I’ve traveled to many of the worlds most famous places. And each and every time I’m disappointed. The Great Pyramids of Giza were notable mostly for how hard I had to work to not ride a camel. (That, and holy crap! It’s the Pyramids!) Ephesus, in Turkey, had the exact same demographics as a $2.99 Las Vegas seafood buffet. I finally gave up on taking a picture that didn’t have several thousand balding heads in it.
This is the kind of picture you have to take if you don’t want people in it.
(Just kidding. I took this lousy picture.)
People. Everywhere, people.
When I visited Giants’ Causeway in Northern Ireland, the buses disgorged massive amounts of fantastically out of shape over consumers, all wheezing, with fanny packs hidden under massive bellies like baby otters.
The Eiffel tower was a clusterfuck. Tulum in Mexico was like purposely attending a food riot. And, closer to home, there’s Fisherman’s Wharf, which is so far removed, culturally, from San Francisco that it should just secede itself and change its name to Crap Town. Hollywood Boulevard. Times Square. The Taj Mahal. Istanbul’s covered bazaar. Pickadilly Circus. Venice Beach. It’s a long list.
In the foreground, my brother. In the background, the tourist hordes.
And it’s wrong. In each and every one of these countries, there are hundreds and thousands of things to do that are culturally enriching, immersive, and don’t treat the environment like one giant Chinese made Tchotchke. As a way of seeing a country, mass tourism is right up there with an invasion of locusts. Sure, they leave with bottles of ill-advised “aphrodisiacs” and several batches of “5 for $10!” t-shirts, but in their wake they leave plastic water bottles and massive amounts of garbage. Like a hungry elephant, mass tourism accidentally kills what it wants.
Luckily, I think mass tourism is dying. I think the new generation is as interested in following a clueless guy with a bullhorn around a famous ruin as they are in moving to the suburbs and bankrupting themselves.
I could be wrong though. For all I know people love to be herded around like cattle and stampede everything in their path.
