The Tribune

SOME things you just have to set eyes on to appreciate. Like Beyonce. Or Taylor Swift.

Or a building on Dowdeswell Street that was recently transformed.

Or a hellhole on Kemp Road that needs to be demolished.

Or the swarm of catamarans in Montagu Bay that are flushing their effluent overboard.

We talk so much. We’re rarely at a shortage for words, any of us. Maybe we should spend more time staring, really seeing.

What prompted this was a pass through Dowdeswell Street last Saturday where I was determined to stop at Rip Ty’d Craft Brewery and see what it was like after digesting the novel just published by one of its founders, who writes under the pseudonym of Bruce Brewer.

Both the brewery and the novel, Rigged, Brewery Tales, (Newman Springs Publishing, 2023) were easily worth the time spent with them.

Rigged, an autobiography oddly written in the third person, takes on a journey of friendship between two men, both fully heterosexual, but a friendship that at times borders on too intense for the adrenaline rush it provides. The subtitle, Nassau, Bahamas, Hideaways & Places Laced in Drama, provides a clue as to what lies between its covers. The pages turn like the weather – sometimes light and breezy and fun and other times, dark and stormy. The book is sprinkled with tales of places you know and at times you can taste the conch salad Brewer describes or smell the aroma of fresh johnny cake.

It’s a downhome tale of intrigue, a touch of sensuality, conflict, betrayal and resolution.

And it is dedicated to the charm of Dowdeswell Street which is what brings us back to where we started and why much of this week’s column is a pictorial.

All of us pass buildings, signs, trees, shops, restaurants, offices, so many images a day that are a blur before our eyes as we dash here and rush there. They are stationary and we are moving and yet every now and then, something catches our eye. We stop and stare. Not like we stare at Beyonce or Taylor Swift, but for a moment we halt, in limbo with our forward movement.

So here I am on Dowdeswell Street heading east toward Rip Ty’d Craft Brewery and out of the corner of my eye I spot a building and do a doubletake, slam on brakes and stare. Librery House has been totally transformed. The once drab and dull brownish building that housed the offices of former Governor General Sir Orville Turnquest is now light and lovely, adorned with sherbet limes and deeper greens, its parapet gently cloaked in artwork created by an artist who had to be lifted by crane and bucket truck to paint in place.

Librery House now lit up the entire western end of Dowdeswell Street, giving the area new life. It stands stately and proud, sunny and bright, artwork covering the entire façade, sprucing up the entire block around it.

I offer silent congratulations to the Turnquest clan and to Carol Lashley, in particular, who I am advised drove the project that is proof of why art in public places works.

I can only stop for so long. That beer at Rip Ty’d awaits. I climb back into my car. But there is The Little Schoolhouse on Dowdeswell Street on the south side and I have to stop again, get out, walk around and admire the proportions, the classic lines of the cottage turned schoolhouse.

Further along, there is a house that I watch with worried eyes every time I pass, so afraid one day it will just crumble to the ground, taking with it the intricate detail of its now faded beauty. What will it take to rescue it before it is too late and we lose yet another treasure?

I make it at last to Rip Ty’d on the north side of Dowdeswell. It is shortly before closing, but the hostess is more than accommodating and the beer I order, a Porter called Loose Goat, is about as good as I have ever tasted in my life which includes tough competition, sampling at the Guiness booth at the London Boat Show. The Porter is dark, creamy and silky and I listen to the tale of how the idea of the brewery started one day as friends gathered on Rose Island.

It was a very good Saturday, indeed.

And a different side of stopped by a building

One look tells you all you need to know. It’s dubbed the rape house, though those who pay close attention may find the word multi-purpose criminal more accurate. No need to worry about painting what’s left of it. Exterior walls are splattered with graffiti. I wouldn’t want to venture what the interior walls are splattered with. The problem with that building is that it is located directly across the street from Uriah McPhee Primary on Kemp Road. Hundreds of cars pass it every day. Police have been told it is nicknamed the rape house.

Whatever nefarious activities take place among adults within those walls is their business. If a child is abducted and violated, that is our business because we did not demand that the entire building be closed off or demolished and whoever attempted to do something only blocked up the front window recently.