Getting Tough on Tourists

Slow moving clumps of them inching down our streets, young and tanned, old and varicosed, colorful carriage loads dragged by herniating horses, creeping carloads ogling architecture, Charleston t-shirted zombies shuffling toward the irresistible odors of frying fish meat—tourists—can't live with them, can't live without them. They're Charleston's biggest industry. Without them, the city would time warp back to the pre-Joe Riley days, when there were 3 or 4 good restaurants on the entire peninsula, Market Street was lined with sleazy strip joints, and the only visitors were relatives, lust-driven sailors and history nerds.

They have become as intrinsic a part of the culture as the attractions they come to see. You have "Rainbow Row," St. Michaels," "Fort Sumter," and "The Charleston Tourists." Perhaps some enterprising artist should start doing water colors of them.

And so, I have acknowledged the "can't live without them" part of my keynote statement. I have paid honorable homage to the Charleston tourist.

I am now ethically justified in elaborating on the "can't live with them" portion of that affirmation, or more specifically, why I, along with many other residents, sometimes find these people's behavior extremely annoying.

But this will be no distasteful diatribe, for as the duly elected chairperson of cranks (Citizens Resolved to Act Not Kindly to Strangers), I will also offer meaningful suggestions on rectifying this dilemma:

Annoying Tourist Behavior #1: They are continually walking down the middle of busy streets, totally oblivious to the cars swerving and screeching brakes to avoid hitting them. I refer to this as the Disney World Syndrome, where visitors of course, are allowed to meander mindlessly through the streets with vehicular impunity. You even hear complaints from downtown residents about tourists invading the sanctity of their walled gardens—first one, then two, then a rampaging mob: "Tourists of the Living Dead."

Solution: The reintroduction of cowcatchers, those included attachments that were fastened to locomotives in the last century to push cattle off the tracks. Of course, they could be made of "Nerf" material to prevent injury. You could call them "Charleston Tourist Thumpers," and they could be sold by Market Street vendors. They could even make smaller ones for bicycles, and perhaps a size that would fit on residents' shoes.

Annoying Tourist Behavior #2: Groups of overweight tourists walking 3 and 4 abreast down the sidewalk forcing others into the street.

Solution: The city should pass an ordinance that states if at least one of two or more tourists (or anyone else, for that matter) has a girth in excess of 42 inches or has to be loaded onto a carriage with a crane, they will be compelled to walk in tandem.

Annoying Tourist Behavior #3: Excessively hair men (and occasionally women) who enter eating establishments wearing tank tops.

Solution: Authentic Australian sheep-shearers could be stationed at restaurant entrances. Those refusing to change into more concealing attire would be torso-shaved and perhaps even dipped just for good measure. Those who objected to this would become involuntary dinner guests at an especially created tourist attraction, "High Battery's House of Primates," where they may even feel less "evolution-challenged."

Annoying Tourist Behavior #4: Overly-muscled, strutting macho men tourists wearing no shirts.

Solution: If they refused to put on shirts, their names and telephone number will be engraved in the men's room at the Tree House.

Annoying Tourist Behavior #5: Tourist couples who dress alike. This action says to me: "Individually, you may be of the opinion that each of us sucks, but in our spunky matching outfits we shall overwhelm you with our collective cuteness.

Solution: This is a very serious psychological problem, possibly based on each person's desire to become the other or at least the other's better half, which, if carried to its natural conclusion, could result in each partner surprising the other by having a secret sex change operation. All couples will be given copies of Dr. Joyce Brothers' new book, "Successful Couples Don't Dress Alike," in which she gives multitudinous illustrative examples such as: Sonny and Cher, Lunt and Fontanne, Hepburn and Tracy, Smith and Wesson, Sacco and Vincetti, J. Edgar and Clyde, Ozzie and Harriet and Penn and Teller.

Annoying Tourist Behavior #6: Twenty of more tourists blithely riding in a carriage pulled by a single, nearly collapsed old horse.

Solution: When the carriage reaches the furthest point from its origin will be unhitched and placed into a luxury horse trailer. The tourists will be given two choices at that point: They will pull the trailer back to the stable or they can participate in an extemporaneous sculpturing contest by reaching into the horse's diaper and pulling out two handfuls of end product. The first tourist to fashion the most technically correct hose sculpture will get to wash his hands before walking back to the stable.

There are, of course, additional forms of obnoxious behavior displayed by these sight-seers from Satan, but there's no need for overkill (I could write an entire article on the Tourist introduced "Change Belt").

Critics may carp that our own natives commit these interrelational atrocities, and I concede that they do but I contend we learned this over the years from the tourist hordes. I don't recall the people of my or my parents' generation exhibiting any of the aforementioned behaviors in the pre-tourist occupation days.

Of course, all my proposed solutions are after-the-fact reactions. They are emergency measures that do not attempt to preclude the behavior before it occurs. Therefore, I am recommending that instead of erection of the much debated convention center, we build the Trident Tourist Transformation Center. All tourists would be required to be processed there. Although "hooks" like midnight tennis, golf and bowling leagues might make it more tourist-friendly, the centers' main fare would be a required 3-hour "Seminar on Civilized Behavior" taught by Ashley Cooper.

I urge you, the reader-residents, to join my cause. Tourist coddling is the futile gesture of cowering citizenry. IT's time to get tough and take back our streets!