I hadn’t learned yet about traveling with Pelle, so I ended up on an overnight train with him from Zurich to southern France. We prepared for the long trip by bringing two coolers full of beer and a bag of potato chips. In hindsight it’s pretty obvious why the two Swiss girls we were sharing the sleeping compartment with were horrified. I don’t think there was a sound from two top bunks the entire trip, and they tiptoed out early. So we stole their pillows hoping the SNCF would blame them instead of us.
This was at the end of July, and we were off for two weeks in Nice. In the run up to Swiss National day on the first of August they sell all kinds of fireworks, so for the trip (don’t ask me why) I picked up some mini-sparklers. Handy little things, a couple inches long that you can strike on the box like a match. They flare in different colors, burn intensely for about 30 seconds, and can be quite dramatic, though I suppose you shouldn’t give them to children.
Once in Nice it didn’t take long to get into a routine of breakfast and beach. One needs a lot of beer to keep hydrated on a hot French beach, so naturally it also didn’t take long until we sparked up a friendship with Neil, one of the cold drink vendors walking up and down the beach yelling “Boissons fraîches”, whenever the police weren’t within earshot.
One day we had Pastis for breakfast, so it sounded like a good idea when Neil suggested that we check out of the hotel and sleep on the beach instead. The beach in Nice is sectioned off into alternating free and pay areas. It’s a rocky beach, so the pay areas provide wooden walkways, beach chairs, bar, and a waiter. One of the free sections had evolved into an unofficial campground. Sleeping on the beach is still illegal, but as long as you turned your sleeping bag into a beach blanket by 09:00 they overlooked this detail. Besides, at night it was an undocumented tourist attraction.
The beach was a micro society, with a social hierarchy complete with rules and norms; odd norms for sure, but norms none the less. There were kids there just passing through and needing a free place to stay for the night, as well as people like Pelle and me, settling in to really “absorb the local ambiance”, and hopefully get laid. Interestingly there were quite a few people on extended stays. To put it in context, this was the late 1980’s and the economy was pretty bad, England and Germany were basket cases: no jobs, no way, so lot’s of young people were on the road treading water, to mix metaphors.
Groups formed, people wandered from one to the other, spending the night with that group or this, like visiting the neighboring village to exchange news. Couples met, bonded, fought and broke up in the course of a couple days. The length of your stay was a prime factor in how high up the social hierarchy you were. Other important factors included your bust size (if you’re a girl), whether you could play guitar, or if you had beer.
One luminary was an older German guy. I assumed he was an out of work professor of some sort because he was articulate, intellectual, and a drunk. Generally if any Germans came to that beach, whatever the duration, he took them under his wing, and his “camp” expanded and contracted noticeably.
Everyday he wore the same threadbare white-ish boxers, so old and thin you could have read a wine list through them. One of the legs had vertical rips and you could glimpse his willy, if that’s what you’re into. I was happy when someone finally gave him a new pair. I would have given him one of mine of course, but I wore y-fronts in those days.
I never saw him leave the beach. He seemed to survive from the steady stream of people coming to speak with him, many bringing him food and beer. I’m convinced he was a Shaman or Sage of sorts, and that the proper tribute was food, drink or underwear.
An ominous vibe came from the far end of the beach where a fairly sizable tribe of local punks had set up camp. This was the period before punk was mainstream. I was wary and discreetly observed them. Over time I saw that this group had their social hierarchies too, and that it had a clear leader. He wasn’t big, but he was sinewy and looked volatile. He had amateur tattoos at a time when only bad people had tattoos, big earrings in both ears, and a hairstyle that was a cross between a Mohawk and a Mullet. It sounds like it would look absurd. It didn’t.
Of course campfires were out of the question, so the only source of light was from the streetlights. I was looking around when I noticed a contingent of punks meandering toward the stairs on the far side of the crowd. In the gloom I didn’t notice him in the group, but he must have seen me looking at them, because the chief detached himself from the group and walked straight at me.
“Tu a Feu?” he said
I said “huh?”
“FEU”, he growled, showing me an unlit cigarette and glaring, having lost all patience already.
Now, I can’t for the life of me explain why I do these things, but instead of answering him truthfully, “no, I don’t smoke”, I took out one of the Swiss sparklers and pretended to light his cigarette. When he jerked his face back from the flare I saw his scowl illuminated in a silver glow, and I thought, “oh shit”. I held my breath as the scowl turn into a look of realization, and then slowly morph into a big grin.
"MAGNIFIQUE!", he laughed, "C'est Dingue"
Still grinning, he asked me if he could have a couple. I gave him a full box with a mix of colors. He, in turn, politely thanked me and went off with his gang, happy as and eight year old with a new frog in his pocket.
The evenings usually followed a similar pattern, so I was drinking beer, listening to, or playing, someone’s guitar, and keeping an eye out for girls that had strayed away from the herd, when I saw the punks coming back. This time I intentionally didn’t look.
I was startled when a hand fell on my shoulder. The group I was with fell silent. I turned around to see the same big grin on the chief’s face as when he left. He said, “mon ami, mon ami”, giving my shoulder a couple friendly whacks. Then, “pour toi”, adding a last vigorous shake to my shoulder as he spoke. In a grand gesture he held up the very same beat-up corkscrew you see in the picture above. Then in broken English -- and I love him forever for his effort -- he proudly explained that he’d stolen it, just for me, from a waiter up at one of the Bistros on the Promenade des Anglais.
Hoboscribe - Regrettably, both the open beach and the drink vendors are now gone from Nice.
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