I like tourists. With their maps and uncynical clothing, they are a collective I sincerely admire. Anthony Bourdain exhorts us in his travel network show tag phrase to be a "traveler" instead of a "tourist". And we all are meant to slap disdainy fives with the lanky snark archbishop about ugly Americans on tourbuses. But I say, fuck that line and fuck Tony Bourdain. Fuck the Mainers who scoff at New Yorkers and fuck New Yorkers who loathe their unsophisticated country cousins.
A tourist arrives with an earnest perspective; she loves her surroundings because they are different and fleeting, experienced for a few hours, days, weeks at most. She attempts to absorb her surroundings, compare what us unknown to sights, sounds and behaviors from the life she knows so well. A tourist doesn't try to be authentic, which I think is ultimately much more admirable. A tourist is an outsider and knows it. A tourist just wants to have fun, go home with a few souvenirs and pictures to prove that she was there.
And that's all I really want from life anyway. I'm a tourist here myself.
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