While looking dreamily through the Fam Frauenfelder's Rarotonga island life web journal I read that there is an 80% completed Sheraton resort there which was abandoned in the early 90s and is now slowly returning to nature. I find modern ruins inveterately compelling, perhaps because of the John Crhistopher books I devoured in my pree-teen years which seemed always to portray a post-apocalyptic landscape consisting of decaying Industrial Age ruins.
I quickly emailed Mr Fraunfelder requesting he take a photo of the hotel for his online gallery, and then thought to do a google search in the meantime, coming up with one photo amongst a good quality travel album.
I wish I had a midi file of Talking Head's Nothing But Flowers to embed with this post as a soundtrack :)
Huh, I guess this was a meme who's time had come, twelve hours after I posted this a post on the Rarotonga Sheraton showed up coincidentally on BoingBoing...
Posted by: Dav | 2003.07.16 at 02:19 AM
I just went to their website. Carla Sinclair sounds so familiar- I think she had some sort of girlie website *back in the day* that I liked. Do you remember? It had a paper doll you could dress up and other neat stuff.
Posted by: Ele | 2003.07.16 at 12:25 PM
This looks like heaven on earth.
Posted by: toph | 2003.07.16 at 03:41 PM
Ele,
Yeah, I remember showing you that site, circa 1994, as evidence that this "Internet" thing wasn't just a geek playground.
Posted by: Dav | 2003.07.17 at 01:35 PM
Hart Island is a thin spit of land just off the Bronx shore, at the western edge of Long Island Sound. It is off limits to the public and has been used as a Potters field for all of New York City. At various times it has also been a pow camp, a sanitarium, and a missile base. Check out the photographs taken of the island. Joel Sternfeld and Melinda Hunt's "Hart Island: Discovery of an Unknown Territory."
Posted by: Chuck Swenson | 2003.07.23 at 03:50 PM
Does anyone know of a fictional book about corruption in the islands where a man tries to begin a newspaper in a tin shed and talks of a hotel not completed (obvious reference to the Sheraton Rarotonga). I have read it years ago and cannot remember author or title.
Cheers
Posted by: Mark | 2010.08.11 at 05:15 PM