TOURISTS

Subject: TOURISTS
From: wildlone
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 05:23 PM

Tourists are like piles. They come down. They hang around. And they are a PAIN IN THE ASS.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 05:33 PM

Ah, toursts are only a problem when you live in a place worth visiting. Got a problem with tourists? Move here to Sacramento in the summertime. Come enjoy the smog and the miserable heat. Lots of slow-moving traffic, too - but no tourists.
Want to live in a scenic spot? Well, kwitcherbellyachin. I should at least be allowed to visit.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: wildlone
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 05:38 PM

okay Joe come to sunny Dorset And spend hours stuck behind a caravan as it wends its way towards Cornwall.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Tony Burns
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 05:38 PM

Got a bug in your bonnet about tourists wildone? The fact of the matter is that when we are more that a short distance from home we are all tourists.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 06:36 PM

Well, Wildlone, you struck home there. I have to admit that I claim the Sierra Nevada and the California Coast as my own, and I really hate it when I get stuck behind a 40-foot recreational vehicle pulling a trailer, going twenty miles an hour. A pretty drive ain't much fun when all you can see is other vehicles.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 06:42 PM

Tourists?

You don't know the meaning of the word.

Here in Cambria on the central coast of California we have about six thousand residents. This weekend we will have between ten and fifteen thousand tourists. They will make driving, parking, shopping and even walking difficult for the next three days.

But they will leave tons of money here and by Monday night they'll all be gone and we can have paradise to ourselves again.

Vive la tourista!!!

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Barry Finn
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 07:43 PM

I was once living as a tourist on the island of Maui. The locals & transients, although not caring much for the tourist realized the need for them. None who lived there in paradise on a long term basis wanted to be left without them. Across a couple of channels is the island of Niihau, no tourists no visitors no one allowed unless they had at least 50% Hawaiian blood running through their brains. The pro side of this for those islanders was that they were left to live as Hawaiians were in the last century. Those that didn't like this could leave. During the last major hurricane the Governor wasn't allowed to land to offer aid, so you can see how much they want to be left alone from the outside. The drawback of this is that you'll never step on those shores unless be some stroke of luck bad bad, no, monster waves force you to letf them shelter you. Throughout the rest of the chain tourists are seen as a lifeline which without there's no paradise for any so even a day at the beach with a little less leg room is just a passing pinprick. You're all wecolme to visit here, we'll treat you decent. Barry

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: wildlone
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 08:22 PM

come on Mudcatters we all know tourist's are a fact of life we often get people from 4 continents at the local folk club.Where's all the jokes about tourist's.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: bbelle
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 08:45 PM

I worked in the travel industry for 10 years ... in Portland, Oregon and Fairbanks, Alaska ... as a hotel executive and the local convention and visitors bureau. The tourists paid my salary ... and a very good salary, I might add. Yes ... by the end of the season, I was ready for them to go home ... but glad to see them return but the months inbetween could be very lean. I seriously doubt there are many of us who have not been tourists at one time or another and I hope I am always treated with the respect of the locals as I have always treated the tourists. Sad to say ... Tallahassee, Florida is not a big tourist haven ... moonchild

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From:
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 09:29 PM

I grew up in a tourist town, in the heart of the historical district. Permanent population of my home town in the 60's was under 2000 - our fourth of July celebration often had 12 to 15 thousand attend.

You can put up with a lot for the money the tourists bring in...especially when there isn't much coming in 8 to 10 months of the year.

BUT...if we had EVER behaved the way some of them did when WE were traveling, I STILL wouldn't be able to sit down! Still, I will admit, you remember the bad ones far more then the good.

MMario

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: bbelle
Date: 03 Sep 99 - 10:30 PM

Probably the percentage of rude tourists is far, far less than the nice tourists ... but, unfortunately, it usually is the rude ones we remember. In Fairbanks, the median age for the summer tourist is 65 y/o and they tend to be very tightfisted and more than a little demanding when things are askew. At first, it made me crazy. Then I realized that a trip to Alaska was their dream of a lifetime and they had saved for a long time for this trip. So ... when the accommodations were not what they were promised and the weather was bad, they were a disgruntled group, to be sure! After that realization, I had a lot more sympathy and was better able to bring deal with the situations. And my favorite questions about Alaska is ..."What time do they turn on the "lights?" referring to the North Lights ... moonchild

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Sep 99 - 03:05 AM

Ah, Moonchild, that reminds me of my last trip to Alaska, in December, 1994. After I got home to California, several people asked me if I had seen the Midnight Sun - in December?
As we used to say in the Midwest, Oh, fer dumb!
-Joe Offer-

Subject: ADD: Winnebacome, Winnebago
From: Pelrad
Date: 04 Sep 99 - 01:31 PM

Winnebacome, Winnebago
(song written by Jon Campbell, recorded on "Ferrying to the Isle of Block.")

Come summer they flock to the beaches and the docks
They've got brown vinyl sandals and black nylon socks
They've got a red peeling nose, and synthetic clothes
And from June to September it's anything goes.

Where's my flip-flop? Where's the gift shop?
Are you feeling sad?
Winnebacome, Winnebago
Clamcakes and chowda and stuffies to go
There's a slick on the bay of Bain de Soleil
And Labor Day weekend seems light-years away.

They're out fishing for flats wearing Budweiser hats
They've got a new Boston Whaler with the cooler up in back.
They go for a spin loaded on gin
And get stuck hard aground till the tide comes back in.

They'll be gridlocked at the town dock;
Are you feeling sad?
Winnebacome Winnebago
It's a long rainy weekend they got no place to go
There's a red tide today and a shark in the bay
And Labor Day weekend seems light-years away.

When the flea bites, jellyfish stings
Are you feeling sad?
Watch a mobster eat a lobster
Are you feeling sad?
They've got sand in their eyes, and a burn on their thighs
And the last to the grinder is covered with flies
There's a squid in the sink, the tv's on the blink
They've got a bucket of crabs that's beginning to stink

Citronella, beach umbrella
Are you feeling sad?
Winnebacome, Winnebago
Well, there's no place to park any place that you go
So let's count license plates from the midwestern states
And hope after Labor Day things will get straight.

With the sunshine comes a gas line
Are you feeling sad?
Be abrasive with the natives
Are you feeling sad?
(fade out to muddle of voices: "Will the owner of Rhode Island registration..." "He doesn't look old enough to be a captain!" "Vinne, get outta there!" "Sorry, parking lots closed." etc)

Line Breaks <br> added.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: paddymac
Date: 04 Sep 99 - 01:54 PM

Ah, Moonchild, One of the really nice things about Tallahassee is that it is not too difficult to hide out where the tourists won't find you. I'd hate to see us become another Mouseland. What with the government, universities, football, sister city programs, and the like, we do get our share of tourists, and my experience is that they are mostly decent folk. A sad reality of tourism in most communities is that they cost the community more than they leave behind. Those cocts are hidden in higher taxes for infrastructure needs to support the tourism industry, and then there are the intangible costs in altered quality of life issues. Yes, tourists do create jobs, but if you look closely at places like orlando, you find that a huge proportion of those jobs are dead-end minimum wage slots, with out benefits such as health coverage. Are you following the current debate on MSTUs for health-care? Grab on to Harpgirl and drop by Lorenzo's some evening for a chat. Apologies to all for going a bit abroad here.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: bob schwarer
Date: 04 Sep 99 - 02:53 PM

Ah yes, Orlando. The city eaten by a rat........oops mouse.

Bob S.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: bobby's girl
Date: 04 Sep 99 - 05:18 PM

I think the daftest tourist comment I know was heard by a friend in Edinburgh - "Well I really like the castle but its a pity they built it so close to the railway station"

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Pelrad
Date: 04 Sep 99 - 05:41 PM

Joe Offer: Thanks for fixing that, sweetie. :-)

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: wildlone
Date: 05 Sep 99 - 09:36 AM

Been away.come back.this is more like it .WL.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: teller
Date: 05 Sep 99 - 09:58 AM

Wildlone!!!!!!! I've seen that caravan!!! Parked slap-bang in the middle of the village, arguing with a tractor driver, pulling a five high consignment of hay, that he (the caravan-puller) can't POSSIBLY reverse and that the tractor HAS to give way! Tractor driver switches off engine, picks up sandwhiches and goes for lunch, leaving the locals to go the other way round and the caravaneer to figure out what the hell is going on!!! Love grockles....not like,LOVE!!!! Teller.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: wildlone
Date: 05 Sep 99 - 10:09 AM

In the town I live in, Sherborne, Darzet,there are several Public schools, I once heard a parent complaining about getting a parking ticket,"my dear I simply should not have to pay,my son goes to the Abbey".[in the Uk private schools are called public].WL.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Llanfair
Date: 05 Sep 99 - 10:48 AM

Mid-Wales relies heavily on the tourist trade, and Llanfair Caereinion is the "other end" of a preserved light railway line. Trouble is, when people get here, particularly on a Saturday afternoon, everything is shut!!! Still, Ilove to hear that lonesome whistle blow as I plan ways to part the grockles from their holiday money!!! Hwyl, Bron.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: poet
Date: 05 Sep 99 - 06:32 PM

Hi wild one

I live on a small Island (Guernsey) Ilike tourists they give me a new audience to sing to every week, the locals soon get fed up of seeing the same old faces you know. dont knock them my freind after all, once year or so every one is a tourist probably even you.

poet.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: kendall morse (don't use)
Date: 05 Sep 99 - 07:00 PM

Here in Maine, we call tourists "Summer Complaints" It's a form of diarrhea. One famous quote, (not made by Dan Quayle) "Isn't it nice how the lobster boats are neatly parked all in the same direction!" SSTruth!! Fact is, without tourists, we natives couldn't afford to live her, as they shoulder much of the tax burden.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Guy Wolff
Date: 05 Sep 99 - 07:35 PM

I have lived off the visiting people for decades.I make pottery in the beautifull hills of western Connecticut about 100 miles north of New York City and people in cars stop and buy things..I did like last year the conplaints I got on how the leaves turning color in the fall were'nt bright enough that year.I did wonder what I could do to make them brighter for them..Is that what they are now calling codependent? By the way everyone makes fun of New Englanders when discribing how to get some-where they often say "You can't get there from here" <<>> What that means is there is a mountain in the way and to get to Cornwall from Litchfeild you'l have to go through Waren or Goshen. {You cant get to Cornwall from LItchfield} Another one I have always liked is when asked "Do you know how to get to Litchfield ?" The oldtime answer is "Yes" I love Tourests...How else could anyone sell a room at the Mayflower Inn in Washington Ct for $500.00 a night{ I kid you not!} We have so many movey stars in my county I have latly thought of clossing up the pottery and staring "A BUS TO THE STARS!" THere are lots of different ways a new influx of somthing over-powering can take hold of a town..We have become the new Beverley Hills for the East coast. I would'nt call them exactly tourest's but they have changed the formula of Lichfield County quite a bit. The year The Rolling Stones rented a defunked Preschool was the begining of it all....Rambling alert I will stop...All My Best Guy

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 05 Sep 99 - 10:15 PM

In March I experienced what it is to be a complete Tourist. I was a passenger on the SS Elation on a cruise of "the Mexican Riviera." We stopped at Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas for intervals ranging from three to 12 hours each. At each stop, we were met by large encampments of merchants hawking everything from hats to belts to carved obsidian to glassware to abalone madonnas. We would line up to trample down the gangway into these villages, wearing strawhats, sunburns and huarachi sandals so that we could be more easily identified targets. We spent so little time in each place that none of us really got a handle on what value Mexican money had, so we would pay for everything with the largest denomination bill we had and trust in the innate honesty of these trinket-hustlers. We would emerge from these markets dazed and sweating, our pockets full of ambiguous change, bearing armloads of stuff that was destined to be placed in cardboard boxes and stacked at the back of the garage in about two months, and we would look for the true essence of the particular town in the 45 minutes we had left before the boat gave it's departure whistle. Usually the essence could be found in some dingy sea-side palapa bar- an ice cold cerveza with a napkin wrapped around it. On the way back to the boat, we stumbled through the still-busy market, where the merchants were as busy as dairy farmers working a herd of cows that badly needed milking. "Hey Amigo! Amigo!" they would call to us,"come back!" as if they were truly sorry to see us go back up the gangway, into the relatively sane artificial environment of the cruise ship, where we would collapse in our staterooms for twenty minutes before donning as many trophies of our recent on-shore adventure as we could manage. Then, casting a furtive glance at our rather ridiculous tourist visage reflected in the mirror, we would make the walk up to the aptly-named prominade deck, order Pina Coladas, and see relected in each other's eyes the world-weary self-satisfied look of the true tourist.

LEJ

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 07 Sep 99 - 09:24 AM

Driving home from Maine to CT yesterday in bumper to bumper traffic for about 7 1/2 hours, we were lamenting all those lousy tourists on the roads. Maine had digital highway signs thanking us for visiting and inviting us back again in the Fall. At the toll booths (where the bumpers got even closer), there were employees handing out Maine tourism mouse pads, which they had the good humor to call "moose pads."

Every weekend during the warm weather there is a ribbon of traffic going through our own town on the interstate, heading North on Friday (and lately even Thursday and Wednesday) and then the same line on Sunday night heading southbound. We're not usually around to see it because we're off somewhere ourselves.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Roger the zimmer
Date: 07 Sep 99 - 09:41 AM

I'll be a tourist myself in a couple of days. UK West country folk call tourist "grockles", in Greece they call them "squids" beacuse they often confuse "Kalimera" (good morning) with "kalimari" (squid!). So I'll be trying not to say "squid" to people I meet. From my travels the Greeks and the Polynesians seem to be the most genuinely welcoming to tourists, except in the busiest centres where exposure to the world excesses of mass tourist has jaded them. Are the French the least welcoming? As with so many national stereotypes individual encounters are usually better than the country en masse. I've met some lovely German, French and US citizens!*BG*
I've also got on well in Wales and Scotland. However, there are "Basil Fawlty" types in every country.
'Er indoors often says when we are staying in a nice place: "It's beautiful,but I'd hate to live here, think of all the tourists!" Living in Ascot, I'm glad Royal Week is only once a year!

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: kendall morse (don't use)
Date: 07 Sep 99 - 01:45 PM

Back in 1988 my wife and I visited Scotland, and 2 years later, sans wife I went back for a working tour of the pubs and folk clubs. This was one of the biggest high points in my life.. I love the Scots, and they love Americans (unless your name is Campbell, like my ex wife)

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Jack (who is called Jack)
Date: 08 Sep 99 - 02:01 PM

Worked for a summer in a resort town back during the 'energy crisis'. Tourism was down almost 25% that summer, and many of the 'natives' were in a holy panic about how they were going to live through winter without their summer savings. Still, it didn't stop a lot of them from complaining about the Quebecois (Correct usage?). Some of it quite ugly. Learned an interesting lesson that summer. Bigotry is unrelated to the target. Heard locals using the exact same stereotypy to characterize the french that the bigots from my area used against black people in my own town. The sentences, the litany, the language was EXACT. It was as if the memorized a script with blanks to insert the desired epithet. Learned then that the hatred comes first, and the people just look for someone to apply it to.

Tourism can so modify the landscape that a lot is lost. Look at Niagra Falls. Its spectacular and the well kept cultivated gardens an park areas around them are nice. Seeing them at night with the colored illumination left my son speechless. Yet a part of me mourned for the lost opportunity to experience the Falls as a wild river surrounded by forest and accessible only by trail. To walk through the forest, feeling the mist, hearing the roar, and seeing the great plume through breaks in the canopy, then to come upon the chasm suddenly, is an experience I would have prefered.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Mudjack
Date: 08 Sep 99 - 03:51 PM

TOURIST? I are one, every chance I get

Mudjack

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 08 Sep 99 - 08:51 PM

A few years ago we were driving south along the west coast of Scotland. It was raining a little (that's called summer in Scotland) and we decided to pull over for a little break. We stopped at a wide spot which was totally devoid of civilization except for a solitary VW bus. Shortly after we stopped, the sliding door of the VW opened and out came a scotsman in full regalia complete with pipes, kilt, bonnet, etc. He crossed the highway and began to play the pipes. Within minutes a tour bus appeared and disgorged about forty tourists who took pictures and tipped the lad generously. After about ten minutes, the tourists got back in the bus and went down the road to the next spot. Then the scotsman got back into his bus to resume his nap or have another glass of single malt whiskey.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Bryant
Date: 09 Sep 99 - 12:09 AM

Whenever I leave the place I live to visit somewhere else I always tell myself "I am NOT a tourist; I'm a traveler." There's a world of difference.

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: Penny S.
Date: 10 Sep 99 - 05:08 PM

When I was in Cornwall the other year I was told the grockles were now called innits, from "Ooh, that's a lovely view, innit?"

There is also emmets, once ants

Subject: RE: TOURISTS
From: John Wood
Date: 10 Sep 99 - 05:46 PM

In Cornwall tourists are called``Emmits´´because,after lying on the beach for at least 8 hours on their first day of arrival,they resemble these little red spiders that you see scurrying about all over the place.

Greetings John(Ex-Cornwall Pat.)