Saturday, June 29, 2002
Tracking our man, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in Bermuda
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Pompano Beach Club, Southampton Parish, Bermuda. Yup, now that you know I’m here, you want to hear all the good local stuff about the big guy, our billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a sometime weekend resident of Tucker Town, 12 miles away. Well, surprise surprise, the news is that there’s no news about Bloomberg. With my usual adroitness, I’ve tried to debrief any number of cabdrivers (in Bermuda, the allotment of cars is one tiny and tinny vehicle per family, and no limos, and cabs are a part of everyone’slife , even if you are a Bloomberg), but there’s no story to be had. The locals will mildly gossip about Ross Perot (he bought a second house next to his original "Caliban" because it has a better dock), Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (he wears beautiful Italian wool suits while staying at his "Blue Horizon"), but that is all. Bermudians are very discreet, ever since the Duke & Duchess of Windsor were banished here in 1940 because of some Nazi connections, before his appointment as Governor of the Bahamas (as King Edward VIII he abdicated the throne to marry the twice divorced Wallis Warfield of Baltimore, "The Woman I Love") and the not yet solved murder of a local dignitary during their stay. The rich of the world who gather here are part of the Bermudians’ livelihood, providing the cachet for upscale vacationing. The luxury cruise liner passengers are attracted here by their fame, coming into Hamilton to shop at the fabled Trimingham, H.A. & E Brown, A. J. Cooper’s and English Sports shops, and buying designer clothes, porcelain and Gosling’s Black Seal rum. Bermuda does not even want the polloi who have recently cruised in on the giant Carnival Triumph liner, on a trial basis, the type of people who will use the beaches and buy a sandwich and soda. But I digress, back to the rich and famous.
Mayor Bloomberg built his Beach Cottage in 1998, a $10.5 million mansion in the traditional simple Bemudian style, using up so much of the native cedar supply that he caused a shortage. [The native cedar, a fragrant juniper that does not mildew or rot, was practically eliminated by a fungus disease in 1944, and its return has been slow. You can see a lot of ancient thin cedar trunks nailed together to form fences. The really accessible native building material is limestone, of which this coral reef chain of islands was formed. Even the poorest houses have solid, elegantly weathered limestone walls and fences, cut by hand-saws in quarries.]
Our Mayor, who has houses also at 17 East 79 Street as well as on Cadogan Square in London, in Vail (a four-bedroom condo), North Salem (a 20-acre farm), and flies his own planes (a 12-seater three-engine Dassault jet and a single engine Mooney Bravo), comes to Bermuda mostly to golf, at the private Mid-Ocean Club, designed by C. B. Macdonald and fine-tuned by the great Robert Trent Jones, which was also the Duke’s favorite course. Good thing that he has not discovered the magnificent Port Royal, actually designed by Jones, a public golf course owned by the government of Bermuda, and amply used by the population, which is 60 percent black (we hit some range balls and putted on the practice green, no time to for a leisurely game when the ocean’s calling and the vacation is short). He seems to live a simple life, no giant parties, typical of the neighborhood (even Charles Watts, the drummer of the exuberant Rolling Stones, has faded into the background). Good for us, it leaves him more time to work on behalf of his constituents, I hope.
Bermudians really know each other. With a citizenry of some 64,000, tightly crowded on a 19 sq. mile island chain, 21 miles long, that is not hard. We still happen to know a few people, having spent many vacations here, between 1974 and 1986, because of my giant ragweed -based hay fewer affliction. Bermuda is a haven, since the pollen do not get blown over from the US, across the 600 miles of sea between the islands and North Carolina. Interestingly, the lush plant life of the islands presents no pollen dangers, although gorgeous flowers bloom all year round. Right now the 20 ft tall pink and white oleander hedges glow with color, as do their more showy cousins, the waxy frangipani. Great royal poincianas spread their branches over the roads. On the single-lane main traffic artery, Harrington Sound to Middle Road to Somerset Road, for a good part you are surrounded by thick walls of palms and broad-leaf trees, a much thicker tropical jungle than the real thing in, say, Mexico. It really protects you from the humid heat. We had heavy rains every day, which did not stop us from beach and hiking activities, except that drying clothes was not possible (luckily, we had enough changes for the five days). But the rains are "guud," we agree with the natives, speaking in their dialect that we have automatically fallen into. "Bermuuda needs rain," we say, relishing the Germanic umlaut-like stretch over every long "oo" syllable.
Rain is most important for the islands, it is the only source of water, for drinking, washing and everything else that the salty ocean stuff will not serve. Bermudians build their houses with gabled roofs and collect rainwater in cisterns, under the structure or to the side of it, in round semi-covered stone barrels that sport two small round ventilating holes, looking like eyes in a suspicious face. In the years of our stay we remember that they occasionally had to import a tanker load of water. Now there are three desalinization plants that successfully do the job.
The daily rains are the source of that great floral beauty, although some native plants seem to be overwhelmed by foreign arrivals. The sharp-needled Casuarina or Australian pine, is such an attacker, as is the purple morning glory, a powerful creeper. But loquats are producing their juicy berries, as before, and the cedars are returning (" you need birds and their digestive systems to spread cedarberries, don’t expect to plant them and see cedars grow," is the local wisdom).
Speaking of growing, the island’s international trade business has completely outpaced tourism, at least in dollar volume. Bermuda has always prided itself of being a legitimate tax haven, and I keep reading, in the Royal Gazette (est.1828) daily complaints about the governmental screeners (presumably the Bermuda Monetary Authority, est. 1969), letting Tyco and Global Crossing incorporate in Bermuda . In insurance alone ("we are the world's insurance laboratory") , Bermuda has some 1,500 captive companies, with 30 local managing firms and over 1,000 employees administering the businesses (captive insurers are formed by large industrial or financial firms to provide self-insurance.) Between captives, reinsurers and excess liability insurers Bermuda companies bill over $38 billion of premiums a year, a huge industry.
More lessons in governance, about how Bermuda protects and reinvents itself, next time .
Wally Dobelis thanks The New York Observer and Bermuda Gazette, online.
Pompano Beach Club, Southampton Parish, Bermuda. Yup, now that you know I’m here, you want to hear all the good local stuff about the big guy, our billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a sometime weekend resident of Tucker Town, 12 miles away. Well, surprise surprise, the news is that there’s no news about Bloomberg. With my usual adroitness, I’ve tried to debrief any number of cabdrivers (in Bermuda, the allotment of cars is one tiny and tinny vehicle per family, and no limos, and cabs are a part of everyone’slife , even if you are a Bloomberg), but there’s no story to be had. The locals will mildly gossip about Ross Perot (he bought a second house next to his original "Caliban" because it has a better dock), Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (he wears beautiful Italian wool suits while staying at his "Blue Horizon"), but that is all. Bermudians are very discreet, ever since the Duke & Duchess of Windsor were banished here in 1940 because of some Nazi connections, before his appointment as Governor of the Bahamas (as King Edward VIII he abdicated the throne to marry the twice divorced Wallis Warfield of Baltimore, "The Woman I Love") and the not yet solved murder of a local dignitary during their stay. The rich of the world who gather here are part of the Bermudians’ livelihood, providing the cachet for upscale vacationing. The luxury cruise liner passengers are attracted here by their fame, coming into Hamilton to shop at the fabled Trimingham, H.A. & E Brown, A. J. Cooper’s and English Sports shops, and buying designer clothes, porcelain and Gosling’s Black Seal rum. Bermuda does not even want the polloi who have recently cruised in on the giant Carnival Triumph liner, on a trial basis, the type of people who will use the beaches and buy a sandwich and soda. But I digress, back to the rich and famous.
Mayor Bloomberg built his Beach Cottage in 1998, a $10.5 million mansion in the traditional simple Bemudian style, using up so much of the native cedar supply that he caused a shortage. [The native cedar, a fragrant juniper that does not mildew or rot, was practically eliminated by a fungus disease in 1944, and its return has been slow. You can see a lot of ancient thin cedar trunks nailed together to form fences. The really accessible native building material is limestone, of which this coral reef chain of islands was formed. Even the poorest houses have solid, elegantly weathered limestone walls and fences, cut by hand-saws in quarries.]
Our Mayor, who has houses also at 17 East 79 Street as well as on Cadogan Square in London, in Vail (a four-bedroom condo), North Salem (a 20-acre farm), and flies his own planes (a 12-seater three-engine Dassault jet and a single engine Mooney Bravo), comes to Bermuda mostly to golf, at the private Mid-Ocean Club, designed by C. B. Macdonald and fine-tuned by the great Robert Trent Jones, which was also the Duke’s favorite course. Good thing that he has not discovered the magnificent Port Royal, actually designed by Jones, a public golf course owned by the government of Bermuda, and amply used by the population, which is 60 percent black (we hit some range balls and putted on the practice green, no time to for a leisurely game when the ocean’s calling and the vacation is short). He seems to live a simple life, no giant parties, typical of the neighborhood (even Charles Watts, the drummer of the exuberant Rolling Stones, has faded into the background). Good for us, it leaves him more time to work on behalf of his constituents, I hope.
Bermudians really know each other. With a citizenry of some 64,000, tightly crowded on a 19 sq. mile island chain, 21 miles long, that is not hard. We still happen to know a few people, having spent many vacations here, between 1974 and 1986, because of my giant ragweed -based hay fewer affliction. Bermuda is a haven, since the pollen do not get blown over from the US, across the 600 miles of sea between the islands and North Carolina. Interestingly, the lush plant life of the islands presents no pollen dangers, although gorgeous flowers bloom all year round. Right now the 20 ft tall pink and white oleander hedges glow with color, as do their more showy cousins, the waxy frangipani. Great royal poincianas spread their branches over the roads. On the single-lane main traffic artery, Harrington Sound to Middle Road to Somerset Road, for a good part you are surrounded by thick walls of palms and broad-leaf trees, a much thicker tropical jungle than the real thing in, say, Mexico. It really protects you from the humid heat. We had heavy rains every day, which did not stop us from beach and hiking activities, except that drying clothes was not possible (luckily, we had enough changes for the five days). But the rains are "guud," we agree with the natives, speaking in their dialect that we have automatically fallen into. "Bermuuda needs rain," we say, relishing the Germanic umlaut-like stretch over every long "oo" syllable.
Rain is most important for the islands, it is the only source of water, for drinking, washing and everything else that the salty ocean stuff will not serve. Bermudians build their houses with gabled roofs and collect rainwater in cisterns, under the structure or to the side of it, in round semi-covered stone barrels that sport two small round ventilating holes, looking like eyes in a suspicious face. In the years of our stay we remember that they occasionally had to import a tanker load of water. Now there are three desalinization plants that successfully do the job.
The daily rains are the source of that great floral beauty, although some native plants seem to be overwhelmed by foreign arrivals. The sharp-needled Casuarina or Australian pine, is such an attacker, as is the purple morning glory, a powerful creeper. But loquats are producing their juicy berries, as before, and the cedars are returning (" you need birds and their digestive systems to spread cedarberries, don’t expect to plant them and see cedars grow," is the local wisdom).
Speaking of growing, the island’s international trade business has completely outpaced tourism, at least in dollar volume. Bermuda has always prided itself of being a legitimate tax haven, and I keep reading, in the Royal Gazette (est.1828) daily complaints about the governmental screeners (presumably the Bermuda Monetary Authority, est. 1969), letting Tyco and Global Crossing incorporate in Bermuda . In insurance alone ("we are the world's insurance laboratory") , Bermuda has some 1,500 captive companies, with 30 local managing firms and over 1,000 employees administering the businesses (captive insurers are formed by large industrial or financial firms to provide self-insurance.) Between captives, reinsurers and excess liability insurers Bermuda companies bill over $38 billion of premiums a year, a huge industry.
More lessons in governance, about how Bermuda protects and reinvents itself, next time .
Wally Dobelis thanks The New York Observer and Bermuda Gazette, online.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 10:49 AM 
