Traveling Troubadours: “The Seedy Underbelly of St. Ives.”

By: Clare Buchanan

St. Ives is a charming port town nestled on a small peninsula overlooking the sea in Cornwall. Named after Saint Ia, an Irish princess and missionary who arrived on the peninsula on a giant leaf in the 5th century, St. Ives exists today as a celebration of nautical tradition and offers some of the most beautiful coastal views in all of England. 

I found myself in St. Ives because of mainly one reason: I was craving the salt air and the sea. I visited St. Ives on a rare, warm February afternoon. I hadn’t seen the sun in ages, it felt foreign against my skin. The air was still and quiet, the gurgling of the waves peaceful white noise in the background. There was no mass of tacky umbrellas and beer coolers, or Instagram models sprawled out on the shore like sleek, hairless slabs of meat. It was just me, the waves, and a few elderly folks bundled in wool knit sweaters, their spaniels licking their heels. The scene felt surreal, serene, and unfathomably ancient and precious. I could imagine Saint Ia washing up half asleep on her giant leaf, the waves carrying her with such precision and tranquility that her naked body became one with the sea foam as it made contact with the sand. 

As the sun dipped below the west side of the peninsula, it sent pink rays across the water and the sky became a mixture of powdery blue and lavender. I walked along the harbor and watched the buoyed fishing boats bob up and down in the incoming tide. I meandered through the cobblestone roads like a fisherman navigating the marshes of the estuary. It was barely 5pm but the town had already shut down for the day, shopkeepers eager to escape the tourists and retreat to their warm homes or their local pubs for a pint. 

As St. Ives fell into a deceptive slumber, I found myself back at the beach, staring off into the calamitous sea, the scene before me so dark I could barely make out the waves. I let my eyes play tricks on me. I imagined krakens emerging from the waves and mermaids and sirens circling the rocks, seducing me into their underwater lairs.

It was from this position that I began to see a brigade of lights descending from the hills. What could have been mistaken as a caravan of departing tail lights as people went home for the night, was too strange of a mass to be that predictable. The lights grew brighter and more frantic as they drew nearer. They danced in the air with little to no rhythm, shouting for my attention. The rumbling of the sea began to be drowned out by the sound of transported house music, such an odd thing to hear when you aren’t expecting it.

The seedy underbelly of St. Ives, a seemingly archaic, bucolic sea town on the edge of Cornwall, arrives around 7:30pm in drunken droves smudged by clouds of blue raspberry scented vape smoke, draped in glittery garments, marked by the sound of youthful hooting and hollering. This spectacle of light and sound is led by a gaggle of tweens who descended from the hilled alleyways like rats, scuttling around with clinking backpacks full of stolen liquor, skipping down the cobblestone roads chirping, shouting to each other to bum a smoke. 

The gang of glittery St. Ives tweens positioned themselves along the beach in carefully organized platoons. The front formation seemed to lead the way as they broke up into groups based on some system of social organization I was too old to understand. 

I watched the scene unfold before me, in shock. 

They were just so young. And so drunk.

Two young girls approached me, stumbling in the uneven sand. Their faces were a different shade than their necks and they wore heavy black eyeliner and thick, golden jewelry. They jingled as they walked. One was leaning up against the other, clearly inebriated. They couldn’t have been older than fourteen.

“I’ve gotta take a piss. Can you spot us?” The shorter one slurred in my direction.

I looked behind me into the sea, certain she was not talking to me.

“Please-I’ve gotta go real bad.” The girl whined, drool dripping from her bottom, brightly painted lip. She looked me up and down curiously and then her eyes lit up with the possibility of something grand. “Wait, do you have any weed?” 

I laughed out loud, shocked at her bluntness. She blinked at me, awaiting my answer. “Um, no. I don’t, sorry.” I said, genuinely appalled. 

The girl smiled passively, her eyes vacant, looking more through me than at me. “It’s alright, love. Just make sure no one watches. Especially them!” She let out a squeal and pointed to a group of boys who had gathered a few yards from us, staring. The boys guffawed and slapped each other’s chests like monkeys, bouncing on the balls of their feet, making whooping noises. The girls giggled and got behind me as one girl began to pull down her skirt.

Not knowing what else to do, I stood with my back to them, my arms extended in a pointless effort to create some sort of barrier between the two young girls and the cruel world before them. 

I thought back to my days as a fourteen year old teenage girl. Oh, I was quite the delinquent. President of the intersectional feminist club I founded, I spent a lot of time organizing protests and writing scathing letters to my local Councilwoman. On Friday nights, when my parents were away, I’d stay up all night blasting Carole King, making dozens of informational flyers about whatever latest social issue I was crusading, all hand made of course with xerox paper and sharpies because my mother had barred me from using our copy machine. 

The light trickling sound of urine hitting the sand brought me back to the present moment. I stood awkwardly in front of these two young girls, sending death rays at the pre-adolescent boys who thought it would be funny to make inappropriate, phallic gestures at me, praying for the moment to be over. 

I thanked God I would never have to be fourteen ever again.

What seemed like a random Saturday night in a quiet, little beach town in Cornwall was actually a night of burning excitement for these kids, the youngest pushing thirteen, the oldest pushing sixteen. They had gathered in communion to partake in this sacred juvenile ritual, armed with their parent’s cheap beer, a portable bluetooth speaker, their vapes full of tropical fruit death juice, and a dream- and while objectively very different from the time I spent as a teenager- the youth of St. Ives sought the same thing I did at their age, an escape. 

And miraculously, in the morning, it’s as if the swarms of agitated and yearning tweens and teens were never there. The golden sand is smoothed over by the gentle green waves. The sky returns to its shade of powdery blue as the indigo midnight sky retreats back into the horizon. There is no dwindling bonfire or discarded rubbish left behind, it’s as if whatever bizarre magic had arrived on that beach a few hours previously never existed to begin with. Jarringly, there is a condom wrapper left on the beach and maybe one empty, crushed beer can has been tossed aside, caught in a gorse bush- but other than that, the seedy underbelly of St. Ives is packed up quietly before dawn breaks, signaling an almost polite and respectful rebellion. If it’s true that kids grow up faster here in the United Kingdom, they at least understand that the party has to end at some point, because come dawn, St. Ives retreats back to what it has to be, a charming, quaint port town off the coast of Cornwall, an escape for people like me.