernible.

i can think no more apt final point for this piece than the words of the late journalist Jane Jacobs who wrote in  The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961): "Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody"

 Let's come together around that guidepost, can we?
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Friday, April 22, 2016

Travel: NYT touches the African Pulse behind Jamaica's Sun Sea and Sand


- From the New York Times
I was trying not to slip as I traipsed over the stone pavement in the drizzle at the old fort at Port Royal in Kingston, the “wickedest city in Christendom,” a warren of iniquity and plunder, a den of pirates and buccaneers and the core of British naval power in the Antilles for 200 years.
As a retired coast guard captain who was born there and lived nowhere else in his 60 years led me around, conjuring up scenes of mayhem, killers, whores and smugglers, I scanned the remains of the fort, nearly deserted that morning, and saw nothing that remained of the glories past. Ruminating about the eerily quiet grounds, the captain sighed and recalled the historic turning point of the Port Royal story, the midday hour on June 7, 1692, when an earthquake toppled most of the city and 2,000 people into the sea, the day Port Royal became a ghost town.
On some islands, the tale would be a defining one, but here, it was just a slim chapter in a dramatic history. Jamaica was born out of conflagration. Fire and brimstone, slave rebellions and insurrections, pirates and buccaneers, hurricanes and earthquakes. It was inhabited by Taino Indians, who named it Xaymaca, and shaped by European conquerors, first the Spanish, then the English.
The British turned the island into a huge sugar plantation, its wealthiest colony in the Caribbean and the hub of slave trade in the Americas. Planters built magnificent houses high above their sugar cane fields, and lived lives of idleness, gorging on drink and wanton sex with slaves.
At the center of Jamaica’s ethnic and political complexity is race. As in Antigua and on other Caribbean islands, the social and economic division between mostly white “haves” and mostly black “have-nots” runs deep. Like other Caribbean countries, Jamaica is demanding reparations for slavery. Old grievances and injustices drive much of the political violence, gang crime and economic problems that have bedeviled the island.
But it seems something is changing. The government is stable after long periods of tumult, and it is pushing to rein in crimes against foreigners, gang-and-drugs shootings, and evangelist-reinforced homophobia. The economy is still wobbly but showing some signs of health, and tourism, the island’s No. 1 industry, on which many Jamaicans depend for a living, has risen to at least 1.5 million visitors a year.
SLIDE SHOW|16 Photos

Exploring Montego Bay and Negril

Exploring Montego Bay and Negril

Robert Rausch for The New York Times
With such high stakes in tourism, the island has begun looking beyond its traditional market, the sand-and-sun visitors and the stable of honeymooners who reliably fill the giant middlebrow Jamaican-owned Sandals and Couples resorts. Jamaica has been promoting celebrity and Hollywood, like the seaside villa “GoldenEye,” onetime retreat of the James Bond creator Ian Fleming and now a resort where one night in the least expensive cottage can set you back $1,400 in the high season.
Glossy videos and magazine advertising showcase a paradise island of multiple attractions including eco-tourism, bohemian tourism, spa and wellness tourism, even small-bore niche tourism like Jewish Jamaican Journeys. It’s an all-out campaign to drum up travelers to Jamaica’s alchemy of nature, adventure, night life and sensuality.
Jamaica has, of course, been a player in the Caribbean tourist game, but competition is stiffer and so are the stakes now that Cuba has opened up and inched ahead of Jamaica in the number of visitors in 2015. Jamaica already lags well behind the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, but it hopes that new mega-resorts and other investments will create badly needed jobs and energize the private sector.
With a per-capita income estimated at $9,000 (it’s $15,200 in Puerto Rico and $9,700 in the Dominican Republic) and an approximate 16 percent unemployment rate, Jamaica is grappling with the steady exodus of thousands of its 2.9 million people to New York, Miami and London.
With few options but to expand tourism, which makes up about 27 percent of the nation’s revenues, the government passed development and casino legislation that will bring the first casino-hotel resort to the island,Celebration Jamaica Hotel and Resort, a 2,000-room, 90-acre project set to open in a year or two in Montego Bay. The resort has a Canadian company behind it, but much of the new tourism investment comes from Spain and Mexico, posing a challenge to longtime Anglo-American dominance.
For all the three centuries that Britain ruled Jamaica, though, the island’s deepest influence is not English. It is African. It is folk magic, spiritual and superstitious. It is musical, the poetry of the hills and the streets, the rhythms you hear in the way Jamaicans speak, the imploding pulse that runs from east to west, from the resort-strewn north coast to the rougher south, through bamboo-shaded foothills and cloud-covered peaks and the wind-driven tides that roll up on this island of old myths and spiritual power.
The “jumping bridge” at Rockhouse.Robert Rausch for The New York Times
Folk magic out of West Africa, not unlike Haiti’s voodoo and Cuba’s Santeria, feeds the Jamaican belief in superstition, witches and ghosts. Magic runs through a pervasive fundamentalist and evangelical Christian society that breeds revivalist cults that speak in tongues and believe in spirit possession. Rastafarians are something else. Born out of poor and black Jamaicans, they worship inner divinity, hold ganja smoking as a sacrament, and are as essentially Jamaican as reggae.
“Reggae is synonymous with social consciousness,” a young Jamaican woman told me. “It means black empowerment. It means Marcus Garvey (the father of the black power movement). It means Rastafarianism.”
This was the Jamaica that I wanted to get to know better.
So after lunch at the historic Devon House in Kingston, the former estate of Jamaica’s first black millionaire, I made the rounds of several history museums with the chairman of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, Ainsley Henriques. As we browsed through rooms of ancient artifacts, pictures and other paraphernalia, Jamaica’s heroes came to life. There wasPaul Bogle, hanged after the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865, and Nanny of the Maroons, who led slaves to freedom in the Blue Mountains, and Sam Sharpe, hanged after the Christmas Rebellion of 1831. More recently, there was Norman Manley, the Oxford-educated nationalist who helped bring about independence in 1962. His face on wall-size posters in airport corridors greets Jamaica visitors.
And there’s Bob Marley. There’s a museum outside Kingston for the reggae icon. He’s the myth, the mystic, who spoke to God, they say, who conquered the world. But I didn’t have to go look at the museum. All of Jamaica is a Bob Marley museum. A stream of gifted Jamaican musicians cycled through mento to calypso, jazz, rhythm and blues, and ska. Then came Marley, son of a white British officer named Norval Marley and a black woman, Cedella Malcolm Booker, and with Bob Marley came reggae, and reggae took everything in its path.
So that night I avoided the mobbed dance hall parties like Weddy Weddy Wednesdays and went to Redbones Blues Cafe, the highly acclaimed venue for Bob Marley’s musical heirs and a beehive of culture, art exhibitions, foreign films and poetry nights.
I hit it on a poetry night. It was raining off and on. The stage was soaked, and managers were fussing around, clipboards in hand. The bar was buzzing. Next to me, a graying ponytailed foreigner in a white seersucker suit was whispering to his blond girlfriend. Dressy couples held up cocktails and clustered under the bar’s roof. Eavesdropping while sipping a Jamaican-style caipirinha, I ran my eyes over bar walls papered with photos of jazz and blues greats, while, oddly enough, American lounge music played in the background.
Jerk chicken cooking at Scotchies in Montego Bay. Robert Rausch for The New York Times
The next day, after a three-hour, stomach-churning ride through the mountains, Jamaica’s limpid blue skies and gorgeous seashore came to view. The resort city of Ocho Rios and the smaller coastal towns were bustling. People mingled on sidewalks and plazas, storefronts and markets, food stalls and at the Juici Patties, the local fast-food joints. I wanted to walk around, have a bite, but time was short. I had to get to Montego Bay.
MoBay was just 30 or 45 minutes away on the North Coast highway. Its fabled resorts are secluded behind high fortress walls, forests of trees and steel gates. Once behind those gates, Jamaica seemed to disappear. Well, not all Jamaica. The sea was there, and the hills, and bartenders, housekeepers and porters speaking English salted with patois, exclaiming, “Milady, milady, welcome!”
I wanted nothing more than sunshine and to lie by the sea. On a narrow stretch of the Coyaba hotel beach, Joni from the Netherlands was reading a paperback in German. She and her husband, Jos, a professor with the graying, thinning hair and serious mien of academia, had been there a week and had five more days to go. They were running out of things to do, had gone to the Blue Mountains and to Port Antonio’s Blue Lagoon (site of the namesake movie starring Brooke Shields) and to Dunn’s River Falls and Mystic Mountain near Ocho Rios. Now they were wondering if they should make the long trek to the Appleton Rum estate in the distant inland southwest. I had no answers for them. I hadn’t seen half as much as they had.
I had imagined Montego Bay would glitter with opulent hotels and restaurants, clubs and shops — and it did, in the resorts — but the town’s Hip Strip (Gloucester Avenue) was a letdown, lined with midrange hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, hostels, souvenir shops, jerk food stands, hustlers, and Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, maybe MoBay’s most popular club. It was the version of Jamaica that its tourism folks wanted to rethink.
I hit the city on the last Friday of the month, when folks get paid and go downtown to spend their money. St. James Street was a clogged artery of cars, trucks and buses, a revolving elbow-to-elbow mass of people going through food stalls, bars, clothing stores, haberdasheries, computer depots, supermarkets, carwashes and plazas reverberating with the earsplitting sounds of hawking vendors, chattering voices and full-volume music. I wanted to step down and join in, but I also wanted to get out of there.
After fumes and crowds, I was hoping for a drink and fabulous food. Friends had talked up Scotchies, the island’s best known jerk emporium. I had expected one of those smoky places with picnic tables and paper tablecloths. I found a quaint roadside joint with an open-air bar and a few outdoor tables for large groups. A dozen customers, foreigners mostly, were knocking back Red Stripe and digging into servings of jerk pork. I ordered the same. The beer was ice-cold, but the pork was tough and tasteless. I kept pouring a spicy goop over it but it didn’t help.
Vivid paintings in Life Yard in Kingston.Robert Rausch for The New York Times
A day later, on my way to Negril’s West End — after my debit card was “eaten” by a Scotiabank A.T.M. at a Kingston shopping mall and after putting up with unreliable land transport — I wasn’t sure I would ever have a great day in Jamaica, or worse, that I would ever feel that inexplicable connection to the island that I had felt in Antigua and San Juan and Havana.
Two hours down the Norman Manley Highway south to Negril, flashing by speeding bicyclists and motorcyclists, herds of baby goats, bold-paint wood-and-tin homes and the open sea, Jamaica began to work its charms on me.
Then, there was Negril’s West End and the Rockhouse Hotel. Magic!
It was visually fabulous with flowers in bloom, bougainvillea vines and almond trees, and shaded winding paths that led to hexagonal thatched-roofed villas of timber and stone looking out to the sea. At a glance, Rockhouse lived up to its reputation, one of the loveliest boutique hotels in the Caribbean.
But extreme contrasts are inevitable in Jamaica. Across the road from Rockhouse’s fancy gift shop, several ramshackle souvenir shops sold typical tourist wares — T-shirts, flimsy dresses, scarfs, hats and trinkets — and a short ride from the eco-centric serenity of Rockhouse, hundreds of tourists flocked to Rick’s Café, a boisterous bar-restaurant-music hangout with a cliff-diving show, super bars and sensational sunsets.
I checked out the scene one afternoon, tried to get a bar stool but gave up fighting the crowd. A singer was dancing on the stage, and people swilling from paper cups clapped to the rhythm. Soon, rather suddenly, as it does in the tropics, the sun went down, and with that the party broke up. The crowd streamed out, pushing and shoving. Tour buses, vans and taxis packed with riders lumbered out of the parking lot. It was a crazy scene, as crazy as Negril’s infamous boat parties and bar shuttles.
That evening at the Rockhouse, I was having a drink and chatting with an American couple who came back every year, had married and honeymooned there. Even with its high occupancy rate, the hotel opens its restaurants to the public. Expats living in Negril make it their club, where you might meet old-time hippies in sandals like Janet, a blustery San Franciscan who married a local 27 years ago and is building a house with a swimming pool on a hill.
An “On the Spot,” whose colors change as you drink it, at the Cedar Bar at the Half Moon resort.Robert Rausch for The New York Times
At the bar of the main restaurant, which doubles as a community center with easy chairs and sofas, books and the only TV in the resort, a small group of women was cracking jokes about the risqué show at the Jungle nightclub on Ladies Night Out. They’d come from Alberta, Canada, and were letting loose and splurging on cocktails, crispy fried snapper and crème brûlée.
Early morning, I was on a sleep cloud, tucked in on a pillowed four-poster bed, a slow ceiling fan ruffling a pinned-up muslin mosquito net. Jumping off the bed, I opened the shuttered doors to my private deck. The roiling sea melded with the distant blurry horizon, and I watched as a small boat with a single passenger, man or woman I couldn’t tell, heaved and tossed in the rough sea. Waves leapt, crashed and spat foam maybe 50 feet high against the Rockhouse cliffs. From somewhere on the nearby road drifted the lilting music you hear everywhere you go in Jamaica, the soundtrack of the island.
Later, only a 15-minute drive away, I was dipping my feet in the sea, strolling along the popular (and overbuilt) Seven-Mile Beach. The fluffy white-sand strip was crowded already. Tourists were ensconced in lounge chairs, their bodies laid out to toast. A rangy vendor with dreadlocks, hollow cheeks and bony legs followed me, dangling a bunch of bananas in one hand and clutching a plastic sack containing who knows what. Peddlers and hustlers are a plague all over Jamaica, but this guy didn’t push it. When I said “no” politely, he backed off.
Grateful, I picked up my walk on the lumpy wet sand. The sea sloshed around my feet, splashing my legs. Glass-bottom boats and fishing charters swayed in shallow waters, waiting to take divers and snorkelers to the coral reefs and grottoes that make this Jamaica’s dreamiest coast.
I had been in Jamaica five days, and finally I was steeping myself in the singsong and blithe spirit of the island.
My trip was now winding down, and I returned to Montego Bay to the Half Moon resort. Half Moon was a palace, elegant, serene, welcoming. Queen Elizabeth II has stayed there and Prince Philip and the Prince of Wales and John and Jackie Kennedy, and countless movie stars and celebrities, honeymooners and lovers on a fling. It is a once-in-a-lifetime place.
Gloucester Beach in Montego Bay. Robert Rausch for The New York Times
I had a few hours left, so I went out to the sun, ordered a gin and tonic at the beachside Cedar Bar, and found a lounge chair near a gaggle of young Brits, Virgin Atlantic crew members on a two-day layover. That evening they had a party and wanted me to go along. I had other plans. I had a predawn wake-up call to catch my flight out.
After a wonderful dinner outdoors at the hotel, I took my time going through Seagrape Terrace, where guests had gathered for a musical nightcap with a Jamaican singer. I listened for a while and walked down the beach. In the distance I thought I heard the familiar words, “One love, one heart, let’s get together and be all right.”
IF YOU GO

Where to Stay

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Friday, May 13, 2011

Jack's Back: Pirates Of The Caribbean On Stranger Tides NEW TRAILER Official Disney HD



"It's a pity they died in the end, cause they could have gone on forever."

So said Robert Redford in reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, their iconic characters in the movie of the same name.

The producers of this storied franchise (which, word has it, was meant to be filmed in the renowned pirate haven in Port Royal) have long since skipped over that little hurdle and, with the global box office continuing to reward them, they have thus continued to spin out this "sprightly" mix of pirate legend and "macabre-lite"

In the midst of the swashbuckling and mast-trimming is Johnny Depp as Capt Jack Sparrow . In the opening 10 minutes alone, he jumps, swoops, slashes, butts and skulks his way through loads of the King's soldiers and other adversaries, including his old foe, Barbossa.

Not long after, they head off on separate ships in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth intimated by Ponce de Leon. Sparrow ends up with a flame from his past (Penelope Cruz) who purports to be the daughter of "pirate of all pirates" Edward "Black Beard" Teach. Teach is, of course anxious to get hold of the eternal youth elixir as his years are fading. And, of course there are complications. Chief among them, mermaids, whose tears are required for elixir. The ladies of the sea (which include Jamaican beauty queen Sanya Hughes) have their own intentions: lure the men with their beauty and song and then drag them to the bottom for lunch...or supper.

Rob Marshall ("Nine", "Chicago") steps in at the helm for Gore Verbinski (who collaborated with Depp to such great effect on the previous Pirate movies as well as this year's "Rango") brings his Ziegfeldian sense of production numbers to this outing  - especially in the mermaid scenes - but fortunately retains much of the sense of fun that hallmarks the franchise. 

Ultimately though, as 2 hours +, this instalment, while still fun, is simply too long. Sure the characters could go on forever - just not in one movie.
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