The "Cultural Iconic Sign" Story

It was an ordinary day. Eating breakfast at Andy and Cheryl's, formerly known as Baywatch, on Orient beach on the French side of St. Martin. Beach is known as the Caribbean equivalent of the French Riviera. And with good reason. Beautiful beach with beach bars spread up and down the 2 mile beach. Water sports abound on the beach and the atmosphere is carnival like. The entire beach is, in the French style, clothing optional. For most of the beach that means topless, but for the south end of the beach, it means nude. Club Orient occupies the last quarter mile of the beach on the South side and is marked with a sign where the naturist part starts. The sign has evidently been there for years and years and was always the same until a year ago. I'm sure that thousands of people have posed in front of it for a photo. It is the farthest south on the beach where you are allowed to take any photos. Cruise ships sponsor trips to the the "nude beach" and bus loads of people arrive at the south end of the beach to be greeted by the sign. Many take the chance to have a photo taken in front of it. Most are fully clothed during the photo, but every so often someone or some couple will disrobe for a photo. They will pose just as the couple on the sign is posing. From our seats in Baywatch we can watch the documentation of the venture onto the Club O Beach by the tourists. Most tourists will stop at the sign, but some walk onto the nude section, out of curiosity. There they are greeted with another small sign that shows a variety of cameras with a large nail driven through each of them. No doubt cameras from people who don't heed the sign about "NO CAMERAS OR CELL PHONES." The security guards do take cell phones and either remove the film from film cameras or take the digital card from the digital cameras. If they can't figure out how to do either, they pound a nail in it on the board by the water. How can they do that? I don't know, but they do it. And, I've never seen anyone question the immense security guards. The sign has changed recently and now shows a photo of a real couple instead of a drawing of a couple. The sign is as much a part of Club Orient and Orient Beach as are the orange beach chairs and yellow umbrellas that line the beach at the naturist resort. They are truly Caribbean cultural icons! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - photos from the top are: orange chairs and yellow umbrella, view of the beach from the water, hand-made sign showing the cameras that were confiscated, couple posing in front of the old sign, and LDub in front of the new sign.