By Caspar Greeff

Sunday-trippers traipse along Main Road, their tongues flicking in and out as they lick ice creams. They may be cold, but ice creams aren't cool in this neck of the woods, and all the shops (except the ice-cream emporium) have signs prohibiting the frozen treats.

A siren wails and a grubby Metrorail train comes clattering down the line .

Below the train the sea is contained in the embrace of the fuzzy mountains of False Bay. Dreadlocked kelp bobs in the sea like an army of drowning Rastafarians.

In the subway under the railway line, John the Busker sings an old Bob Dylan song. He's been singing in that subway for as long as anyone remembers.

He acknowledges the coin that clinks in his cup. "The acoustics are great in here," he says. "But I'm leaving now. I'm going to buy a frostie for me and some nappies for the laaitie." John used to live in a tent on the beach; these days he's upgraded to a caravan, parked next to the fifth palm tree on the left at the harbour.

In the harbour gumbooted fishermen stand next to rusty bakkies and down quarts of Black Label. The small fleet of wooden boats looks like a jigsaw puzzle waiting to happen.

"Angel and snoek! Angel and snoek!" yells a hawker. Next to him there's a squall of scales as a toothless woman cleans a yellowtail.

Welcome to Kalk Bay. Haunt of hobos and bohos. Home to weirdos and winos. Poets and puppeteers. Curios and curiosities for sale. Not to mention antiques, ephemera, zebraskin ottomans. Tequila sunshine and tik, too. At Hennie's Supermarket you can buy bait and tackle. Across the road from the trendy restaurants and antique shops is a container where the homeless sleep at night.

Kalk Bay is a character in Cape Town's unfolding drama: its weather-lined face has been given a shot of Botox and some expensive cosmetic surgery; the toothless grin has turned into a convivial smile; the oilskin jacket has been changed for a Woolworths pullover.

The quaint fishing village is receding into the city's past ; it's an old story underwritten on a palimpsest. The new story is the usual one of property developers, big money, sought-after sea views and young professionals; of a hungry city devouring the villages on its outskirts.

Kalk Bay is receding into the past and emerging in a new guise, in a kind of bittersweet schizophrenia.

In 1884 Charles King ran an advert in the Wynberg Times for his hotel: "Bachelors desirous of mating and spending a sporting week-end could do no better than enjoy the comforts of the Kings Hotel, Kalk Bay."

Now the hotel site is at the flank of a "historic development in Bohemian Kalk Bay". The huge development, renamed the Majestic, is barely completed and already it's historic. Apartments in the Majestic start at R1.4-million. Also in this new village within a village are other apartment blocks : New Kings and the Mews, New Quays, and The Townhouses.

Close to the pink Majestic is the social heart of Kalk Bay, the Olympia Café and Deli , which is where I'm headed. Inside the air is thick with chatter and the smell of pastry. Five kinds of Danish alone. A ceiling fan splices through time. A woman kisses a daffodil. I wave at a waitress, indicating I want service. She waves back. Hi there.

It's Easter, and the bakery is selling Hot Nought Buns. Kalk Bay may be in the throes of a major makeover but it retains its quirkiness.

A guy I know joins me. He looks like Captain Haddock in the Tintin comics. His name's George Curtis, and he sells antiques and books at his store, Quagga. Before that he was a shark fisherman. He still has an affinity with the sea, and is one of a handful of locals who swims every day at the nearby Dalebrook tidal pool.

Curtis landed up in Kalk Bay 20 years ago, after "my wife told me to take a walk ", and he heard of  "a beautiful place above the harbour for R300 a month ".

"I went to see it. I was walking down Windsor Road. On one side of the road was a beautiful young woman in shorts, standing on a box and washing the windows of her house. On the other side a black cat was sunning itself. I looked down the cobbled street at the little harbour and thought 'this is a beautiful place to live'."

In those days, says Curtis, "Kalk Bay was more of a community, a village complete with the village idiot and a host of characters." There was the charming bergie couple known as Lady Di and Prince Charles ; the garrulous fisherman called Mr Skollie ; the boat owner known as "Die Jood", who still went dancing in Fish Hoek in his 80s and died when he fell off a balcony.

"One Christmas when I was a shark fisher- man I saw Harry Fisherman and three other guys sharing a flagon of Honey Blossom on the pavement. Harry said, 'Skipper, have a cup of wine,' so I had a shot and Harry said, 'Do you believe in Father Christmas?' I said, 'Of course I do,' and then Harry said, 'You will receive.'

"I walked past the old Olympia and saw a R50 note - a lot of money then - on the pavement. I gave it to George the Greek at the Olympia, but after three days nobody had claimed it, so my belief in Father Christmas paid off."

We finish our Café Americanos. Curtis walks down Main Road to Quagga, and I go to an indoor market where an attractive blonde wom an does a tarot-card reading for me.

She delves into my past and future, and speaks a bit about herself .

In one of her previous lives, she says , her father "was a shape-shifter, who one night turned himself into a rhino. I ran away, but he chased after me, gored me and ate my liver."

"Hectic," I say, unsure whether to be envious or amazed. Perhaps the story is a metaphor. Maybe the medium is the message.

I go outside, my head buzzing with the future and the present. At the Lever Street Community Park, some kids are twirling on a merry-go- round. Next to the Money Tree restaurant derelict characters are playing dice for silver coins. At the other end of the parking lot two bergies share a beer under a sign which prohibits the cleaning of fish.

A buxom woman with sunshine in her face is walking a boxer dog. Her name is Theresa Lewis, and she is a fine chef, the owner of Theresa's restaurant opposite the harbour.

Theresa has lived in Kalk Bay for 25 years. "It's the kind of place that you never want to leave," she says.

"Sure, it was different back then - all sex and all action. I used to live in Windsor Road, which was the bohemian quarter: artists, students and party people. Then Kalk Bay had more village charm. It had a real old-fashioned country butcher, a lovely old post office and a little bank. Mrs Fish sold fish cakes at the harbour."

"The people who live here have changed. They used to be poor ; now the more professional types are moving in."

Nestling against the mountain on Kalk Bay's southern flank are the fishermen's flats, their shabby yellow exteriors contrasting with the pristine pink of the Majestic.

One of the inhabitants of the flats is Peter Gomez, who has lived here for 66 years.

"I started fishing for white stumpnose in the harbour when I was 12," he says. "Later all I did was fish, and my father said if I don't go to school I must go to sea. I was 13 then. My father was a fisherman, and his father was also a fisherman. Today the young men no longer want to be fishermen, and the fishing community is dying out."

Gomez no longer fishes; instead, he makes finely crafted models of the fishing boats in the harbour.

Like Kalk Bay itself he's moved on, into the present, where authenticity is found only in scaled-down replicas.

Sunday Times