New Yorkers have been plagued with many stereotypes: jaded, unfriendly, aggressive, overcaffeinated, the list goes on. Now we can add tourist-hater to the list.
One fed up resident of Manhattan’s trendy Chelsea neighborhood recently plastered fliers to light poles, condemning out-of-towners who visit Chelsea and disturb locals with their rude and inconsiderate behavior.
The posters read:
“Attention High Line Tourists. West Chelsea is not Times Square. It is not a tourist attraction.”
The fliers goes on to rant about how tourists crowd the sidewalks, take pictures of residential buildings and infiltrate Chelsea’s High Line:
“Please consider how you would feel if 3 million people a year from around the world trampled your street, your neighborhood, and your local park, and act accordingly–in the way that your morals or religion or general human consideration would dictate.
If you see an empty space, leave it empty. Otherwise there will be no spaces for New Yorkers… And if you love New York, leave it alone.”
The anonymous poster’s sentiments, however have been met with outrage by many other New Yorkers. On the blog Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, where the posters were originally reported on, many commenters disagreed with the Chelsea resident’s anti-tourist outlook.
“Anti-tourism may seem ‘hip’ but it is elitist and uninformed,” one said.
“Get over it, flyer-writing-person.” another commenter chimed in. “That’s the price you pay when you live in the greatest city on the planet: people are going to want to come here. I know, I know, who would have thought a city of 9 million people would have crowds, must be the tourists’ fault.”
In a follow-up post the writer of Jeremiah’s blog reflects on how New Yorkers feelings towards tourists have become, on the whole, a lot more friendlier. Consider the once-popular t-shirts reading “Welcome to New York. Now Go Home” that have now become pretty much obsolete; in no small part, says the writer behind Jeremiah’s blog (who doesn’t seem to happy about it), to New York City’s more “mainstream” character. We guess you can’t please everybody.