People watching in Durban

Downtown Durban, nowhere near the restaurant,

but I thought my catty post should have a picture. So there.

Our last night in Durban we went to a restaurant recommended by 1 friend and 2 very different guidebooks. As it happened, this place was very busy and very hip, which meant we had ample time to do some solid wealthy Durbanite (Durbzian?) people watching. Durban is a multicultural city. This means that men and women of all races look equally silly and tart-y in their Saturday night get up. In all our years together Andrew has once and only once mentioned an opinion about shoes unprompted. Sure, if I say, “aren’t my new shoes cute?” he will say, “yes, very cute.” But only once has he offered an opinion out of the blue. A few years ago he explained to me, in no uncertain terms, that he thought a certain style of bootie/shoe/ sandal was, “the stupidest looking thing I have ever seen.” That style of shoe was ubiquitous at this place. We spent a happy hour watching extremely done up women tittering on their high healed peep toed booties. It didn’t stop with the shoes. Some of the bottle blonds looked straight out of our visits to LA or the Marina back home. But, as I said, this was a rainbow nation of tart-y-ness and folks didn’t have to be white, tanned or bottled blond to look silly.