Last week the temperatures along the I-5 corridor (stretching north and south through Seattle and Portland) reached over 100 degrees for several days in a row. Morning, noon and night the weather guys (and gals) on the big-city news broadcasts suggested “escaping the heat” by getting away to the coast.
Although “the coast” is only 75 to 100 miles from the corridor, the temperature difference can be as great as 30 degrees or more. It’s that big ocean out there that influences our climate. We never get too hot or too cold, which is one of the primary reasons I choose to live here.
It’s also one of the reasons we at the coast experienced such an influx of traffic last week. Apparently there are some folks who actually heed the advice given on the broadcast news. At the very least, our population quadrupled in just few hours. Cars, cars, everywhere. And with them came a plethora of visitors to our area. The more polite locals call them tourists.
Whatever you call them, they arrived in droves and hordes. Which caused immediate discord among the locals, whose primary occupation until last week was to sit in the coffee shops and cuss the lack of summer tourists. Now they sat in the coffee shops and cussed the tourist traffic, which is a whole ‘nother ballgame.
But tourists spend money. So the motel owners were happy, the restaurant owners were happy, the gas station owners were happy, and the gift shop owners were happy. Particularly the gift shop owners (and I use the term “gift shop” lightly).
I’m not talking high-end merchandise here. I’m talking your average run-of-the-mill souvenir “happy crap.” That’s the Made-in-China bulk market trinket stuff. The stuff tourists buy simply because it sports the name of the town they visited, or just because they can put it on a shelf at home as a reminder of “that time we went to the beach.”
Driving through the downtown “core” last week, which was certainly a rookie mistake, given the masses I knew would be huddled there, I couldn’t help but notice, as they stepped off the curb and in front of my car in alarming numbers, how many of them, particularly those with children, carried bags and bags of souvenir happy crap.
I smiled as I waited for group after group to cross the street. It’s obvious the local economic recovery has begun, and we owe it all to an inland heat wave and an abundance of happy crap stores. Who would have thunk it?