Trip Report: Blue Mountains, Boston Bay, Kingston

[mwenvlay]

random observation: i see such sad parallels between the latest wave of gentrification of brooklyn and the state of tourism marketing in jamaica. to me, what's going on in bed stuy and negril is the exact same thing. i should probably elaborate on it, but no one wants to hear a bitter new yorker's railing against getting pushed out of her long-time neighborhood and i KNOW no one wants to hear why i'm finding it harder and harder to seek out the things i once found so easily in jamaica/how intolerable i find a lot of my fellow tourists to be (but if you're interested, i could tell you the story about the german lady who was pissed off that she was a- unable to get a steamed milk latte at great huts and b- unable to make the poor, overworked waitress understand wtf she was asking for, and how wack it was that the fancy jamaican dread who was traveling with her and her friends didn't bother to step in/step up and tell the german lady she was SOL and to stop giving the waitress a hard time).

a corollary (sort of): i barely heard any new/current music being played anywhere. it was ALL old school stuff. i heard that song "toast" by koffee 3x in 10 days (that song sounds like a tropical dancehall combo of "bam bam" and "workworkworkworkwork," so i'm not really a fan) and maybe a konshens song or two, but other than that it was stuff from my now-dinosauric era (mid 80s to late 90s).

it made me kinda sad- i mean, i love gregory issacs and an always happy to hear supercat but is that really what the kidz today want to hear? i want ja to step up its tourism plan and find a way to keep things current for the youth them. i don't want an entire country to be a nostalgia trip for old hippies or an all-inclusive paradise for the medicore.