Here are some wider-ranging tidbits for you. Thought a new thread was in order.
Actual structure going up at
Wal-Mart! The ! is for surprise, not for some other opinion either way on this topic. I just didn't realize they were moving quite that fast, especially since the area in question seemed dormant for a long time, so long that I began to doubt the folks telling me that that was where it would be. But last night we drove down 30th and could see some girders (or whatever you call them properly) in place reaching up, well, about as high as the roof in a Wal-Mart generally reaches. For those a little behind on this issue, this store will be in the block bordered by 30th and 25th Aves and 8th and 10th streets, meaning 1 block immediately west of the city hall, 2 blocks immediately west of the park, 3 blocks west of Plaza Pelicanos, and 6 blocks immediately west of Playa Maya. Oh, yeah, and of the beach.
And speaking of the beach, word comes from and AHRM meeting that the city is seriously considering placing an
official limit on beach chairs in terms of the number a given establishment may place on the beach in the area for which it has paid the concession fees in order to operate its business. This will presumably be some mathematical factor involving the area involved and/or the capacity of the property in terms of rooms, in the case that the establishment is a hotel/resort. This may sound a bit ridiculous at first, however there is some good cause: rising complaints from locals that the proliferation of establishments with concessions operating on the beach and putting out more and more beach chairs has resulted in less and less space where those locals are free to sit down and relax and enjoy a day at the beach, which is of course precisely the right behind the entire system in which the federal government retains and oversees the beach zones of the country and issues exclusive concessions to businesses to operate in those zones in the first place.
Also in beach news,
swimmer and boat zones are under revision in central Playa as the authorities move to replace the buoy lines marking each type of area. An aborted attempt to put in the lines by a frustrated civil protection agency, who saw too little movement for their satisfaction from the office of the
Capitán de Puerto, the official in charge of such things, was at least successful in prompting various dive shop and hotel representatives in this stretch to get the
Capitán de Puerto out on the beach this morning and get some talking done. Looks like in our case we'll benefit as the mysteriously ever expanding zone centered around the end of 8th street is shifting north, to claim more of the beach area in front of El Faro (which anyway seems in limbo) and less in front of us.
The
annual alleged world's largest pizza thing was held again last night on 5th Ave. As we were walking out to leave we saw a 4 x 4 with the Domino's label emlazoned on the side pull to a stop at the intersection of 5th and 8th street, the bed overflowing with pizza boxes. And that's about the extent of interest in that topic, imo.
Ah, well, thought I had one more topic to mention but I guess not so I'll just post this now, FWIW.
Steve
p.s. Wondering if I should ask James to change my avatar caption to
Playa Maya news hound guy or something like that... NAH!