Big city disdain for tourists

This week's inductee into the "Overrated Hall of Fame" is ... your big city disdain for tourists.

I have lived just outside of Washington, D.C. for over 20 years, which means I have spent a considerable amount of time in this remarkable city. For half of the year, it is overrun with tourists. For the other half of the year, well, it's still teeming with tourists, including: fannie-pack wearing rubes from the midwest; turban-wearing Muslims from all those countries where Muslims come from, most of which end in "-stan" (this does not include the 98 percent of cab drivers who fit this same description); Italians with too tight clothes and too un-deodorized armpits; Africans with rich, ebony skin darker than Karl Rove's soul; stuffy Brits whose pasty skin burns to Union Jack red by the time they've made their initial mid-July walk to the Washington Monument to pay tribute to the slave-owning, wig wearing femboy who kicked their allegedly superior asses with a band of musket-toting New World backwoodsmen; Turks; sari-wearing women with those funny dots on their foreheads and Japanese, who really do come armed with two cameras apiece and who really do take pictures with the fervor of that Mr. Wang character from Caddyshack.

You might think I loathe these tourists, but quite the contrary. I love them because of whom they piss off - the pretentious, new-to-the-big-city 20-somethings whose sense of over-importance is exceeded only by their over-inflated sense of urban chic.

I love to hear these asswipes whine about the tourists. Yes, I'm talking to you, Miss Kansas State Fair Queen Sixth Runner Up, and you, Mr. Most Likely to Succeed at one of Boise's many impressive public high schools, and to all of your snooty brethren and sisteren.

How dare these wide-eyed tourists jam up your precious National Mall running lanes! Don't they know that those spacious walkways weren't built for tourists, but were instead laid out specifically for the aerobic pursuits of 24-year-old grade-grubbing overachievers who come to the capital to sell their insipid souls for a chance to suck on the cock of power?

And how dare they clog up the Metro that was constructed especially for you, forcing you to - oh the indignity! - stand for the entire 12-minute ride to your overpaid job as the second assistant to the administrative assistant to the head of the U.S. Deodorant Lobby, when you could have used that time to whip out your laptop and bang out that vital memo about this Wednesday's intern softball game, a task that would have gotten done a hell of a lot sooner if it weren't for all those goddamn tourists who had the unmitigated gall to catch a ride on your own personal public transit system.

In fact, you're still steaming from having to wait behind a father of three who took an extra 90 seconds to figure out how to buy Metro fare cards, something a smartie-pants like you can now do in a matter of seconds. (You conveniently forget that you, too, had to learn this process when you first got here.)

And have you ever tried to cross a city street during the height of the Cherry Blossom Festival? Why, these tourists all mosey along as if they were out enjoying ... ohhhh ... a cherry blossom festival or something. It's a wonder you ever manage to make it to the Starbuck's for that $7 cup of Mocha Almond Mint Pretentiousness you simply have to have in order to get through another long afternoon of world-affecting paper pushing and flowchart creating.

And nothing impinges upon your hellbent morning rush to your low-level job at a low-level thinktank like that lollygagging family from Duluth who insists on walking four abreast down Independence Avenue. You sneer as you skirt by this father and mother, smug in your cultural superiority because you happen to live in a city visited by people on vacation instead of a city visited only by eight feet of snow every winter. The father might be one of Duluth's most prominent lawyers, and the mother might be the lead accountant at his law firm, but you, who will spend your day unclogging copier jams, shoot them a look of arrogant contempt because they happened to walk a little too slowly for your big city britches.

These urban hipsters embarrass themselves with such behavior, and their contrived weariness is unbecoming to say the least.

These nouveau-hip city-dwellers think they're being urbane, but every eye roll and head toss and irritated "tsk" show just how insecure and unhip these phonies really are. They come from every corner of this country to work here, and I'm sure it makes them feel cool. And it is cool to live and work in Washington, D.C. But you, the new arrival from Memphis, do not make it cool. The tourists, from all over the country and the world, make it cool.

It's the same with any big city. No matter what job you have or how many Fortune 500 companies are based there, take away the tourists and you have a bigger version of Little Rock. Or Charlotte. Or countless other cities that are nice places to live and work, I'm sure, but not exactly blowing the lid off of the coolness curve.

I get to Chicago and Philadelphia almost every year. I go as a tourist. Just to piss of the faux-haute phonies I'm talking about, I'll sometimes stop right in the middle of a busy sidewalk and look up at the skyscrapers. (Okay, I admit. I don't do this just to irk people. I really do enjoy looking up at the buildings. Because I am a tourist. It's what we do.) I hope the local busy beavers "tsk" me and roll their eyes at me as they skirt around my unmoving blob of wide-eyed wonder.

Keep in mind that these are very intelligent people who get so irritated by tourists. Perhaps the most ridiculous example of anti-tourist angst I ever heard was uttered by a brainy guy who worked as a CPA in the corporate offices of a huge D.C. area company. While the main office is located in a ritzy suburb north of the city, he spent many work days in downtown D.C. doing whatever it is that businessmen do. (Making deals? Doing lunch? Ruining people for sport? I have no idea.) One summer night I heard him mention "those damn tourists who overrun the city every summer." What company did he work for? Marriott. You know, the company with countless hotels in the city, hotels patronized by "those goddamn tourists" who get in the way of a very important CPA who just has to get places in a hurry so that he can figure out more effective ways to bring in more tourists to piss him off every summer.

That's just stupid. I have a friend who works in the FedEx offices. I've never once heard him bemoan "all these goddamn packages people keep sending." That would be like my teacher friends doing something as stupid as referring to "all these goddamn kids we have to teach." Okay, I have heard that. Many times. But teachers, for the most part, are incessant whiners.

So ease up on the out-of-towners who give your big city so much of its flavor and energy. I'm sure you have an important job to get to, but I'm also sure that it's probably not as important as you think. Unless you really do work for the deodorant lobby. In which case, for god's sake, before next summer's tourist season, start marketing some of that shit in Italy.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.