The Tourist Trap
I am a local. I grew up at the Jersey Shore and spent most of my childhood on the beach. The only way I could be more local would be if I had literally been born on the surf. If you ever watched the original “Jaws” movie, there is a scene where Ellen Brody asks Mrs. Taft, “Will I ever become an islander?” and is told, “Ellen, never, never! You’re not born here; you’re not an islander, that’s it.”
As an Islander, or a Local as we call it here, I perfectly understand what is going on in Barcelona, Spain. There, the locals are attacking tourists with water pistols while they try to eat, sightsee, and shop. Anti-tourism sentiment is rising in places like the Canary Islands, the Maldives, and even Majorca. And I do not blame them in the least.
When an area becomes dependent, hooked, or addicted to tourist money, it is not a good thing. It may seem innocent at first — “free” money from people who want to share your town for a few days seems like a trivial price to pay for a tiny bit of annoyance. As locals quickly find out, though, it only gets worse from there.
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An economy built on tourism is an unequal one. The visitors hold all the power and the money. This turns the people who live there into second-class citizens, servants to the monied class that comes to visit. It drives up the cost of housing, food, goods, and all services while offering little in return. Much like the shark in “Jaws,” tourism just keeps coming back to take more and more, one bloody bite at a time.
The town I grew up in, Ocean City, NJ, used to be a sleepy little shore town. After Labor Day, all the traffic lights would be turned off and set to blink, the boardwalk shops would shutter their windows, and the 16,000 people who actually lived there would look forward to eight months of peace and calm. This eight-by-one-mile sandbar that separated New Jersey from the ravages of the sea was a nice place to be from.
It’s not anymore.
Tourism is a 24/7 thing at the Jersey Shore now. The casinos in Atlantic City, a better economy, and even the show “Jersey Shore” have ruined it for the locals. Ocean City now only has 11,000 residents, all sandwiched between the ever-growing McMansions. The small homes that once made the town quaint are gone, swallowed up by greed.
If you still call the Jersey Shore home, you most likely have a job serving our new masters, the monied class that can afford to build the multimillion-dollar homes, or better yet, spend ten thousand a week to rent them.
This is the future for Barcelona, the Canary Islands, the Maldives, and the rest. Becoming a rest spot for the lords and ladies in a neofeudalist society. The locals are right to be angry, but it’s already too late. They have been sold out by their ‘city fathers’ one bite at a time.
