Some like our little village, some don't

I was standing in front of the Information booth in front of The Gap, with my camera in my hand, as I can usually be seen, and these tourists came up to me, four of them, two women and two men.

They were about to ask me something and one of the ladies says, "Oh, forget it, he has a camera!" Talk about profiling, reminds me of the time Johnny Rockets padded my bill because they saw me with a camera and thought I was a tourist. By the way, that Johnny Rockets story made it all around the world. It's been published time and time again in various consumer publications and national news publications. Guess it wasn't such a common thing, that tourist profiling thing that they do.

Anyway, I told the four tourists that I wasn't a tourist, and I could help them, but alas, I was no help. They wanted to know where Bayside was. When I told them it was a few miles away downtown, they got exasperated and said, forget it. I pointed to our waterfront, such as it is and they were not interested. She asked, "Is this all there is here?" and she swept her hand around the area.

I said, "We'll we are a small village, this is all we've got." Her husband seemed to like that, he said, "Thank God for that."

So I guess it's all in how you see it. He was a small village sort of guy, she wanted a shopping mall.