Sur la plage

(Attention Jersey Readers: That's French for "Down the Shore")

Despite its somewhat hideous re-design, online magazine Slate has been consistently outshining its old counterpart Salon of late, which aside from the occasional amusing letter to Cary Tennis has been offering less and less fresh content on a daily basis while forcing the reader to jump through ever more annoying Flash ads just to get it. Over the past week or so Slate's been going with a beach theme in its "Today's Pictures" feature, and Thursday's photo essay by Carl De Keyzer consists of a series of black-and-white snapshots from the Black Sea resort town of Sochi from 1988, during the last days of the USSR.

There's something about going to the beach that transcends notions of space and time. Frescoes from ancient Sicily portray bikini-clad girls who for all intents and purposes look as if they'd wandered straight out of a Hawaiian Tropic advertisement. So, too, do the Black Sea vacation photos toy with the notion, stoked by Cold War American popular culture, that the denizens of the Soviet Union were at heart fundamentally different from you and me.

In fact the whole shore experience reminds me of a song from Sandy Wilson's 1954 musical "The Boyfriend" (which our high school performed in my senior year; I played the lead romantic role):

What a lovely day
What a lovely day
For a dip in the sea
Oh, what fun it will be
Won't you come and have a swim with me?

But whatever you do
When I'm swimming with you
Please remember not to go too far

Though you may look cute
In your bathing suit
We don't know who you are

There's no knowing
Who you are going
To meet sur la plage

You may run up against a rajah
Or maybe your man
Will be a poor man
Sal or Susie, cannot be choosey
For here love's a guessing game

Sur la plage, sur la plage
Everyone looks the same

There's no saying
Who may be playing
With you sur la plage
A knight who's left behind his charger
May call you "ducky"
Won't you be lucky?
In the ocean
You'll find emotion
May play you a funny game
Sur la plage, sur la plage
Ev'ryone looks the -
Ev'ryone looks the -
Ev'ryone looks the same

Sur la plage, sur la plage
Ev'ryone looks the -
Ev'ryone looks the -
Ev'ryone looks the same

Translation: capitalists and communists appear equally foolish in Speedos!