News of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands

Subway restaurant for sale

St. John's franchise fast-food business is on the market, listed for sale for $225,000. 

The Multiple Listing Service describes it as a "Wonderful franchise restaurant in the heart of Cruz Bay. Already successful with room to expand." The building which looks like a trailer, is across the street from Woody's. 

The Subway company's Web site (www.subway.com) says there are is one of 28,678 Subway restaurants in 86 countries.  The "Store Locator" feature says there are four Subways on St. Croix, five on St. Thomas, and one on "St. Johns" (sic).

St. John for your iPod

The SeeStJohn.com Web site has more than the usual information for tourists.

Sure, you can find links to rental homes, restaurants, real estate firms, wedding planners, and so on.  But besides all that kind of boiler plate data, the site has links to eight videos, including some you can download to an iPod.

Two of the videos were co-produced by the Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park.  The first is a video tour of the Park, while the second is the story of an effort in 1999 to protect the coral reefs.

There are half a dozen other videos.  They include a video tour of the Annaberg Sugar Mill, a nature lover's view at Trunk Bay in the morning, and deer at Cinnamon Bay.  No Oscar winning material here, but pretty pictures at least.

Blues Festival: 6 live shows in 5 days

The 6th annual St. John Blues Festival schedule's been released and there will be plenty of music for everyone.

The show founder and organizer, Steve Simon, said "We are tying this year's Blues Festival into a 'Ragin Cajun' New Orleans Party with some of the greatest Blues talent to ever come out of the delta."

The Festival is dedicated to the Voice of the Wetlands to assist Tab Benoit’s efforts to put a stop to the dramatic and constant loss of Louisiana’s wetlands.  Benoit will be one of the stars of the festival's main concert Saturday March 22 at the Coral Bay Ball Field.  Other performers include Chubby Carrier & The Bayou Swamp Band, Waylon Thibodeaux, and Sean Carney and the Sean Carney Band.

“The loss of Louisiana's wetlands contributes to the loss of our unique culture, our heritage, our wildlife, our people and their livelihood”, said Blues legend and life long Louisiana wetlands resident Benoit.

Here's the full Festival schedule:

Comfort food and deli in Coral Bay

Peggy Yolman and Tim Cummins have made it through their first two months.  The couple opened the Big Belly Deli at Cocoloba Plaza in Coral Bay in the middle of November, the better to kind of sneak up on high season - giving themselves time to figure out how things work. 

Open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days days a wee, the Deli offers breakfast, lunch and dinner and, of course, takeout.  Desserts, too. Their inspiration was to offer comfort food that their Mom made for them as kids, they told Crystal Bray of the St. John Sun Times.  Besides sandwiches like classic Reubens and hot pastrami on Rye, you can also buy deli meats to go from the display cooler. 

"It's just like a regular, New York-style deli," Bray wrote, "and what you see is what you get."

Book store sale pending

The island's only bookstore may soon have a new owner. 

The store, located at the Marketplace, was listed for sale a couple months ago, because the business' owners   would be making an employment-related move off island.   An employee reportedly told an author trying to place his book on the store's shelves last month that the Book & Bean would "close soon." But now the Multiple Listing Service has a "Sale Pending" tag on the offering.  The asking price was lowered last month to $75,000.

Speaking of price cuts, the asking price for the Stone Terrace restaurant has been reduced to $575,000 from $650,000.  American Paradise is the listing agent.