Just for the fun of it, here are a few of the things that caught my attention this weekend walking the streets of this Spanish beach town.
* Music Of The Street Kind. I'm a fan of buskers, musicians who play on the streets and who not only make a living doing what they love to do, they seem to have *fun* doing it. I kinda judge any new town by the quality of its street musicians. Well, lemme tell you, Sitges rocks. In the courtyard of the Palau Maricel there is a guitarist obviously well trained in classical guitar, Flamenco, and jazz, and he adds chops of his own to create a dreamy soundscape that just sucks you in, and is very appropriate when standing in front of a 15th century Spanish palace. Just up the street you find a guy and a gal playing some kind of Swiss metal drum thingy that I've never seen before, but which produces a rather heavenly percussion sound. It sounds a little like what might happen if your steel drum got loose one night and mated with a marimba and these drums were their kids. Really sweet guy and gal, improvising 100% of their performance, just bouncing off of each other musically, having a ball. It was difficult for me not to have a ball along with them. * Weird Events Out Of The Blue. So I'm walking down at the south end of the beach last night around sunset, and I notice a small crowd milling around, looking out over the beach wall at the little quai that juts out into the ocean at that point. Curious, I walked up and damned if it's not a swimsuit model photo session in progress. I have to tell you, Edg, I almost got over my inhibitions about the word "God" and thanked Him right there. :-) *Very* entertaining. It was a crew from American Vogue, as far as I could tell, and they were really doing it up, with four or five photographers working with ten or twelve...uh... Major Fashion Magazine Swimsuit Models. I don't think I have ever seen more walking tributes to the plastic surgeon's and personal trainers' art in one place in my life. And it was entertaining to watch the Spanish guys and gals oggling this whole scene, too. They seemed as amused by it as I was. * Clothing Experiments Of The Deeply Disturbed. This is a beach town known for its liberal attitudes and its all-night nightclubs. Just walking down the street you can see someone walk by wearing ten-inch high heels, a Borat-inspired bathing suit, and a pink feather boa. And that's just the guys. (Just kidding, but only partly, because Sitges *is* a big gay mecca.) It's not really *that* over the top or flamboyant, but there is an amazingly wide range of creative fashion to be seen and dazzled by. Later last night I ran into the models from the photo shoot coming out of a restaurant, and boy! were they Dressed To Disco. I'll bet a few Spanish guys had their hearts broken last night, or at the very least had their standards raised. * The Smells. Sitges is a fairly small town that continas well over a hundred restaurants. Every one I've tried is not just good, but excellent. You walk by their outdoor terraces and the smells from each restaurant vie for your affections and for your Euros. You turn the corner and this aroma hits your nose, and you can't for the life of you identify all of its ingredients, but it smalls *really* good, and you know that you're a goner, and if you don't stop and eat there today, you will someday soon. * The Touchy-Feely Spanish. You might get the impression from watching French movies and all those bissous (cheek kisses) that the French are into touching each other a lot in public. Au contraire, Pierre. It's almost the opposite. The French ckeek kisses are very chaste and formal, whereas the Spanish cheek kisses might just get you a Wet Willie. The Spanish exchange kisses as well, both men and women, but they're more "real" kisses and they supplement them with lots of hugs and hand-holding. It's kinda neat to see after three years in France. The tendency to touch and stroke and hug a lot extends to their children, and I'd bet that Spanish kids grow up pretty happy and fairly well adjusted as a result. * The CD and DVD Counterfeiters. They're everywhere. You'll be walking along a street and look down and this young guy has a plastic sheet covered with CDs and DVDs. Curious, you stop to look at them and they're the *latest* CDs and DVDs, the ones just now appearing in stores or in theaters. They have covers, printed disk labels, the whole bit. Counerfeits, but quality counter- feits. The CDs sell for 2 Euros, the DVDs five. And when a cop appears in the distance, the guy just whips up the strings attached to the corners of his plastic sheet and, like that... (insert Kevin Spacey gesture at the end of "The Usual Suspects" here)...he's gone. * The Sidewalk Bars and Cafes. To Die For. The one I'm sitting in right now writing this is a chiringuito. I've been told that this term was originally applied to the clapboard beach shacks that sprang up along the beaches before everything got all civilized, and sold food and drink there. This one actually bills itself on its menu as the "First Chiringuito In Spain." It could have been; it's construction screams of having been cobbled together with scrap lumber and discarded windows. These days it serves decent tapas and sandwiches and salads and more than decent wines and beers. But the essential concept is the same now as it was whenever it was built. It's a comfortable place to sit out of the sun and enjoy a beverage in the late afternoon while watching the surf and watching the people stroll by. And maybe, if you feel so moved, write about it a little.
