New York, no fucking snakes.
Paris, London, no snakes.
San Francisco, full of fucking snakes!
Neither do i, really. But say it here in public and you might as well jump up and scream, “LOOK AT ME! I’M A DUMB TOURIST WHO OBVIOUSLY DOESN’T KNOW A THING ABOUT YOUR CITY AND DOESN’T CARE!” Seriously, the way some people get treated, you’d think they’d gone to Beijing and tossed their car keys to the nearest person (who happened to be a 45-year-old executive) and said, “go park this for me, boy! Chop chop!”
If you wanna go back, i think it mostly has to do with Emperor Norton, who was a total loonie who declared himself emperor and decreed (among other things) that anyone caught uttering the word “Frisco” would be hit with a stiff fine.
Word. This happens in all big cities, though - I’ve been to DC, London, Chicago, Seoul, NYC, and same thing every time.
When I was in NYC, I quickly learned that if you wait for the light to turn green before you crossed the street, you immediately gave yourself away as a tourist. Ditto if you said “excuse me” when someone bumped into you. The correct response seemed to be “get the hell outta my way!” :dubious:
Here’s a map of the Bay Area, for reference.
The term “Bay Area” is usually used (at least here) to refer to the nine counties around San Francisco Bay: San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Marin, Sonoma, and Napa counties. It might very occasionally include Santa Cruz county, to the south.
The East Bay includes Oakland and its suburbs, and everything on the eastern shore of the bay north to Suisun Bay. It is so named because it’s east of the San Francisco Bay. There is also the South Bay, which is the area around San Jose and Fremont, the Peninsula, which is the area west of the Bay and south of San Francisco, and the North Bay, which is the area north of San Francisco Bay. San Francisco is sometimes called “The City”. There is no West Bay.
Just as important, it’s a different climate. In the summer, the high temperature can be 60 degrees in San Francisco and 90+ degrees in the parts of the East Bay that are east of that first range of hills that you come to when you’re travelling from the coast. (On the linked map, “the hills” are roughly that green diagonal strip of parks running east of and parallel to the Bay, from San Pablo to Fremont, more or less)
The homeless people in San Francisco are authorized to collect those fines, as are other residents of the Bay Area. We don’t take checks or credit cards, sorry 
With respect? Try living against Golden Gate Park. Apparently my neighborhood exists so young wanna-be-hippies can block my driveway then wander around all day saying “Yo dude - I’m on HAIGHT!!” into their cellphones or hanging out in the park twirling sticks, trying to sell drugs to me, getting stoned and leaving garbage behind. Yeah - you’re a hippie. You’re effin’ seventeen.
Er… yeah. Sorry, forgot to throw Upper Haight in there.
I’ve been to San Francisco. I enjoyed my visit to San Francisco. I’d like to return to San Francisco someday. See, I learned this “never say Frisco” thing before I left home, and it served me well when I visited your city. We also once had a cat named San Francisco. His name could be safely shortened to “Frisco” and often was. But in spite of our cat’s nickname, “San Francisco” remains the name of the California city as far as I’m concerned. Hey, I’ve gotta stay on good terms with San Franciscans; I’d like to return someday!
Okay, my turn. Most tourists we see around here are fairly harmless. They come for the mountains of Banff National Park, maybe do some skiing or golfing, and take a pile of photos. Show them a cowboy or a Mountie (bonus points if either is on a horse!), and they’re snapping away. Fairly harmless, and not really an inconvenience. In fact, they’re kind of interesting–I’ve sat in a Banff or Calgary bar, and struck up conversations with people from all over the world. Great times!
My only complaint would be the road that leads from Calgary to Banff. Beautiful road, two lanes each way with a centre median, limited access, and a speed limit of 110 km/h (70 mph?). Too bad it doesn’t go that fast on weekends. It’s not crowded, really, it’s just the tourist’s rented car slowing down to look at the mountain scenery. Or it’s the tourist’s rented car slowing down as it passes the “Caution! Wildlife May Be On Road” signs, so its occupants can look for bears or elk. The tourists aren’t bad folk, and the mountains are quite majestic. But they are even better if the tourists would pull their cars over into any number of handy pullouts and enjoy the scenery from there rather than cause road delays.
Here in Santa Barbara, we tolerate tourists reasonably well. After all a lot of them appear to be supermodels from L.A.
The tourists that I do hate are the ones who clog the sidewalks (not the smarmy local punk ass junior high school twits, I can tell the difference). We don’t have tall buildings, and it’s difficult to get lost. You are just a fat fuck walking 3 abreast at a half a mile an hour. The other asswipe tourist is some retard who thinks cars always have the right of way and then yells at me when he runs my bicycle off the road. Said asswipes are usually driving rental convertible mustangs.
I agree. Parisians, on the other hand, completely live up to their reputation.
I hate to be a Pollyanna but I’ve traveled a great deal and can’t remember being treated badly anywhere especially in Europe. So I try to treat tourists that I encounter accordingly.
The only place I’ve ever been where we weren’t treated well was in the South when I was a kid.
Of course. I was in Rome last week and it was great except for all of those other tourists. 
Tourists are those strange people who say things like ‘Hi’ when they don’t know you. I’ve never had much issue with tourists in my area. Most are calm older people taking in the New England landscape.
I imagine most tourists consider us local massholes quit rude. We do things like keep the location of the cape cod tunnel secret so only we can use it.
Hm. Perhaps a trip to Spain is in order! 
I don’t know about that one. I went to Paris about two summers ago with my mom and I don’t speak a single word of French. On the many occasions I would set out on my own in the city people were more than happy to help me out and I never noticed anybody that seemed put out by me. YMMV of course.
Unfortunately, my mileage has varied. A lot of people have told me about their positive experiences there. I’ve been to Paris 4 times, and quite often, I have found the people to be fairly unhelpful, with a decent number of exceptions. Yes, the fact that I’m an American of asian descent who doesn’t speak French (I call it the 3 strikes) is problematic. I actually always try to speak a few phrases in the local language, though. I’m real good at deciphering people with really poor English skills, and just wish the Parisians would make a bit more effort to try to understand my butchered French.
By the way, I’ve been to 68 countries, so I have been around the block. I’m much more polite than your typical cruise bus American tourist (at least in my own mind).
My Dad’s a doctor, and the old adage about new procedures goes like this:
See one
Do one
Teach one
Don’t know if it’s true or not. The thing with New Yorkers and tourists seems to follow the same pattern.
Be one
See one
Complain about one
Of course there is a slight time delay in the stages though…
I think the only time you ever need to complain about tourists in New York, is when you start working there. If it’s in some sort of job where you have constant contact with the public, then yeah, you’ll get loads…
However, if you’re just going to an office every day, then things might be different, but you’ll always get really pissed at the people on the street that slow you down on the way to work. And you’ll probably identify them as tourists. They probably aren’t though.
Here, the problem is terrible. Our population (as you well know) seems to double between New Year’s and Easter – mostly wretched old Canadians with a smattering of wretched old folks from Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Northeast. After Easter, those people go home and are replaced with wretched younger folks from all over the US and the world.
My biggest peeve with these people is that they forget that we are not exclusively a tourist destination. There are almost 3 million people in the Bay area, and a whole lot more than the beach. Also, we work for a living – we’re not on vacation like y’all, so kindly get the hell out of the way.
Ive never noticed any negativity to being a tourist while on my travels. The one time I was in New York the people were actually really nice, and I wasnt staying in some fancy hotel where the people are paid to be nice to you, I was in a hostel in Harlem. Even the locals liked the fact that we were there - one night a friend and I did the night open top bus tour of the city and one guy shouted up “thanks for coming back to the city”. I felt very welcome there…
That being said I can understand why people have these negative attitudes to tourists. Im from a small city in Ireland and every summer we get boatloads of French, Spanish and Italian students who come over and they just take over the place! A lot of people resent them for that
This often describes the problem with tourists in New Orleans. People seem to forget that the French Quarter, among other places, isn’t an amusement park like Disneyland. People actually live there, and they don’t appreciate your throwing up or peeing on their doorstep.
I never thought of my stay in Ireland as tourism, I went there to learn English. Same as I never thought of the exchange students we got as tourists.
How do they take over the place? By there suddenly being a lot of people around who are likely to yell at each other in a language you don’t understand?
We tried to be polite and not be a pain in the ass, but I know there’s a lot of things that we discovered were done differently there - problem is, nobody tells you about them until you’re really up shit creek. If you find a paddle you count yourself lucky.
People all-in-lilac and with hats stared at us in Mass because we weren’t “dressed up enough”, but really, if I tried to buy clothes like those in Spain outside of Carnaval I wouldn’t even be able to find them!
I don’t have much to say about Tourism, but stopped by to compliment your expert use of the English language.
(However, I have watched many travel programs. And I’ve wondered why so many tourists dress so badly. It’s quite possible to be cool & comfortable in something other than a large t-shirt & shorts. Especially when the outfit makes you look like a bowling ball balanced on two toothpicks.)