I was staring at Google Maps, trying to figure out which way we should walk from the Parc Monceau in Paris. It’s not a particularly touristy part of the city, it was early in the summer, and we were on a wide triangle of sidewalk, so no one was around. Or so I thought. I didn’t clock the guy walking toward us. Partly because I was looking at my phone so I wouldn’t have noticed a picket line of mimes demanding a younger retirement age. But my lovely wife Cassandra and my 15-year-old son didn’t notice this man either. I’m sensitive to danger because I’ve lived in cities since I was 21 and have been afraid of confrontation since I was one. But this was a normal, non-crazy, well-dressed guy holding a plastic water bottle. I felt soaked. I kept my mouth closed in case it was acid, or urine, or some kind of acidic, urinous wine that French hipsters are into. From a half block away, Normal Looking Guy yelled something that wasn’t about libraries, discotheques, or anything else I absorbed in high-school French class. I had no idea why he chucked his water at me. Now I think I might.
When I first saw the Mona Lisa at 17, I had the same thought as everyone else: It sucks. I mean, if it was in my friend Mike Gorker’s living room, I’d definitely walk over and check it out, but I was pretty entranced by the Franklin Mint coins his parents put on the piano in his Forbidden Room. Surrounded by all the great art at the Louvre, the Mona Lisa was small and boring. Even for a DaVinci, it’s no Last Supper. Maybe I’m a Nancy Kerrigan kind of guy, but that smile didn’t seem all that great. I might even prefer DaVinci’s John the Baptist as a cheeky proctologist:
I viewed the Mona Lisa the same way everyone had since it became famous for being stolen in 1911: Wait in line, stare, shrug in disappointment, go home, and tell everyone how small it is. It was like going to one of Tom Cruise’s weddings. That is not what like seeing the Mona Lisa is like now. Seeing the Mona Lisa is like going to a Beyoncé concert. People crush into a room and hold their phone cameras above their head to document their proximity to it. The Mona Lisa isn’t a painting. It’s a celebrity. And, not to harp on this, not even a great-looking one. It’s tempting to blame social media for this, but people have been bucket listing vacations since at least Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad. The problem is that the world has gotten rich. In 2000, there were 14.7 millionaires in the world; last year there were 58 million; Credit Suisse predicts there will be 87 million in 2026. The first two things that people do when they become millionaires are travel and find new friends. Our cities are radically changing to cater to these visitors. You can’t walk through a major city without navigating past a tour guide with a flag explaining precisely which way each building is haunted. You can’t jog across the Brooklyn Bridge or walk through Times Square. At sunset each night, cops spend hours directing traffic away from the park we live next to in L.A. because tourists want to see the Observatory and the Hollywood Sign. I was in Bologna last year and since then many shops have closed and been replaced by chains selling one of their specialties, mortadella, despite the fact that it’s so disgusting in America it’s made by Oscar Meyers and used as a synonym for bullshit. What’s happened to Venice is happening to every great city in the world. They’re getting EPCOTed. They’re becoming a cliched version of themselves. Instead of a dynamic city, where ambitious people move to create new businesses and art, large parts of metropolitan areas are becoming resorts. There are more beds for tourists than residents in Venice. This year, Venice started charging day visitors a five euro fee, like an amusement park. Locals are getting pissed off in a way that not even the Next Door app could handle. The town of Fujikawaguchiko put up an enormous black mesh net to block views of Mount Fuji. Nearly 10,000 people in Mallorca, marched against tourism, despite the fact that the only other way to make money in Mallorca is to sell almonds to people so desperate to impress their friends that they need to say, “Those are Mallorca almonds.” Anti-tourism demonstrations in Barcelona (which had 2 million tourists in 1990 and has 13 million now) included squirting water guns at tourists and posters suggesting that “balconing is fun,” referring to two different young, partying British tourists who fell off balconies to their deaths.
I’m pretty sure the French guy pegged me as a tourist, did the lazy equivalent of shooting me with a water gun, and hoped to ruin my trip. And he succeeded for a few hours. But the next day my son and I walked up the Eiffel Tower in the rain like idiot tourists, soaked and happy before standing on an unnecessary line with Americans for a hot chocolate at Angelina. Where we planned on which city to ruin next summer. Thank you for paying to read my column. Wait: This is for the people who didn’t pay? Then I owe you nothing. You are the ones contributing to the end of my career. If you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get one extra post a month – which often won’t even be that good – upgrade to a paid subscription here:
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Thursday, August 22, 2024
Tourists Are Ruining Our Great Cities
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