Ahhh, Memorial Day Weekend at the Jersey Shore. Nothing to do but relax, barbeque, enjoy the company of friends…
…and not go anyfrickingwhere near the beaches.
If all goes right, not even have to drive anywhere at all. Make sure the fridge is well stocked, because you don’t want to have anything to do with Central Jersey Shore roadways until September 7th. That last Friday in May signals the beginning of Tourist Season, which unfortunately does not carry the same meaning as, say, “Deer Season” or “Duck Season” (ok…I’m kidding about the “unfortunately” part). For the next 14 weeks, all travel plans will be carefully laid out to avoid any thought of traveling southbound on a Friday, or northbound on a Sunday.
I spent my teens and 20’s loving every minute of summer at The Shore. All the tourists just meant that there were more people to party with. Now, as 40 is appearing on the horizon, and I find myself all grown up and married, it just doesn’t hold the personal appeal it used to.
However, I realize this tourism is an integral part of my local economy. North Jerseyans, New Yorkers, Phillyites, c’mon down, I welcome you. You’ll never hear me yelling “Bennies go home!”. No “Welcome to the Jersey Shore. Now leave.” t-shirts in my closet. I just hope you won’t be offended if I don’t join you on our beaches, or if I get a wee bit miffed if you pick the road I commute to work on for some slow-speed sightseeing on your vacation.
So how 'bout you? Anyone else have the annual three-month curse/blessing that is a summer tourism industry?
San Diego, here. Summer, winter, any time the kiddies are out of school for more than a day.
It doesn’t really affect us much. We generally avoid the big, expensive tourist traps like SeaWorld. And there are just certain days when you know to stay away from the Zoo.
We don’t spend whole days at the beach anyway. A favorite thing to do in summer is take a picnic in the late afternoon/early evening when it’s still warm, but everyone else is packing up to go. We’ve also learned which beaches are less well-known to tourists.
Ain’t going near Mission Bay this weekend, though. No way.
Year-rounder tourist place here. September is about the only time with a drop in the tourist numbers (barring any incidents). May used to be somewhat of a reprieve, but there has been an increase in the number of junior high school end-of-year trips.
I have no plans at all of heading to the oceanfront any time between now and fall. So we just bought a boat so we can get to the bech without dealing with tourist traffic. Well worth the extra expense…
In my case, there are year-round tourist attractions within 10 miles in every possible direction from me. Nothing to do but try to go with the flow (in a manner of speaking. FLOW isn’t a very apt description of the normal movement of the average tourist. more like go with the unexpected and random dead stop).
That’s pretty much the description of Door County, Wisconsin,the “thumb” of
Wisconsin. With 300 miles of freshwater shoreline on the perimeter and many small inland lakes, we are the water and family playground for Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison and even St. Louis. The many state parks, islands, arts & crafts stores, galleries, specialty shops, good restaurants, festivals, live theater productions, nature and outdoor activities bring people, cars, motorcycles, boats and bicycles from June to September. It can get pretty crowded on some narrow roads that were designed to handle only an occasional farmer’s pigwagon, although solitude can be found if you look.
Tourists, go home! :mad:
Oh, wait, they bring fistfuls of dollars. Tourists, welcome!
Kentucky Lake here. Luckily we are in the middle of no where so the tourists only come on the holidays. Memorial Day Fourth of July and Veterans Day. I refuse to go out on the lake on those weekends. “Hey let’s get all drunk and then drive the boat as fast as we can go, through waters we don’t know very well.” :eek: The weekend after I usually spend cleaning trash off the beaches. WTF is that all about any way? Here’s a nice clean beach let’s throw our garbage all over it. GRRRRRRR. :mad: I really wouldn’t mind them coming if they wouldn’t act like complete idiots.
I live on the coast of the Florida Panhandle, or L.A. as the locals call it (Lower Alabama). During the summer months, between spring break (that’s a whole 'nother rant) and the influx of Snowbirds (Canadian retirees who winter on the beach), the beach is clogged with hordes of redneck slobs. They think nothing of driving along throwing out their empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans and fried chicken boxes.
I guess they get carried away seeing palm trees, sugar-white sands, and emerald waters and forget that they are visitors to someone’s home.
The annoyance is tempered, however, by the fact that the tax dollars they spend saves Floridians from having to pay a state income tax.
So long as we stay off the main belt road that connects the tourists to HersheyPark, we can pretty much ignore them.
The only problem I have is that some people coming up from the south road from Route 283 don’t know that Hockersville Road does not go all the way to Hersheypark (a railroad divides the road). If they miss the turn, they get dumped into my neighborhood and trapped. We’ve had to direct people out about six times a summer.
Which was fine, except one day when a freakin’ TOUR BUS found itself trapped. I was driving the van, negotiating a tight, tight turn, when this wall of steel crossed in front and slowly, slowly, slowly, tried to turn around me.
It didn’t make it. I panicked and sat while it managed to crumple my headlight at the pace of a snail before stopping.
Other than that, it’s a fun combination of living in a small town that has a great collection of good restaurants and fast-food joints.
I grew up at Terrigal Beach, on the very touristy Central Coast, upon which the entire population of Sydney seems to descend every summer. I learned to enjoy being a barefoot little urchin running about the town and the beach as if I owned it (I knew every square inch), while the city kids would be scolded by their mothers for going too close to the water, or getting their expensive gear dirty. Later, as a teenager I lived in the city at the famous Bondi Beach, and it was much the same. Why join the hoardes from the suburbs in trying to find a parking spot when you can walk home barefoot in three minutes? That part of it I enjoyed. These days though, both locations are wrecked. Full of metrosexuals, yuppies, BMWs, expensive coffee houses, and I can barely afford to breathe the air there. If I could afford to, I wouldn’t still. They aren’t the same now.
Now I’m in the suburbs myself, and I feel sorry for my son who doesn’t have the beachside childhood I enjoyed. I also feel a little guilty when I join the procession of cars waiting to park at the beach. I see the local kids looking at me like I’m “another bloody Parra” (“Parra” means daytripper from Sydney - it comes from the Sydney suburb of “Parramatta”). If only those kids knew I was probably standing on that exact same spot looking thinking the exact same thing, several decades before they were born.
I sure hope to someday because I sure as hell don’t now. Change is good.
Last week we went to the initial opening of the bottles for a winery I own approximately one half of one percent in. Heh, I suck. Still, it was fantastic and was my second time to visit St. Helena, Ca. The lifestyle those folks enjoy out there is something I could get used to in a heartbeat. Dry climate, sunny skies, healthy food, good vino… need I say more?
After a trip to Yosemite, we drove in our convertible to Monterrey and along the coast past Pebble Beach and down to Carmel. Jeez, seriously, I’m still reeling.
I know these places are popular and that the flux of tourists may at times become tiring but you know what, I’ll adjust, contribute to the community and enjoy the most of those golden years in style. It’s still a way off but recognition of what you want and what it’s gonna take is haly the key to it’s realization…
We live 23 miles from the Iowa Great Lakes Area. Which is just fine, but we work on the north end of it and my parents live on the south end. So I can’t avoid it. It sucks. It’s practically impossible to get out of our parking lot because of all the traffic (nope-no stoplight). The tourists drive and act like they own EVERYTHING and the rest of us are dirt under their feet. Not all are like that, but most are.
Sorry, but I’ve lived in this area all my 32 years, they come around three months of the year and take over and I’M the one who has to adjust? I might, if they quit tailgating me and being rude in the stores, but since they think they are better than me, that ain’t gonna happen.
South central Texas. Hordes of little old people from the northern border states come down here in RVs to live in our RV camps during the winter.
Then, during the summer, they leave. But that’s when hordes of people from all over the planet show up to swim in our rivers, float down our tube chutes, and so forth. Fredericksburg, Boerne, and New Braunfels must have more antiques per square yard than the Smithsonian Institution, but the Smithsonian doesn’t try to sell theirs to you.
Makes me wonder if there isn’t some way to just get everyone to MAIL in their money, instead of having to come and spend it personally…
I live in the Pocono Mountains, so we get a lot of tourists too. Like somone else said, I wouldn’t mind them so much, if they didn’t act like idiots. It seems like they forget about little things like manners when they are here.
Northern Michigan, represent! All the snowbirds flying back up north, all the downstaters coming up to clog the beaches and roads, all the golfers and yachters and campers and conventioners… But they’re the only things keeping our economy going, so bless their little Fudgie hearts.
“Niagara Falls: Honeymoon Capital of The World”, “The Big Mist”, “Star of the ill-fated TV series Wonderfalls”, yadda, yadda, yadda. Used to be just summer tourism making the locals’ lives hell but, with the advent of (soon to be two) Casinos, there are huge sections of the city that locals avoid like the plague all year 'round.
Since Niagara Falls doesn’t have a huge industrial or commercial base most natives have, at one time or another, worked in the tourist industry in some capacity. For instance, it was my hellish 2 year stint as a waiter for Victoria Park Restaurant that made me vow never, ever to work in either the tourist or food service industries again. These experiences are common and can lead to some jaundiced attitudes as most of us have witnessed the “ugly tourist” up close and in our faces. As such, stupid tourist jokes run rampant and traffic complaints abound.
However, the cynicism doesn’t run very deep and I think most of us are proud that so many people want to come here. Not to mention the spin-off benefits from the influx of cash such as a plethora of restaurants and bars and major infrastructure improvements have definitely improved the quality of life. Also, with the new Casino (opening June 10, for those with extra cash they don’t know what to do with), we finally have a decent concert venue so maybe we’ll see some good live acts come through town. It’s always annoyed me that for a region with so much going for it, the live music scene seems to consist solely of crap Kiss cover bands.
Oh, and the Falls, themselves, are still cool, too.
I lived in San Diego until I was 15. I knew it was a “tourist area”, but I never noticed it. L.A. and Orange County have several tourist attractions. When I saw people from elsewhere, I was sometimes amused that they would find certain things interesting. But then, of course they would! Else they wouldn’t have gone there.
But L.A. and San Diego are year-round destinations. Now I live in the seaside community of Birch Bay. There are about 2,000 year-round residents, a population that swells to maybe 10,000 in the Summer. I’ve been here in the Summer, and it gets a little crowded. (And they’ve lowered the speed limit on Birch Bay Rd. from 35 mph to 20.) Fellow Doper Nymysys and her husband live across the street from the water slides. I’ve heard the park blasts bad music (“Elvira”, e.g.) from huge speakers. I don’t envy them their location!
Me? I’m just up the street from the beach. I’ve noticed more and more people appearing on the mud flats when the tide is out. Boats are showing up, and are beached at low tide. Clamming, long one of the most popular draws to this area, is being partaken of my many people. They’re all over the flats. Tents and stalls are showing up as people hawk their souveniers. Many of the houses around here are owned by Canadians, who are moving in for the Summer. We now have a Thai restaurant, and The Pepperdock will be re-opening soon as The Blue Fish. (The (former)Pepperdock is the only building on the beach side of the road.)
I’m new here, having only lived here since November, so I haven’t experienced the “Summer Crowds”. I’m looking forward to seeing it!
I live in Santa Cruz, CA…Home of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, good surfing, redwoods, a couple of tourist traps and a major tourist destination for most of Northern California. In the summer, the students from the University (which make it a largely vegetarian, insanely liberal, extremely queer friendly beach town) leave and the tourist pour in. It’s funny because the town changes character with the seasons.
Mostly, we know tourism make our town rich enough to pay for the scads of social services, luxerient bus systems and cleanly downtown area. The tourists mostly stay in their own area (which they probably don’t even know is the sketchy side of town) and rarely ask for more than directions to the beach.
However, I work at Denny’s, a motel, and a video store and I have to say this weekend SUCKED! I’ve never worked so hard and so long in my life. And went I got home tonight I couldn’t even find a parking spot (downtown, where I live) so that I could buy a burrito for dinner. Blegh.
