I felt the need to post this today, 26 years after the opening of Sunset Beach Bar!

Building My First Bar
How do you start your first bar? First is a location, then a lease, then a concept, a name, a logo, a license, insurance, employees,
equipment, power, water, phone, trash removal etc, etc, etc.
I was lucky on the location. I had worked for a company for three years whose principle had purchased the bankrupt Caravanserai
Hotel and offered to lease the "little bar out front" to me. The name was easy too as the location was on the western end of the
Island. I'm pretty good at visualizing concepts and what I saw in the lay of the land was a given. A simple bar with a wide ocean
front deck and a simple BBQ operation, down wind of the bar. A basic stereo system playing Island tunes and classic rock was
was I wanted for the crowd that I envisioned patronizing the place. Cold beer, good drinks, good music and a friendly staff. And the
beach and the ocean views. And so was born Sunset Beach Bar.
The bar building had been built years earlier as a part of the Caravanserai Hotel. It had been used as a bar but not focused upon
as anything more than a service to the hotel. We were about to change that. The building had survived Hurricane Luis but had been
beaten up a bit. The terracotta roof was a mess of broken tiles. We stripped off the tiles and exposed the asphalt shingle roof
which was in pretty good shape. We covered the dark shingles with a white zinc roof. The bar top was finished in dark brown
little round tiles, ugly. The tiles were soon history and the top given a coat of cement paint. The mish mash of cabinets inside
were soon scrap lumber. A coat of dark brown paint on the inside walls from the floor to the bar top was applied and the exterior
was covered in light blue with a light grey trim.
While we had an open trench across the driveway of Caravanserai Hotel a gentleman approached me and commented that we had an
open trench to which I agreed. He then said that we should run a telephone line while the trench was still open, OK. He then introduced
himself a "Gibbs", he was with the local telephone company Telem. Next he asked how long a cable would we need, about 125 feet.
He got on his cell phone and called Yolanda at his office and asked her to drop off the cable on her way home that night. Yolanda
lived down the road in Beacon Hill and did indeed drop off the cable that evening.
A week later another employee of Telem, Shorty, came to the bar and dropped off two copies of an application for telephone service.
Carl Wagner from Don Carlos Restaurant was sitting at the bar, enjoying a drink from our cooler, and nearly fell off of his chair.
In 1996 it was still a bit difficult to get a telephone line installed. And here was the company DELIVERING an application.
Carl wanted to know who I knew to get this kind of service. I had no idea. I had never seem Gibbs before.
Next was getting the bar and grounds rewired, all new wire was installed including a 1,000 foot feed wire directly to the
transformer house in the middle of the Hotel's grounds. There was no power as the local utility company had terminated the
connection at the power plant since the hotel had not been operational for several years. When we applied to have our new
line activated the power company had to replace the old transformer with a new and smaller one. The day that the bar went
"live" the technicians radioed the power plant to "turn on the beach bar".
The bar opened for business on September 01, 1996 almost one year after the hit of Hurricane Luis. We began as the neighborhood
bar for the residents of Beacon Hill. Business began slowly with some nights being so slow that Gabe and I, and some evenings
Geoff from Chesterfield's Restaurant, entertained ourselves by baiting and shooting rats emerging from the empty hotel next door
with BB and pellet guns.
The bar was decorated with nautical junk which I had been collecting since the passing of Luis. Additional junk was donated
by customers and hung from the ceiling and walls of the bar. The most entertaining piece in the collection of bric-a-brac was
a bosons chair which hung in the center of the bar. The bosons chair was lowered and raised via a few pulleys and cleats.
The chair was salved from the boat "KOMA" , Kiss Old Marks [censored]. Thank you Mark Williamson. This custom made bosons
chair was an instant hit with customers sitting in the chair and drinking shooters while hanging nearly upside down.
Martin from NCR in Philipsburg donated two brass running lights from the boat which he lost to Hurricane Luis. These port and
starboard running lights ended up at Peg Leg Pub, behind the bar. They are antiques which were lighted by kerosene.
The construction of the wooden deck was done by Brad and myself with much kibitzing by our resident experts, some of who
did raise a hammer or grab a screw gun. I had never built a deck and Brad wasn't particularly handy. So we spent a day touring
many bars and restaurants to see how other people had built their decks. We also used this trip to measure the various home
made picnic tables and bar stools of the Islands watering holes. The deck was trimmed with a four inch thick rope donated, along with
other nautical junk from the van den Bosch brothers, Harry and Johnny and their boatyard.

We ended up building the deck with pressure treated number two lumber, two by eights, set on an eighteen inch center with three by six
support columns and railings. This framework was double bolted together. The bar stools were made of two by fours and two by
sixes. They're very heavy but can support a 350 pound person. The picnic tables we made with two by sixes and are bolted together
too. The deck was structurally sound as it has supported more than 100 people at one time. The bar stool design has been copied
by others on the Island. They're durable and we never locked them up as they're too heavy and ungainly to be stolen for home use.
We needed to purchase the aggregates to mix our own concrete to anchor the support columns of the deck. We drove over to BBW,
the local cement plant. We bumped into Steve Smith, the owner, in the lobby of the offices. Neither Brad or I had any idea of how
much sand, gravel and cement we needed. I had to describe to Steve how the deck was going to be built and that I needed to build
nearly thirty "ant hills" of concrete around the support columns. Steve quickly calculated the amounts of aggregate that we would
need. We had no idea how much money this was going to cost. Steve commented that the bar was our first business venture
and he wanted to help us out. The sand, gravel and cement were a "house warming" present from him. Steve still has an
open tab at any bar of mine.
The colorful surf board logo of Sunset Beach Bar was created out of convenience. We had been searching for used surfboards and
windsurfer boards to use as a railing for the deck with little luck. A couple of friends told us where they had seen some junk boards,
and that's just what they were. Then Rodger Boutelle, of the Last Mango In Paradise store, donated a board which had come with his
well known "Shark Man" figure which stands at the entrance to his Front Street store. The board was then painted with the name
Sunset Beach Bar, in outlined letters, by English sign painter Dean Allen. We now had our logo.
Some of the initial charm of the bar were our bathrooms, or lack of. We had the use of a couple of rooms in the hotel for storage
of beer and liquor but with no water the bathrooms were soon nailed shut. What to do but rent a couple of port-a-johns and place
them downwind just inside the parking lot of the hotel. Some of our patrons still preferred the "third tree on the left" over the
port-a-johns. In December 1997 we began construction of a building to be half bathrooms and half storeroom. It was an
octagon shaped building the same size as the bar, about twenty feet across.
The building was divided into three rooms. One quarter of the building was the Ladie's Room, one quarter was the Men's Room
and the remaining half was our storeroom. The storeroom was large enough to accommodate an ice machine, refrigerator, freezer,
shelving for liquor, wine, juice, logo merchandise, charcoal, burger rolls and lots of cases of beer.
As this building was nearing completion we were visited by the local Health & Hygiene Department who wanted to inspect the septic
system. Our septic system was nearly complete and they were able to view the entire system before we buried it. Our holding
tank was a fiberglass barrel about six feet long by four feet across and was connected to a proper leach field filled with gravel.
After much discussion we were given the thumbs up.
The next visit was from a gentleman from Public Works. He was a fairly regular customer. The roof was going up and I was
watching the crew at work as the gentleman walked up to my side and said "Nice building". I looked at him and said yes.
He then asked if we had a building permit. No, we didn't but he knew that. He next asked how soon could I get it finished to which
I replied, Monday. It was then Friday afternoon. He simply nodded and said good. End of story.
At this time the hotel was under going renovations and there were many changes in their plans and permits. I'll assume that our
toilets fell into these renovations and permits.
During the construction I was vigilant about pouring Boric Acid on every surface at every opportunity. It was in the dirt foundation, on the plastic
sheets under the foundation, in the electrical conduit pipes, on the roof joists, literally everywhere that I could think of. It's a lot less expensive
to deal with extermination during construction than dealing with it after infestation happens. The construction guys thought that I was nuts.
The barbeque area was added at this time as we now had ample storage room for the needed cooler and freezer to store the
perishable foodstuffs. The BBQ area itself had dry storage and a "working" cooler. Our three BBQ grills were stainless steel beer
kegs, cut top to bottom with hinges on one side and a handle on the other. The feet of these grills were embedded in the concrete
roof over the dry storage. When D grill became operational we added a splintered wooden boat mast to the edge of the deck
as a flag pole. The pole flew four flags, a beer mug and three nautical signal flags, two B's and one Q. Not one yacht or boat person
ever caught the "beer and BBQ" message. A bit too subtle?
One item behind the bar which was cause for quite a few comments, our cash box. We did not have a typical cash register. We had a
simple wooden cash box, similar to a cigar box, for bank notes only. I had seen a couple of restaurants using the same thing and simply
copied their concept.

Pizza
As a thank you to our regular customers we began giving away Dominos pizza on Friday evenings at six o'clock. This gesture of
thanks began to draw new customers as well, one of them who we'll call "Disgusting" only showed up for the free pizza. He became
so bold that he actually got off of a bar stool to help the pizza delivery guy carry the twenty pizzas from the car to the bar. What to
do? We played the game and began to change the delivery time to anywhere from five thirty to six thirty, just to bust his chops.
More US Navy League
My being involved with the United States Navy League had benefits for Sunset Beach Bar. Sunset became an unofficial "Officers Bar".
Sint Maarten was a popular liberty call with the US Navy between 1994 and 1999. The more well known visits were those of aircraft
carriers. There were visits to the Island from the "America", the "Teddy Roosevelt", the "John F. Kennedy" and the "John C. Stennis".
There were also liberty calls from a variety of other US Navy ships and from the United States Coast Guard. The US Coast Guard
Cutters were about eighty to one hundred feet in length with an average crew of about eighteen while the carriers had crews of
five thousand or more.
During carrier visits we were home to a variety of officers and even had a visit from an Admiral from Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico.
Some of the best selling items during a Navy liberty call were Cohiba cigars from Cuba, Robustos and L'Espenditos. During one visit I
traded and extra Cohiba humidor for a flight jacket.
On a weekend in 1998 we had small group from a United States Coast Guard helicopter. They had been in the area assisting with a
search and rescue operation. After spending an afternoon "break" at Sunset their chopper broke down. They ended up spending the
weekend at the bar. They were big fans of Carib Lager Beer and we just happened to have Carib umbrellas at the tables on our deck.
Yeah, we gave them one. As they were leaving the airport Monday morning they hovered over the bar with the sliding door open to
wave the Carib umbrella and yell a thank you as they departed.
We never had a negative experience with any military personnel. They were all well behaved and decent tippers too.
Missing Bottles
In the summer of 1999 we began losing a couple of liquor bottles at night after closing. Four of the bars serving "windows" had an
open space between the top of the shutters frame and the roof. This allowed the building to breathe and the heat to escape. The
down side was that, a motivated person could reach over the frame at two points and reach the liquor bottles displayed on a shelf
running across the bar near the ceiling. After losing a couple of bottles two nights in a row something had be done to prevent this
from becoming a daily problem. Closing off this gap with wood was one solution. Hiring a security guard was a possibility. We chose
another. Two large rat traps were purchased and set on the ends of the shelf the next evening. The following morning one of the traps
was gone as was our liquor bottle problem.