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Open Beach

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For the past three decades Vilnius has been emerging from its post-Soviet slumber to become a contemporary European city.  In recent months, the city has garnered international attention.  First, by creating a Drive-in movie theater at the closed airport in April, where it cleverly staged its Spring film festival.  Second, by announcing that it would give restaurants and bars free space in the downtown by closing off several streets and opening up its plazas to create the largest open-air cafe in Europe.  It took a while for this to happen as the weather wasn't cooperating, but now in the heat of summer thousands of young people have turned the downtown into a lively urban center once again.

However, the mayor appears to have taken this transformation a step too far by creating an "Open Beach" in the historic Lukiškės Square, internationally famous for the toppling of the Lenin statue after the country declared its independence back in 1990.  The park had been a dead space for more than two decades until the city remodeled it a couple years ago, but even then city officials had to stage events at the square to draw any people, like hosting open-air forums in summer and an ice skating rink in winter.

The idea for the beach appears to have been born out of Lithuania's entry in the Venice Biennale in 2019, which won the Golden Lion for its post-apocalyptic beach.  Unfortunately, this "Open Beach" appears to have no trace of irony, and as such has been subject to ridicule and scorn, much like the city's infamous g-spot ads from a couple years ago.  It's purpose appears to be to provide a sand lot for its citizens until the city finishes its long overdue beach volleyball courts at White Bridge, which were scheduled to open this summer.

However, turning the square into a play area was too much for many Lithuanians, who remember this square for being the site where many dissidents were tortured and killed by the KGB during the Soviet era.  The square has an even darker past stretching back to the Russian occupation in the 19th century when it was used to hang insurrectionists like Konstanty Kalinowski, earning the Governor General Muravyov the nickname, "The Hangman."

You might say that the mayor was trying to re-appropriate the square as a public space, which historically it was used as an open-air market before Soviet occupation.  During the years between WWI and WWII Vilnius had been annexed by Poland and the area made into a formal square with a symmetrically arranged set of paths.  The Soviets plopped a statue of Lenin down in the middle to declare dominion over the capital, which they returned to the Lithuanian SSR.

Projects had been ongoing since the early 2000s to make Lukiškės square into a contemporary plaza.  I took part in the early workshops where we were encouraged to steer away from monuments and give the plaza a democratic sense of being.  The economic crisis in 2008 put everything on hold, but that didn't stop some enterprising students from creating a sand sculpture of John Lennon, mocking the statue of Lenin before.

There has always been a sense of whimsy in the city.  After all, Vilnius became home to the first sculpture of Frank Zappa in the world, not because he had any connections here, but rather a devoted group of fans petitioned the city to erect the bust raised on a pedestal back in 1995, two years after his death.  It was such a handsome likeness that the City of Baltimore asked if they could make a copy to honor their hometown musician.

So why not an open beach in the underused square?  Well, memories of the Soviet occupation are still fresh on senior citizens' minds, because many of them faced deportations back in the 1940s.  The first deportations came in June of 1941, so you can say that the grand opening of this beach was very bad timing.  Kind of like Trump staging a rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth, when it was the site of the worst white on black violence in American history 99 years ago.  Add to that the interrogations that followed as Soviets tried to root out all the potential trouble-makers in the city, and you are going to make a lot of people angry.

However, the mayor is holding firm.  Despite pressure to close down the beach, he will only do so if the state parliament issues a law forcing him to comply, which the majority Green and Peasants Party has vowed to do this week.  This may be the last weekend to enjoy the Open Beach in Vilnius.


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