I live in a small town in Northern California. My town is in the middle of several vineyards and is sort of a tourist town. Most of our tourists are well off citizens who like to see where the ritzy wine they drink comes from. Normally, I don’t have a problem with tourists. They provide a good amount of business and generally leave pretty good tips. Today, I lost my faith in the intellegence of tourists. The woman at the table I was serving commented on how well I spoke the English language. She assumed that becuase I was from a small town, that I would have poor speaking skills. Basically, she thought that I woud talk like a dummy. I have heard about this sort of thing before, and shrugged it of as someones tall tale. Now I know better.
What I want to see are other dopers tales of tourist woes. The stupid things they ask and do. I would also like to apologize to every person to whom I have been stupid toursit . I’m Sorry.
I live in Oxford. A university town (arguably, THE university town), with all that entails.
So… one day a colleague of mine is strolling into the city centre, when a tourist accosts him with the question, “Excuse me… how do I find a bookstore around here?”
My colleague’s response: “Oh… chuck a brick, I think.”
C’mon, Shera! You’re clearly imagining things! How the hell would anyone know that you’re from a small town?? Are you kidding us?
Perhaps you speak with what some people think is a foreign accent, or perhaps the tourist only imagined that you were speaking with a foreign accent. I know people can be amazingly stupid, but you’re crediting them with the mystical powers to know where you were born or raised! That’s a tall tale no matter who tells it!
Having grown up near the Hamptons, I have many stories about idiot tourists. Trust me, Lizzie Grubman is only par for the course.
Lessee… There was the tourist who bitched out a lifeguard at the beach and threatened to report him because he didn’t have his “orange thing.” I watched this crazy tourist lady get all huffy at the lifeguard, saying stuff like “You’re supposed to have your orange thing. It’s supposed to be hooked to the back of your lifeguard chair. Who is your boss? I’m going to report you if you don’t immediately go get your orange thing.” The lifeguard was clueless as to what she was talking about for a minute or two, and then he realized that she was talking about that orange flotation device that the idiots on Baywatch twirl around all the time. She slinked away after the lifeguard explained he didn’t use that style of float, and that he had a flotation ring instead.
Then there was the “left turn into nowhere” story. I was in one of my dad’s company trucks, on my way to a job. Stuck in traffic on Montauk Highway, I noticed a black convertible Mustang several cars behind me that keeps pulling out into oncoming traffic, passing several people, and then pulling back into the line of cars. Eventually he zips up the shoulder and cuts in front of me. The car has five people in it - three guys and two girls, obviously not locals, and they’re playing obnoxious club music really loud on the stereo and going “wooooooo!” and shit. Anyway, Mr. Mustang Driver decides to pull out of the line of cars again and makes a left into incoming traffic. He spies a cop further up the road while he’s doing this, and momentarily freaks out. Other cars are coming toward him in the lane he’s currently occupying, and his simple brain probably wasn’t up to multitasking, so he just continued the left turn - across the lane of traffic, across the opposite shoulder, over the curb, and straight into a tree. I just laughed.
My friend tells another story about hanging out at Orient Point and encountering a tourist couple that looked somewhat bewildered. He talked to them a little while and nearly lost it when one of them said, “We’ve always wanted to come to Montauk, but we heard the traffic was really bad. But I didn’t think it was too bad, did you, honey?” My friend laughed hysterically. “That’s because you’re not in Montauk,” he explained. That’s right - they had driven out from the city intending to go to the end of Long Island, but had somehow driven to the wrong end.
NYC is an intimidating place to those of us raised in the wide open spaces. Getting used to thinking vertically is hard. Our tourist locales are usually surrounded by an average of three thousand signs.
My first visit was easy because I was armed, legally (I was an MP going to pick up a wayward soldier). I had a Beretta and a shotgun, so I was ready. I went back a lot of times unarmed, but the firepower definitely made the first trip less nervewracking. At least I wasn’t afraid to stop and ask for directions (which I did not have to do, after all).
In High school, I lived on the Presidio of San Francisco (which had recently became a Nat’l Park) because my Dad was in the service, and By God, it was cheaper to house us in Old DoD housing on the Presidio then help pay for rent in the SF Bay area.
Anyway, it got very stupid, very fast. My view of Tourists went down, and my view of San Francisconians went even lower.
Almost every saturday when I was mowing the lawn (Presidio inhabitants are some of the few with lawns in San Francisco) Some idiot would drive by, stop, roll down his windo and ask “Hey, do you know where the ~insert large building he drove past~ is?” It was amazing these people could live in San Francisco and not recognize a Chapel or Mueseum when they drove by it.
Another tribute to the stupidity of Tourists/San Francisconians was when a family just went out, an had a picnic on * our neighbors lawn . It isn’t like these lawns are huge, there can’t be more than 40 ft. between buildings (they’re duplexes), what on earth posses you to just go and sit on someones lawn? It’s the Frickin’ Presidio! There’s green space everywhere? This family wouldn’t leave when our neighbor asked them (kindly) to go, so he went back minside and turned on the sprinkling system. This said family then complained to the Park Police, who then laughed in their faces.
Now, what’s next isn’t exactly tourism, but it’s close to it. These middle-aged hippiesih woman came up to a neighbors house (that at the time was holding a “Infantry Terrace Wives club meeting”) and ** demanded* to be allowed in to she what ‘her tax dollars were paying for’.
The damn building was built in 1908, YOUR taxers didn’t go into it, and I doubt that your specific taxes are going to pay for the incomes of servicemen who’s job is to save your ungrateful ass…grrr…