TOURISTS! Pushy, rude, self-centered, inconsiderate tourists, who come to this city expecting everyone to bend over backwards for them and then get mad when we don’t snap to it. Let me tell you, it’s a lot to put up with. The sense of entitlement that folks carry with them on vacation is astonishing, as though the entire city (and all of us in it) are here solely to entertain them. I swear I’ve had complete strangers approach me on the street and complain that they can’t, for example, find a hotel with decent rates or get tickets to Alcatraz. As though this is somehow my responsibility.

Is the author of this blog one of those rude, obnoxious out-of-towners that I hate so much? I have no idea. Perhaps she’s a perfectly polite victim of circumstance who got a raw deal, and if so I am genuinely and dreadfully sorry. I don’t pretend this city is perfect and God knows I have my share of gripes about it. But I will tell you that when faced with the sort of discourteous behavior that people routinely evince when visiting the Bay, even the saintliest of us can start feeling downright nasty in return. Maybe your barista is genuinely an asshole, or maybe he’s just crabby because that couple from Long Island bit his head off because he didn’t know how to get to the Golden Gate Bridge from Bernal Heights.

The height (or nadir) of this phenomena has of course got to be those busloads of lookie-loos who drive through the Castro snapping photos of the locals like they’re animals on a safari. I’m amazed we went all summer without one of those twits getting punched in the face. I can’t imagine what people do with those photos, go home and show them off saying “Look, real homosexuals, just like it talked about in the Encyclopedia!” Do you know have gay people back home? Must you treat ours like a freak show?

Btw, you know what ruined Fisherman’s Wharf? Tourism! Sort of a Catch-22 thing I guess.