TA K I
TAKE IT PUBLIC
This page, from left: Taki Theodoracopulos’s former yacht, Bushido; our columnist aboard Bushido while sailing the Mediterranean Sea.
“SUMMERTIME, AND the livin’ is easy,” or so Ella Fitzgerald croons. My father echoed the sentiment as he complained when confronted on his boat by the “vacances payées,” the socialist French system that ensured that working people could invade the South of France for a month while collecting their salaries. Old Dad was a fair employer (he owned textile factories and tankers) but he liked his Riviera beaches empty so he could swim off his boat with various 50 QUEST
friends and picnic undisturbed. Ah, the trials and tribulations of the rich! It was enough to drive Old Dad to drink and put on weight. He died of a heart attack at 80. Unlike my father, who at times employed as many as 10,000 people (5,000 people in the Sudan alone), I’m always taking the side of the workers when they dispute their bosses—except during summertime. There is nothing like waking up in your house and walk-
ing down to your tiny beach and finding a large group of hairy men and women eyeing you as a capitalist oppressor while filling the sand with garbage and covering it with oil. Here’s the problem: the European Union, or E.U., has ruled that there are no private beaches anywhere in the Mediterranean. In Greece, all restrictions on the space around the sea have been removed in terms of refreshment stands, hotels, and restaurants. They can