Four Seasons Big Island
Last weekend I went to the Four Seasons restaurant on the beach on the Kona coast of The Big Island of Hawaii. It is in an exclusive resort situated way out on the gold coast coastline, in the middle of the ancient lava fields, now blooming with exotic flowers, soil brought from elsewhere and sand to construct the beach was imported from New Zealand. As I surveyed the crowd, I was blown away by anachronistic 1950s or 1960s like contingent of nicely coiffed and appointed, homogeneously sleek group of well dressed mostly young white rich women. Oiled and sleek, plasticized, attractive trophy wives in the main, surefooted and unafraid, with their mostly drab husbands and lovers. After a day at the spa, I imagined them thinking, this buffet would be “just the thing.” Although it is a primarily American crowd, I can hear a smattering of German and French at the buffet table.
Bird of Paradise
The signs of money were everywhere. We walked down massive rock stairways thru the manicured gardens and exotic flowers to the white sand beach.
At the dinner Buffet, (all you could eat of lobster, crab, fillet mignon, fish, rich desserts prepared individually as you waited, etc. etc.) The blond sweet young thing waitress showed us to a huge round table directly on the sand where we sat next to a man and his pretty wife and perfect child from Austin Texas who as we talked politics was sort of apologetically but cynically conservative, hinting a wild, hippy youth, now long past. I was I’m sure, a “roaring liberal,” in his eyes. The only thing we held in common was our ability and willingness to pay 100 dollars per person at this disgustingly indulgent sunset buffet. As he left he said under his breath that there really was no difference between Democrats and Republicans, it was all about the “exigencies of life” in the end.
I was a wild eyed hick, thruout the evening I kept imagining this little scene repeated at Four Seasons and Four Seasons wannabes around the world. It jarred me. Made me aware once again of the gap between the rich and the poor and the ease with which we can shut out the poor and live our lives as if the rest of the world does not exist.
Oh, the food was pretty good except for the barbeque ribs, which were almost meatless.
Sunset at the Four Seasons
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