Mi casa, su casa

I enjoy every waking second of it but I have to admit, hosting out-of-towners is a labor of love. For some reason, I immediately fall into tour guide mode when my friends arrive and it starts with a cold beer waiting for them at baggage claim.

For the last three weeks, we have had friends stay with us, which is my excuse for the very low blog frequency.

Had two old work friends from The Capital newspaper two weeks ago, my younger brother and his girlfriend last week and an old friend from Annapolis this week. All in all, everything has been going pretty swell. But a lack of sleep is starting to get the best of me.

For all you suckas that don't know, this guy (two thumbs pointed at me) is running his first marathon June 6 in San Diego so the training has picked up this past month. Not exactly the best time to be up all night slugging tequila shots with tomato juice chasers.

The nights go late and the mornings have to start early if I want to get a run in before that blistering sun sneaks its ugly face over the hills.

But having friends stay here is a pure delight. Just watching their reaction to where I live, where I work, where I drink and where I like to soak in the water is pretty satisfying.

The "I can't believe you live here" comment has been just as prevalent as the "Crazy White Boy" stare I've been getting from the locals. No one around here really runs through the city streets so when this tall, weird-looking Caucasian does it in the pouring rain, the gawking is obvious and I can read their lips.

This picture is of Brianna, myself, Stacey and Conor at one of the best bars in Red Hook, the Caribbean Saloon. Yes, Conor was immediately turned onto my favorite beer here, Presidente, and if you can't read my shirt, well...

Murder, Inc.

It was late on Sunday and my girlfriend was ringing the dinner bell.

I had already cranked out two sports stories and had a football combine feature to finish up after I met Brianna for some special pasta. The girl can cook. You can call me what you want but never call me late for dinner with my baby (Wow, that sounded very sappy).

As I slipped out the office, I caught the eye of a frazzled news reporter, who was holding a police scanner to her ear. Three people, including an infant baby, had already been killed over the weekend and the reporter was up to her neck in blood, gore and a staggering murder rate.

I got in my car and started the half-mile drive back home when the iPhone lit up. It was Constance, the news reporter, and her first few words immediately put a damper on my evening.

"You're going to hate me for this..."

When she told me the news, I pulled a U-turn out of my driveway and already heard the police sirens as the cruisers tore down the streets. I grabbed a camera and followed after them.

At first, I felt like one of those jackass lawyers who chase ambulances. I slowed down because I knew where the cops were headed. When I got close, there was another cop, who blocked the entire road and asked pedestrians to turn around. I showed him my press credential and asked if I could go around him. He looked at me like I was crazy.

"There's bullets flying and people dying up there..."

I humored his ode to an Ice Cube rap song with a nod and started to drive closer to the crime scene. Since the road was blocked off, I was completely alone on this dark road and it felt very eerie as I approached. Finally, I saw all the lights flashing -- the cops had turned off their sirens by now. Other cops rolled out the yellow "Don Not Cross" tape around the scene and the big guns were out.

I made a quick call back to Constance to give her an update before I got out of the car and she gave me the name of the police chief that is friendly with our paper. She told me that most cops won't tell you anything without consulting the chief but I found it quite the opposite.

I asked one of the cops rolling out the police tape what had happened and told him I was from the paper. I think he was impressed with my response time.

"Four shot, two dead..."

I got closer and started to snap off as many pictures as possible. After talking to drunk on-lookers, I started to piece together what happened.

Two guys had waited in the woods across the street for these two other guys coming out of the Cock Pit (Yes, I know it's crazy but there is a cock-fighting place here and believe me, it's not one of the places I will show my parents when they visit next month).

When their ride showed up, the two guys came out and there was a fire fight. Three people were taken to the hospital, one was DOA and a second fatality was still in the car.

It was the guy that came to pick up his friends.

He was wearing a red shirt, his seat belt was still buckled and he was slouched over the center console of the bullet-riddled SUV. The corpse remained in the car as the police conducted their investigation around him and after a while, a crowd of about 40 people had gathered outside the Cock Pit to watch.

It was the first dead body I've ever seen outside of a casket.

Now I continued to click away photos and after I finally got a hold of the police chief, I headed back to the office and brought a few of the gruesome photos with me. I sat down with the executive news editor and went through (what I considered) the best ones. She decided to stay conservative and this is the photo that ran in the next day's edition:


Per the story I had a co-byline for: After a shootout outside the Cockpit on Sunday night left two dead and two wounded, the territory’s homicide count stands at 34. By this time last year, the count had reached 22 — and all of 2009 had a record 56 killings.

For some reason, people on St. Thomas are killing each other at an alarming rate. It's not exactly a statistic I like to share with out-of-towners, who are booked at my house all month.

Carnival -- Part Deux

The J'ouvert Rally is one of the finales for Carnival. It's a party that starts at 4 a.m. and it consists of several 18-wheeler trucks with bands playing on top, scantily-dressed women, and a whole lot of Cruzan rum.

Click HERE to see some video footage of the melee.

Our executive editor assigned me to cover the party. Well, not exactly. If all the party-goers were dribbling basketballs or if L.T. was in the crowd, then it would fall under the "sports" realm.

Basically, my job was to protect the news writer assigned to the story: a very sweet girl by the name of Constance, who has a thick Southern accent and took me up on my ice-cold beer offer at 8 a.m.

She was a bull dog and worked the crowds. I just tried to keep up and not be seen by high school girls I normally cover on the sports field who were now shaking their butts to the very loud music.

Per her story in The Daily News: "By 9 a.m. the day was wide open. Bodies were packed along Veterans Drive from the storefronts to the sea. A helicopter hovered over the harbor, lending a post-apocalyptic feel to the party and giving the revelers a welcome breeze when it dipped close to the crowd. People danced on speakers, rooftops, stone walls, the beds of pickup trucks. The crowd was a tight, sweaty, lingerie-clad ball, gyrating toward Carnival Village."

By the way, and some people will not like to hear this, but the local music here is horrible.

Don't get me wrong, I am a sucker for the steel drums but the bands that played J'ouvert -- and I was told they play every year -- should not be asked back. Or maybe after some music lessons.

I remember when my mother got me a kiddie karaoke machine when I was five and I would just holler and scream into the microphone because it was the thing to do and there was no reason, no rhyme. Well, that's what these bands sounded like.

But the girls still went crazy and the booze flowed like water.

Yes, that's a media credential dangling from my neck, a beer in my hand and pretty lady's dairy air in front of me.

I'm work hard for the money.

Styling in the VI

For those who know me well, you also know that I am fashion-challenged. I wear and sport what is comfortable and as long as the threads haven't completely fallen apart, they will remain in the rotation until I either lose them or they mysteriously disappear to my girlfriend's delight.

So I shouldn't make fun of how people dress here and the funny styles that stick out to me. But in dedication to all the extravagant outfits I saw on TV during the Kentucky Derby this weekend, I felt it was the right time to show you, the reader, what is popular around these parts.

First of all, JHORTS (jean shorts) reign supreme here. I found that out the first week I moved here and Dickie's is the go-to brand. Older men wear them long and high school students sport them as part of their school uniforms (all VI students, private or public, are required to wear uniforms to school each day).

I will not abide by the JHORTS fashion trend here. No sir.

All the young men have both their ears pierced. Instead of the traditional hoop or a silver ball, they love to sports little cursive words. I sneaked this picture during Carnival and got a nasty stare after the unassuming teenager heard the camera flash.

He didn't punch me but his defense was up and I was never able to get close enough to make out what the ear jewelry said.

Now, of course I understand that kids like to do things different. I had my ear pierced all through high school and I even had my eye brow pierced when I was a freshman in college (Yeah, I was that guy).

But it just goes to show you that style is universal. It's also different depending on where you are in the world.

It reminded me of a retarded VH1 show I caught this weekend about how Jessica Simpson travels the world, tries to keep the weight off, and asks the question, "What is beautiful to you?" to different foreign cultures.

While I gawk at the different trends here, I really can't compare them to what is going on stateside. Or in China, where half the world resides.

Remember Starter jackets? Those things were awesome.

Carnival -- Part I

Some of the older reporters and editors in the newsroom giggle at me when I ask newbie questions like, "So what's so great about this Carnival thing I keep hearing about?"

They think it's cute and they laugh at my innocence.

Little do they know.

Carnival is actually hard to explain. In the simplest way possible: it's basically a party that closes down the city for two weeks. Schools are off, banks are closed, prostitutes are shipped in from neighboring islands. It's a chance for the locals to take back their island, if only for a short time. Music concerts, food villages and booze flood the streets.

Since I work at a newspaper, it's a busy time for us. People love to lose their minds and have proof of the debauchery in tomorrow's edition.


Being the lone sports writer on staff, the higher-ups said I should cover the Water Sports & Activities event. Once again, simple terms here: A bunch of people -- over 5,000 -- crowd the harbor waterfront to see a bunch of Jet Skis, medium-sized boats and larger vessels race in a completely unorganized fashion.

Throw in some tent vendors, cheap rum and over-sized speakers blaring local crap music and you have yourself a nice little Sunday afternoon.


As if you couldn't pour any more fun onto this event, the Carnival organizers also have a "greased pole" event. In simple terms ... I'm sure you can figure it out.

They have a pole. They grease it up. They hang a flag on the end. If you grab the flag and don't fall in the water, you get $100. The whole spectacle attracted idiots from all directions. I saw several unsanctioned attempts on the flag by very drunk adults -- I think it's designed for children -- and then I lost interest before the actual event began.

I decided to grab a rum and punch and walk the crowd instead.

The Water Sports event is on the water front, which is the exact place I run every morning to train for an upcoming marathon. Before I left, I tried to estimate how many crushed beer cans and how much debris would tarnish my glorious training site the next day.

Confused and a little dehydrated, I tossed my empty cocktail cup in the trash and stumbled home.

Morning interruptions

So today is Thursday and my morning routine has been interrupted by some person knocking on my door all four days this week. Now I don't like to complain. I like to sleep in the mornings.

All four visits were warranted. I wasn't surprised by any of them. But still, they irritated me enough to write about them so here you go.

MONDAY: the V.I. census lady. Down here, the census is handled a little bit differently. Since no one goes by your official physical address -- "Yeah, it's the house near the fence, past the stray dogs and right next to the palm tree that looks like a Iceland volcano" -- the census form is mailed to your P.O. Box and you're supposed to hold on to it until a certified census person comes to pick it up at your house.

The first form was mailed. I procrastinated. A week later, the census lady knocked on my door. I hide in the back room. A week later, she ran down my girlfriend, who was headed to work and couldn't deal with her so she set up an appointment to visit me at 8 a.m. How grand is that?

Back in the states, I heard you guys have a one-page census form. Here in paradise, it was a 56-question booklet that the lady goes over with you one question at a time.

"OK, now let's do your wife, Brianna. Do you know all of her info and where her parents were born?"

"What? You got to be kidding me?"

TUESDAY: the Direct TV guy. Now this was a glorious encounter. For so many days I have been deprived of ESPN and other pointless cable networks but those days would now be over, pending a really bad thunder storm.

We get the feed from San Juan, Puerto Rico so channels like MTV are in Spanish. It is hilarious to watch 16-year-old teenage mothers flip out because they can't handle their new-born babies and get irked by their own mother's participation. Not as good as the Bubble-Bee Man show on The Simpsons but almost.

I worked out a deal a few days prior to get the satellite for around 40 bucks a month. Not bad, huh? But in order to get a DVR box, it would be another cool $200. I had a fresh $100 bill in my wallet when the installment guy came so I went for it.

"So you got any extra DVR boxes on that truck because my friend, Mr. Benjamin, loves to record the shows he can't see because he's at work?"

I slyly revealed the $100 bill and raised an eye brow, "How 'bout it?"

The Direct TV guy laughed. "You know they are going to re-design the $100 bill? I read about it in the Daily News today."

I put the money back in my pocket and sat down on the couch. Defeated.

"So how many channels am I going to get?"

WEDNESDAY: the dog groomer. Since my dogs had started to smell like Fritos and they love sleeping on the pillows on my bed while I'm at work, we decided to get the girls cleaned up.

Brianna was recommended a guy named Paul and he turned out to be pretty cool. Once again, I woke up at 8 a.m. because he had an earlier appointment cancel on him.

I had to sit on the porch with him because the dogs get a little crazy with groomers. While he cut, cleaned and reversed vacuumed every loose, filthy hair off my dogs, we talked about a wide range of things: local high schools, different kinds of beer, his wife, his girls on the side, why I should be very nice to my girlfriend or else she will leave me. Pretty basic stuff.

When he was done and half the block was covered in Hunter's skeleton hair, I realized I did not have enough cash for him -- Mr. Benjamin was spent at the gas station Tuesday afternoon. I asked him to follow me to the nearby bank and he gave me the classic deadbeat sympathy look.

When I left the ATM and gave him the cash, he mentioned that he also sold drugs to make ends meet for him and his family. I told him that I could only make one ATM withdraw a day and then revealed that my uncle was the man behind the saying, "Just Say No To Drugs."

He was not familiar with the motto, sort of shook his head and drove off.

THURSDAY: the refrigerator repair man. What a character? Now this jackass came last month because our fridge was leaking and sure enough it was leaking again.

Last month, after I nodded at him and acted interested in what he had to say, he started to pitch me on some cancer-preventing pill that he has taken for the last 15 years. This time around, it was some cell phone service provider.

"Just fix the refrigerator, please," I said. "I have to be at work soon."

It was 9:30 a.m. and I wasn't planning on work for at least another three hours but I couldn't stand his banter. Blah, blah, blah. He took the frozen food out my freezer, put it in the sink and then went on this rant about how the VI youths are killing each other.

"Please, just finish the job," I said. "The ice cream is starting to melt."

After about an hour of pointless fidgeting, he gave up. I guess that was all he needed to earn his pay.

"I'm going to tell Roy (my landlord) that you just need a new fridge," he said. "This one has expired."

"It's either that or I'll see you next month, huh?" I barked. "What will you be pushing by then? Sewing machines, male-enhancement pills?"

He didn't laugh. He immediately put together his tool box, said good bye and walked out. I guess I can kiss that new fridge good bye.

All I need is a few ice cubes for the rum. Is that too much to ask for?

Pounding Guinness on St. Croix

So I made my St. Croix debut over the weekend and if you don't know where that is then you need a Geography lesson. Let me help you. I live on the island of St. Thomas. It's about 40 miles north of the island of St. Croix. Together, along with the tiny island of St. John, they make up the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Now that we're all caught up, let me continue. St. Croix (STX) and St. Thomas (STT) have almsot the same population (50,000) yet STX takes up twice the land mass.


"Oh yeah, there's always been a pissing match between the two islands," a female news reporter shouted to me from across the newsroom during my first week.

The two islands compete over money, the better high school sports teams, government officials and the ever-climbing murder rate.

So I got the assignment of heading south to cover a women's tennis tournament (yawn) and the inter-island All-Star basketball doubleheader (passive yawn). I was more excited because I took a tiny little two-engine seaplane to and from and the paper put me up in a trendy hotel on the beach that I later learned appealed to same-sex couples.

First, the flights. Almost threw up on the way down because of the turbulence. Drinking three beers at a nearby bar while waiting for the flight probably didn't help. The turbulence on these suckers was crazy. Straight for a second, slide right, straighten out then dip. It was like a really bad carnival ride.

Awe, carnies. Homer Simpson once described them as Gods among men.

OK. So when I arrived, our STX photographer, a guy named Cris, who I've talked to countless times on the phone but never met in person, picked me up at the airport. We immediately drove to the Women's Coalition of St. Croix 18th annual tennis tournament. I nodded my head, acted interested but really couldn't wait to check into my celebrity hotel. I researched it online beforehand and couldn't believe they were putting me up on the beach. To tell you the truth, I couldn't believe they were putting me up, period.

The hotel, itself, was dead and when I put down my bags and washed up, I noticed my room did not have a single towel. Celebrity hotel my ass. Didn't they know Aaron Gray from the VI Daily News was staying there? Jeez.

Went to the basketball doubleheader and it was running late. Very late. We didn't get out of there until midnight but the night was young and I was ready to hit the STX social scene. Quick fact about STX: the island only entertains about three cruise boats a WEEK where STT can house up to seven cruise boats a DAY. That means no yuppie tourists were nerding up the bars.

I met up with a news reporter, Danny O'Shea (just like the Rick Moranis character in The Little Giants) and he brought out a "new girl he was seeing." This cat was hired maybe two weeks after I was -- he literally just got a car on STX the other day. How was he already "seeing" girls? The kid moves fast and drinks fast, too.

We decided to hit up this Irish Pub I've heard about on radio commercials. It was called 1884. I'm not sure why and I ignored some drunk fat dude when he tried to explain it to me while I ordered the first round.

Now I am no stranger to Irish Pubs and my old friend, Bernard, a renowned booze hound and an Irish Pub manager in Annapolis would have scoffed at the sight of this one. Aside from a Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey flag hanging on the ceiling, the rest of the bar looked like a T.G.I. Fridays. I mean I had a great time pounding Guinness there but a traditional Irish Pub it was not.


I awoke the next day, watched SportsCenter and laid outside my room near the beach before charging yet another meal to the room. This time it was a shrimp, spinach and bacon omelet. While sitting alone at breakfast, I realized I was the only person there under the age of 65. Same-sex friendly my ass. They never pulled that shit in grandpa's day.

My return flight -- click HERE to see some crazy video -- did not leave until 2 p.m. so I walked the hotel grounds and quizzed the desk clerk on the differences between our islands. For some reason, I found myself actually defending STT in our friendly spats. I guess I can officially call it home now. The VI census lady, who stopped by the house the other week, said I have to wait a year.

Until then, I guess I'm still just a poser.