The Tourists (Heart) NY

So last night, I was meeting up with a few friends near Rockefeller Center, and I arrived a few minutes early. Whenever I have time to kill, I take part in the national pasttime of people- watching. It always fascinates me, especially in Manhattan. Inevitably, every time I people- watch, I am inspired in some way to write about one of the many situations that I see or observations that I make. Last night was no exception.

I stood in the area right above where the ice skating rink is in the winter time; in the summer, it is transformed into several outdoor cafes and a bar. I proceeded to watch many tourists pass by and I found it very funny how enamored they were by the Rockefeller Center mezzanine area, with that large gold statue and all of the country flags. Personally, I don't find it to be that exciting, but there were plenty of pictures taken with the statue and flags serving as a background. The best was the parents who would force the kids, displaying their I (Heart) NY t-shirts and hats, to take multiple pictures. Believe me, the kids didn't seem thrilled either. The backdrop isn't quite as glamorous as the Statue of Liberty, Grand Canyon, or even Wrigley Field. Those are worthy photo ops. I'm not quite convinced that a gold statue and some flags fall into the same category.

Another source of confusion for me are the tourists who carry around a camcorder while they traverse the urban jungle. They walk with the camcorder in hand -- at times looking through the eye hole, and at other times just filming whatever the hand guides them to film. My question is this: you go on vacation somewhere for, let's say, 5 days. Even if you only shoot 2 hours of tape each day (which in itself is a low-end conservative estimate), then you have 10 hours of footage of sightseeing. Is a person really going to sit down at a later time and view these tapes? Frankly, you're better off using the digital camera, because you can easily flip through 100 pictures in a couple minutes. I know I'd rather view the highlights of a friend's vacation in 2 minutes rather than re-live all the action over 8 hours of amateur video footage. Gotta love it.

As mentioned a moment ago, I'd like to talk about the "I (Heart) NY" paraphenalia. They sell hats, t-shirts, sweatshirts, pins, posters, you name it... with I (Heart) NY on it. And why shouldn't they? This campaign, which began in 1977, has to be one of the most visible and recognized tourism slogans in the world, and the street vendors of NYC love it. They love it because tourists come to visit and they want to buy the merchandise. People travel all over the world and obtain souvenirs of their destination for themselves and friends/family back at home. The part that gets me is when the tourists wear the I (Heart) NY paraphenalia while they are walking around in New York City. I saw a family yesterday and they were all decked out in a variety of shirts and hats, all with the slogan on them. This is a little much, don't you think? The only understandable excuse is if they ended up in the city a day longer than expected and ran out of clean clothes. So maybe they purchased some cheap t-shirts to get them through the last day of the trip before they left. Otherwise, it's purely cheesy and unnecessary. Keep your souvenirs until you get home, and then wear them later on to show the folks in Anytown, USA that you were in the Big Apple this past summer.

That's all I have for now. Back later