This place is nuts, money can buy just about everything. 4 of the richest folks who skip the Forbes list on purpose have homes here, but there isn’t a Ferrari one on the island, everyone has mules, or electric cars. Perfect roads, beautiful beaches, beautiful people. Well at least the arm candy that is.
Some year we’ll learn. NEVER BE ON TIME, our you’ll be early. Its island time. We got our wrist bands, and made dinner on the boat, and quickly hit the sack. Its new years eve, so we went to bed, well before midnight, cause the party didn’t start till 10pm. Of course, ever punctual, we showed up at 10pm for our ride, and were the FIRST, the absolute first people to arrive. We had credentials, but stuck out like a sore thumb as the first to arrive.
The theme was Modstique, London in the 60s. The whole place was done to the 11s, no 9s or 10s, they cranked it up to ELEVEN. Complete with english phone booths, abby road, dance floor, and even a Pie Shop that served food. And had a couple of bars and the Cotton House was awesome.
We chilled out, watched and watched the people. More Austin Powers references than you can immagine. Bar opened and we started our celebration, folks started arriving 11ish. Thats an hour after we got there. Over achievers we are. Multiple tents setup with art from the 60s, and various ‘stores’ representing times in london, complete with the “mind the gap” tube signs. Awesome.
Lots of eye candy, tall ones, short ones, all dressed like fluffers. As I don’t keep up with my “people magazine” subscription, didn’t recognize a soul. One dude, I called Carl Lagerfield, was had a nice demeanor and entourage, but might have been Tommy Hilfiger for all I know. Christine the social butterfly, talked to more than I did.
We spotted our sponsors, Richard and Val, just before midnight as we were going to the bar to get champagne glasses as they kept refilling those all night. Chatted with them for a bit, they introduced us to a few folks, pointed out a few folks. Everyone was very polite, but we got along most with the bartenders and servers. Wished them Happy New Year, we said thank you, and treated everyone like people. Caught most of them off guard, we even got a few hugs, and “thanks” for talking to them.
Fireworks, OMG, yes, I just used that trite phrase. 15mins of spectacular low flying BOOM, Bah, BANGs going on. Not since that Chinese New Year I spent in Beijing, have I seen so many fireworks. The last time I saw the city of Austin fireworks grand finale, would be like the intro to this shindig.
Its a breezy night, wind blowing off shore, the fireworks barely cleared the nice plastic tents that were set up. I kept thinking we’d be on some TV show, when fireworks go bad, but they kept going and going and going, basically 15 mins of grand finales, and when it finally finished they found some more. AWESOME.
I must have had a few adult beverages, cause I tried to shake my money maker. Ended up broke, but at least I tried, or so I was told. Met a girl who had been on island for 3 days, and had a 6 figure salary and was appalled as to how little that was compared to everyone else who makes that in an hour.
Time to leave, we decide to ‘walk’ back down the hill to Basil’s where our dingy was parked, got picked up by flat bed truck driven by a local Ken and his lady friend. We jumped in the back flatbed, went to FireFly to look for someone’s shoe, not sure what that was about, then finally made it back to Basils, but our new friends said lets go to the ‘real’ party. And we loaded up, off to a house party. And by house, I mean, HOUSE. DJ was rocking, house over looked the bay, all open, and PACKED. But on the way there, we stopped by the police station, and they gave us some beers. I love the police now. The house party was rockin, to say we were the outsiders would be an understatement, but we all had a great time.
Little fuzzy on how we got home, but we took the same path we found on the way back from clearing out of customs. And managed to find the dingy, and get it started and found the mother ship. Probably wasn’t the most direct route to the boat, but Christine said I left her hanging on the davits when trying to get aboard, but we all made it.
Closed out the Old Year, and brought in the New Year in with a touch of the flue, aka Hangover.
Happy 2015 Ya’ll .
Richard Schaffer, Val and Matt & I
