I live in this general area and we get a lot of tourists, who clog up the narrow streets and get in your way when you’re trying to go about you’re daily life. They bitch about shops closing for lunch/half day/at all. They assume that, because you live here, you know where everything is and exactly how to get there, and how long it will take to get there …
If this weekend was any indication, we barely heard it. If we have absolute silence in the house it’s noticable, but since we’re usually playing our own music, it’s no bother t’all.
While we were outside putzing around a bit we did have a “Reunited” moment. It’s the soundtrack of our lives.
P.S. This is our LAST TBALL WEEKEND! We’ll have to do movies or something next week.
San Diego, here (Hi, Cher3!). It is strange how locals here don’t stay at the beach all day like we used to on the east coast when I lived there. I don’t either, now - just breeze in at 5:00 pm or so for a beachwalk. But I can always tell when it’s tourist season because someone will ask me to take a picture of them every time I go! I must look like a really nice, trustworthy person or something because tourists are throwin’ their digital cameras at me despite the fact that I’m walking about 15 mph with a water bottle. An exceedingly polite group of Japanese tourists asked me one time, and it soon became clear that each and every one of them wanted his picture taken *with me * separately. :rolleyes: I’m probably well-known on Japanese websites by now, LOL.
Used to live (& still have a family cottage) in a tiny little lakeside Michigan town about 3 hours north of Chicago - the population would at least double during the summer. Great fun when you’re a teenager, less fun now
The hardware & grocery stores downtown are long gone, replaced by antique & other fancy-pants shops; and with condos going in on every available square inch, residents are getting priced out of the housing market.
I live in a non-touristy part of Long Island (good thing, too - it’s quite crowded enough as it is), but my grandmother lives out east, near Southampton - playground of the rich, the famous, the rich & famous, & those who just rent beachouses & pretend.
Yowza, does it get crowded out there - seems to get moreso each year. And, of course, there’s the love-hate relationship between the tourists & the locals that gets covered by Newsday every other year. Well… I reckon it’s not so much a “relationship” as it is the locals trying to work out conflicted feelings about the tourists. I suspect that the tourists, for their part, don’t think about the locals much at all.
My city in general entertains millions of wide-bottomed polyester wearing slow-walking folks a year, so I hide up here in da Bronx. If you stay away from the Zoo and Botanical Garden and avoid the 4 and D trains right before a Yankee game, you’re fine.
No-go zones for a native NYer in summer: Times Square. Rockefelluh Cenneh and Radio City. Southern third of Central Park. Main streets of Soho and the Village on weekends. Riverside Park from 96th Street down. The Met (the art one). The American Museum of Natural History (especially the dinosaur halls :eek: ) South Street Seaport. And fer gawdsakes use the downtown TKTS on John St. if you can. Times Square (needs saying again, this is the worst).
That said, I love watching tourists on the subway. Lurching around, holding on with both hands and prehensile feet to the railings, cameras swinging from necks as they stoop to peer at the maps and figure out which of the 465 stops is theirs. I try to help them if I can. They all look so cute and wholesome and honestly !
Downside of living in a seaside resort community: Stephani’s raised the price of their dinner specials from $9.99 to $14.99.
Here in Nashville we get a lot of tourists – especially for special musical occasions such as Fan Fair. I can’t really tell the tourists from the locals. There will be just us here and then there will be a whole lot of us and then it’s back to being just us again.
Most of them are really sweet people – very down to earth. If they speak a Northern dialect, we women ham it up for them with various Southern dialects and it makes them smile.
It always touches me when they envy us for living in Nashville.
A friend of mine lives in Clifton, TN. She says that people there wouldn’t understand me. She says she likes talking to me, because it helps her keep a west coast accent.
I can’t help but to ask this: Do people call the road that leads into your town as the “Hershey Highway?”
I’m right outside of Daytona Beach here. No locals that I am aware of go to Daytona Beach itself. Its yucky- cars, concession stands, people renting surfboards, boogie boards, umbrellas, chairs, people selling cheesy t-shirts. At the end of my road is a lovely beach area- no condos, no hotels, no cars (no driving allowed) , no concessions, no tourists. And a great playground, clean bathrooms, grills, picnic tables, showers.
Don’t ask me where- it’s a secret.
Oh yeah, now that’s happened over here on the other side of the border, too. Except, the NY side now wishes it had your problems, as it slowly sinks to near Third World standards in infrastructure, industry, accomodations, etc.
NF, ON isn’t helped in the least that the Rainbow Bridge is so close to the tourist area that every Orange Alert turns it into instant gridlock, as does every major holiday. It took me two hours to return to the US yesterday… Still, as I say, we wish we had your problems. Maybe, if the tourist problems over there get you down, you can always look across the river, and look at the downtown area that was torn down in the 70’s and never rebuilt, the hole in the ground known as AquaFalls, and our decaying city streets, and have some level of comfort!
New Hampshire gets a lot of tourism in the white mountains, the lakes region, and so forth – mostly camping, kayaking, that kind of thing. Now, I don’t actually live in that part of NH. However, there are only a couple of major roads to go up North – and one of them is my ride home. Every Friday evening, the road home crawls with vacationers going out for the weekend.
Makes me glad I don’t actually live on the NH coast, which some friends of mine there tell me get pretty crowded.
We have always gotten lots of tourists and beachgoers, but the last 10 years or so it’s gotten much more crowded. No parking, rude people and idiots- gee, happy holiday!
I actually prefer it in the winter, but I don’t mind the summer crowds that much, except for the constant circling cars looking for parking when there ISN’T ANY! It is a peninsula, people- there is nowhere to go but back the way you came!
It used to be that the tourists only congregated around the piers, but now the beaches are packed all the way down the peninsula.
If we aren’t parked on the street by Friday night of a holiday weekend, we’re screwed (no garage- it’s a 100+ year old beach house!).
Lovely Newport Beach, CA- home of The O.C.! Gag…