Have you ever been to Whitefish, Montana?
I am sure if you are reading this you have been.
You know that time of year when all of the sudden you look around and BAJAM! you don’t know a single person in line with you at the grocery store, and you hang your head and say….”damn. the tourists are back.”
Yes, it happens everywhere, but it was always so sudden back home. One day you were the only person on the beach, and suddenly BAJAM! 5000 people were squishing you every which way and you had to find the most remote lake (Wood’s) to hide from them.
I always swore I would never live in another tourist town. I have come to realize that every town in America is a tourist town…or at least everyone I choose to live in.
NYC? Tourists all the time. The city that never de-tourists. But you never had to interact with them! It was genius! You just shoved past their lost looking faces in the middle of Grand Central and left someone else to deal with them. It was kind of heavenly.
Portland, Maine? Quaint small city. On the ocean. Lots of restaurants. Lots of artists. Lighthouses. Islands. Tourist Mecca.
Since I no longer work in the public eye, I don’t notice the slow creep of people descending on our town. Every two weeks I work at the parking lot, just like I have for the last 8 years, and every week I am swarmed by tourists asking the best place to eat, the greatest things to see, and the cheapest place to sleep. When I worked in retail I could handle it. Just an extra long shift at the store. These days I literally go days without talking to someone who knows my entire life story. I work alone, I go home to the boyband, I repeat the next day. So the tourists are a bit overwhelming when I am in hermit mode.
We are all tourists. At some point. But I would like to think of myself as a good tourist. And here are some secrets people.
1. Don’t ask–”Where should I go for dinner.” Portland, Maine has more restaurants per capita than San Francisco. That is a lot. Please phrase the question–”I am hungry for Mexican. What is your favorite Mexican restaurant?” (Although here it always Seafood. Lobster used to be fed to prisoners people, AS TORTURE, and it really is not that much cheaper here….so don’t even complain that the freaking lobster dinner that I recommended to you cost you $20.00. boo.)
2. Don’t ask….”Where do the locals eat?” because I am going to say…”At our houses.” And then I will probably charge you double for parking. We are not going to tell you where our favorite restaurants are….that is where we hide from you. We are much more likely to tell you to go to the giant tourist trap floating craphole of a restaurant when you ask this question.
3. Do not ask me for directions and then question those directions. When I say, “go to the stop light and turn left” …do not say, “Wouldn’t it be quicker to go left and then drive down Spring Street?” If you know how to get there…..DO NOT ASK ME! I don’t care where you are going. True story….The parking lot is right on the water. There is a ferry, called the Cat, that takes touristas to Canada. It is a ferry. Ferries leave from the water. Tonight I gave directions to the ferry to a flaky guy, and when I finished he said, “Don’t you mean, turn right when you get to the diner?” To which I replied, “The water is to your left, I think if you go to the right you are going to have a really hard time catching a ferry.” He looked at me all suspicious and drove off. BLEAH! I hate giving directions to tourists. And GPS just makes it worse. Because now, they don’t just want directions, they want to know how to spell things….
Tourist: So how to you spell Portland?
ME: P-o-r-t-l-a-n-d. Port. plus. Land.
Tourist: One more time, how is that? Oh and can you give me the names and spellings of all the lighthouses on the Maine Coast while you try to do your job at the same time? I am not in a hurry, I am on VACATION!
4. Do not ask me how much hotels are, how much other parking lots charge, how much ferries are, what the ferry schedule is, what the best things to see in the summer in Portland are, or what my favorite tourist activity is. I DON’T GET TO DO THESE THINGS! You get to. Go do them! Read a book about my town. I only get to enjoy it in the dead of winter.
grr.
There are lots and lots of summer camps in Maine. And this is the weekend when all the guilty New York and Conneticunt parents come up to visit their spoiled rotten children and spoil them some more. It used to be the busiest weekend of the summer at the toy store. Now it is just idiot fest at the parking lot.
grr.
Believe it or not, I had much more of a rant brewing in my head, but jezum crow….it is 1:30 in the morning….and I just want to crawl into bed. So I am going to do that. Neener neener.
