So. Much. Fucking. Litter.
This 1000 times… This. People are so careless it’s disgusting.
Only had one day at the Grand Canyon so I was by the congested main tourist area. Looking over the canyon, I turn around and there is a picnic table and nothing but McDonald’s trash left there. I don’t even know where the closest McDonald’s is, but they got it, drove in with it, carried it to a stone table overlooking the canyon, then just left the trash and walked away. WTF.
It’s not always tourists but stopping in unexpected places is a common irritation in NYC. Like, they’re walking on the sidewalk and just stop, and mess up the flow of foot traffic. Maybe to look at their map or to gawk at something. It’s extra annoying and a little dangerous when it’s on the stairs
I visited New York for the first time with a friend of mine who has family there and knows the city well. We went to Grand Central and I was admiring the beautiful artwork on the ceiling and a guy passing by called me a “fucking idiot”.
I was surprised and turned to my friend to ask if he was talking to me, which they confirmed. I was actually really happy, I got the infamous NY harsh street talk! I’ve traveled all over the world and never was spoken to like that anywhere else. NY is truly very special.
This has gotten so bad in my city since covid times. I’m constantly having to go around people stopped in the middle of the walking path. Just yesterday I was walking and these two people exactly stopped where the sidewalk narrowed for a bus stop and were blocking 3/4 of the area to walk because of it. They literally could have stepped 2 steps over and been completely out of the way beside the bus stop shelter.
That was my mother, in train stations etc where literally everyone is trying to get to somewhere else. Get to the bottom of the stairs, STOP and look around for the next direction sign. STOP in the entrance to bathrooms to decide her next steps.
i learned to stay away from midtown or battery-park/statue-of-liberty or any other tourist traps between friday afternoon and monday morning as a result of this.
I never went to a crowded city, so the notion of “foot traffic” really sounds dystopic to me 😅, but I see what you mean.
Funny, because when I go to the suburbs or other sparsely populated areas, walking around without anybody else feels dystopian. Feels like a post-apocalyptic setting, where everyone else got taken by aliens or plague or something.
I like how having opposite vision of the world may comes from things like this. Not linked to any religious or education background, but only on where we use to live.
For reference, Brooklyn alone has over 2 million residents. NYC as a whole is 8 and change million. So yeah, we’ve got huge population density, and it shows in busy areas.
So much this here in Bangkok as well, and in addition nobody has any clue which side to walk on.
You are constantly approaching head-on with a pedestrian who doesn’t know where to walk and weaving around wandering groups that wall 3-4 people wide.
Found the grumpy old lady ;)
Visitors who believe that because they paid a cruise company to bring them here that they are somehow special and deserve to be treated as such by all the locals.
I live in Vancouver and we’ve had massive issues with people (both tourists and locals) feeding coyotes in our downtown park. It got bad enough that they had to euthanize a bunch of coyotes because they were habituated to humans and have even attacked some people. They’re not puppers, they’re wild animals that play an important role in the ecosystem. You do them literally no favours by feeding them. Also, even worse, feeding bears.
I used to live across the street from a relatively popular tourist attraction and would occasionally get tourists standing in front of my windows and commenting on things in my apartment. Once my girlfriend and I were eating breakfast in front of an open window and someone tried talking to us about how expensive something was in our apartment. Besides that the only regular rudeness was groups acting like they own the sidewalk. Usually its large families but I do remember one time what looked like a Russian oligarch trophy wife surrounded by an entourage of stereotypical body guards that had people swearing at them because they were not letting anyone else use the sidewalk as they headed for the tourist attraction.
I live in Rome so you’d think I’d see more asshole tourists but surprisingly I’ve never seen anyone being outright awful! Maybe all the crazies just go to Venice lol. The ones that irk me the most though, as someone who takes public transit, is people with 0 train/bus manners, stop trying to get on while other people are getting off!! Step the fuck out of the way oh my god some of us are trying to get to work!!
Walking into tulip fields and (accidentally) trampling them, even when there are signs, ropes and people telling you to stay out
On Vancouver Island they will shit literally anywhere. After summer ends, go camping literally anywhere and there is human shit
I have even seen it cooking on pavement outside of an outhouse at a roadside pullout
Until I got to the specific shit I thought this was going to end with a punchline about Canada geese.
Tourist catcalling local women on Rio.
I watched a tourist drink a few beer at the local inn and then just throw the cans onto the lawn and keep drinking. So basically littering. That stuck in my craw. This is my town buddy, take the 5 seconds it takes to dispose of your shitty cans of your shitty mass produced beer that you usually have back home that you made sure to let everyone is far better than the local microbrew we have here in town.
Also one time we had some tourists loudly complaining about immigrants while visiting. Those aren’t immigrants you dope, they’re citizens of our country. They were born here.
On one occasion I was driving somewhere and it was along a scenic drive and I had to stop for something. A group of aging old men on motorcycles who were doing the scenic drive told me I couldn’t park in that area because it was theirs. I said get fucked, you’re in my backyard, I’ll park wherever the fuck I want. I think they thought they were intimidating because they fancied themselves a biker gang, but biker gangs usually don’t have New Balance and rental bikes as part of their aesthetic.
It might be just a story, but I’ve read several times about someone telling someone speaking Welsh in Wales “we speak English here”.
Where I’m from, the tourists are usually nicer and more respectful than the locals.
Whoa unexpected
I think it depends on the type of tourist attraction. In places like beach towns, “locals” are usually people who happened to have enough money to buy a vacation house, and decided to make it permanent. Or think of ski towns where the cost of living is so expensive that everyone who actually works there commutes in from another hour away or lives in their car or a jam packed seasonal rental. Basically anywhere that tourism is the only industry, a lot of decent people will be priced out.
Taking up sidewalks and roadways and just generally being fucking oblivious people are around them. Parking in front of people’s driveways??? Littering, feeding seagulls, being oblivious fucking dipshits. Shore community here.
I’ve lived in a very touristic city for basically my whole life, so I tend to avoid tourists whenever possible.
Stuff that I see frequently that annoys the shit out of me:
- littering
- pictures, videos, tiktoks and similar shit EVERYWHERE
- tourists getting way too drunk and causing trouble in various settings
- driving like morons (please google traffic laws before traveling somewhere)
- large groups walking slowly side by side, blocking entire sidewalks
- complaining about everything, especially stuff caused by tourism, like long lines or long waiting times
- acting entitled towards people trying to do their jobs
Sticking their cameras (phones) where they don’t belong. Pointing fingers or openly gawking at you: look at the locals, they’re so picturesqe (Me thinking: hey, I wasn’t even born in this country)!
I would have to think things like shitting in public. There’s signs like this in locations around the world.
