With the summer tourist season winding down (even as the weather warms up), we thought we’d attempt to offer some perspectives on one of San Francisco’s most important industries.
DAN: I love living in a tourist destination. Or, to be more precise, I get a little thrill every time I see a bunch of Europeans wandering around, or a tour bus of Asians emptying out ––it makes me feel like the things I see and do every day have some impact on the lives of people in places I would like to visit–– perhaps it’s a spurious connection, but it’s a connection nonetheless.
TROY: You know, I noticed this summer that there seemed to be more foreign (and straight) tourists in the Castro– and they weren’t lost. They were there, apparently, on purpose. (But they were probably thinking “this is it?”).
DAN: I saw a visitor on the bus a few weeks ago, by himself, studying his guidebook, entitled “Californie.” He was leaving the Museum of the Legion of Honor (very French, itself ––I wonder what he thought of that) and he kept turning to the page labeled “Les Gays.” I suppose he was heading to the Castro, as many European tourists do (but Americans do not ––I wonder why).
TROY: It is funny how the Castro is a destination for foreign tourists, but not Americans. Anyway, soon after I noticed this phenomenon, it came out in the paper that foreign tour buses were making the Castro a stop on their city tours. Reaction in the neighborhood was mixed. From Curbed a few months ago:
Says one Castro resident (an attorney, obviously): “The tourists appear to have little regard for the neighborhood and its residents and view the stop as akin to visiting a zoo or other attraction where they are entertained by exhibits or animals … Many of them seem uncomfortable or shocked by their surroundings … You’ve got these throngs of people walking up and down Market and 18th, holding hands to make it clear that they are heterosexual”.
I don’t know. I think a lot of queens in the neighborhood *enjoy* being on display, to be totally honest. Though I do have to laugh at the straight men holding their girlfriends’ hands in a vice grip to make *sure* I won’t hit on them. Anyway, these tour buses?– the city has gone and taken care of it:
Simple solution: make parking illegal in the first place. Following last evening’s MTA meeting, the restricted zone that such buses tend to park in shall be marked as such with the same red curbs that strike fear into the hearts of desperate drivers city-wide. Brillz, if we do say— gay or straight, no local wants to waste their time with repressed out-of-towners looking to fulfill their latent desires at the San Francisco “freak show.” Tourists, you’ve been red-lined.
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DAN: I wish we had more posts on our blog that used the word ‘brillz.’
TROY: Of course, in our neighborhood, the Western Addition, far from the Fisherman’s Wharf/Chinatown nexus of tourism, we don’t have to worry about being on display. We see a few tourists– rarely enough that it’s still fun to help them out when help is requested. Things may be picking up here as well though– I was stopped twice in one walk home from coffee the other day. First, I gave directions to Fulton St. (probably to Alamo Square) and then *immediately* afterward, I was stopped by a nice young couple asking me where they could find a “real” breakfast in the neighborhood. I might have directed them to Mojo (where I was returning from), but it has been sliding a bit lately– and this morning they had pissed me off by continually skipping *past* Stars tracks when they came up on their iPod rotation. So I suggested they catch a #5 bus to Velo Rouge Cafe instead. I hope they enjoyed some good omelets named after French bicyclists.
DAN: I think Eddie Merckx was Belgian. Oddly enough, I was asked the way to Fisherman’s Wharf this week, by a lady at the gas station. She admitted that she and her friends were kind of lost, so I suggested they try Green Chile Kitchen for lunch.
TROY: Tourists do the craziest things. The other night, waiting for my commute bus home from Vallejo, another nice young couple asked me where to catch the bus to BART. I suggested that they could also catch the ferry for a scenic and direct ride into SF, but they politely informed me that they had taken the ferry *to* Vallejo and really wanted to experience the train on the way back.
DAN: You should have suggested the Market Street Railway. It’s the largest rolling museum in the world!
TROY: We hope you had a lovely tourist season in San Francisco. Come see us again real soon.
Sunlight in a Jar 
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