A Different Culture

We stepped up to a portable bar on Quai Charles de Gaulle during a party following one of the St. Barth Bucket races, and were taken by the poster hanging on the wall in the back. As you can see from the accompanying photo of the poster, it features a sophisticated and haughty blonde woman, her hair up, holding a megayacht in her hand.

As much as we liked the art, we liked the caption even better: "No Passion Without Risk." Surprisingly, the poster was produced by Pantaenius, a big European insurer of yachts. Most U.S. insurance companies would have done a poster of a wrecked boat with a caption that said "BE CAREFUL ON THE WATER!!!"

We liked the poster so much we thought about ‘keeping it’ as a souvenir. We reluctantly decided against it.

A couple of days later we walked into our local chandlery and saw this 7-inch by 4-inch artwork — see the second photo — enclosed in cellophane, by the cash register. As you can see, the artwork was similar to the first, but a little more racy. Indeed, this sophisticated blonde seems to be so stimulated by the sight of a megayacht sailing toward her that she’s — and correct us if we’re wrong — on the verge of removing the top of her dress! It’s not something we could see State Farm producing.

"Are these for sale or what?" we asked our friend Claudia the cashier.

"No," she said, "those are for cleaning your glasses. They are for free."

We would have taken two, but there was only one left. We’re looking for an appropriate size frame.

We don’t know about you, but we say, "Vive la différence!"