Resort.Patch.com

For the past week, I’ve been traveling far from my hyperlocal home town, on a travel writer’s FAM trip to Puerto Rico.

A FAM, by the way, stands for “familiarization” and not “family,” and usually is comprised of site inspections of hotel properties, whirlwind tours of parks or shopping districts, forced smiles and enforced friendships – never staying long enough in one place to gorge on its flavors, but just long enough to scent its essence.

One of the main questions I hear from my fellow writers when I tell them I work for Patch is, Why isn’t there a Patch in my town? After all, there are over 900 in the nation, in places as obscure as Nashua, New Hampshire to Enumclaw, Oregon.

The answer is that AOL didn’t select your town for a Patch.

Which begs the question: How then does AOL select Patch locations? Why Attleboro, MA but not Brattleboro, VT? Why Monrovia, but not Whittier in Southern California?

Why, for that matter, Healdsburg but not Windsor – which is just five miles down the road in Sonoma County, has a larger population and inevitably more businesses.

Abutting towns are sometimes both selected – San Rafael and San Anselmo in Marin County share a border, and both have local Patch sites (though San Anselmo shares it with Fairfax, an even smaller town just to the west).

Surely there’s a formula, based on population perhaps, average income maybe, potential advertising opportunity almost certainly.

Look at it another way: are municipalities the only candidates for Patch-hood? I ask in part because I am now, as I write this, in a community whose population reaches almost 4,000, which has a law enforcement and security department (police), an emergency department (fire), a sizeable resident population and an even larger temporary (e.g., tourist) population, with restaurants, zoning regulations, a furnicular, health clubs, clothing stores, a mini-market, a golf course, tennis courts and a water park, live music and a casino.

There’s even a Starbucks. If that’s not a town, what is?

Where I am is the El Conquistador Resort, on the northeast edge of Puerto Rico. It was founded in 1962 with 80 rooms and an oval pool overlooking the blue Caribbean, and with $120 million in the latest round of renovations and enhancements now has almost 1000 guest rooms, suites and villas, some of which are available for time-share or purchase.

It’s even appropriated a nearby island – Palomino – as its private beach, leasing the privately owned sandy rise for 99 years. Kayaks, snorkel gear, towels and lounge chairs are available, and an open-air cafe called Iguana’s serves burgers with plantain chips and Medalla beer. (Yes, there are iguanas here. Also lesser yellow-legs sandpipers, at least one peregrine falcon and mosquitos.)

A short swim off Palomino is Palominito, an even smaller sandy islet that figured in the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean,” playing the part of the deserted desert island where Penelope Cruz is stranded.

But we’ve gone far afield (as have the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies). Let’s get back to our little village, with its revolving population. Although the restaurants, bars and casinos are relatively stable, and the rolling hills of the 18-hole golf course present the same challenges day in and out, with allowances made for the tropical weather, it is the stories that change and the people who live them.

Is Tropical Tots having a 2-for-1 sale on tiny tees? Is the lobster in its sweetest season at the Stingray Café? Was that Geoffrey Rush at the Strip House steak restaurant? And who are those unclothed 20’s and 30’s actresses in the large photographs decorating the Strip House, anyway? (Can I have the assignment to find out?)

There seems to be, on a brief visit at least, no shortage of articles short and long, event listings, arts and entertainment, reviews and updates to be reported here. Community news from staff – new hires and promotions, a birth in the family or the day’s wedding (there are about 200 a year here, according to the guest services staff).

I ask if there have been any births – there were at least two at Woodstock, for instance; sure there have been at least one over the nearly 40-year history of this resort.

“Surely it’s more fun to conceive here than it is to give birth,” says travel writer Dena Braun of Phoenix. Of course, that’s true anywhere. Yet even that, if there were a local Patch, might turn out to be news worth knowing.

Resort.patch.com. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?