[log in to unmask] writes:
> I've lived in tourist-attractive towns
>  most of my life, the contempt just creeps in--when I travel I try to
>  resemble a tourist as little as possible, not always with success.

I like tourists, generally.

When I see them on the street, sort of scratching heads, looking up, looking
slightly disoriented, I envy them - to see New York for the first time!  To
not have any baggage!  To read things freshly - maybe they like that damned
Jewish Museum addition!  They don't know that there are white brick apartment
houses on Third Avenue because there was an Elevated train there until 1956.
They don't know that Central Park used to look like a parking lot.  That
MetLife was PanAM, that GE was RCA, that The New Yorker was just "the New
Yorker", that Soho was full of paper box factories.

They have all sorts of interesting observations, like (looking a street with
mid-block 1890's rowhouses and 1920's steel-framed apartment houses on the
corners) "Gee, it's neat here, they way they built those tall buildings on
the corners and, after that, filled in the middle spaces with the little
ones."

Very cool, I think.  Sort of "Natural Traveler" (nod to Ken).  Somebody copy
this to
P-L and get flamed.

Sign me:
When I Moved to New York at Age 9 and Saw the Advertisements "Eat Levy's Real
Jewish Rye Bread" I Didn't Know What Rye Bread Was - or What Jewish Was.