Falstaff and Me
On Waterfront Kitsch
by Roscid Cup
Where carny gathers moss and sings shanties.
Most every large coastal American city has That One neighborhood or even entire suburb that is most easily described by naming a few examples. Seattle has Pike’s Place Market. San Francisco has Fisherman’s Wharf. Virginia Beach has “The Strip.” San Diego has Seaport Village. Honolulu has Waikiki. Capitola has, er, Capitola. Even landlubbing Chicago has Navy Pier. Are you seeing a stylistic pattern?
Why am I such a sucker for these places? They are derided as tourist traps and rightly so, but they are some of my favorite places to visit. Perhaps it’s because carny meets nautical here, although paradoxically carny and nautical describe itinerant lifestyles, while a city district stays put. (Another paradox is that I really ought to hate nautical, since I used to be a sailor. But like John Masefield I apparently have Stockholm syndrome.)
These neighborhoods — in most cases I should call them “strips” — target those tourists who would be fascinated by the most banal things, so long as they are different from what they see every day back home. So these strips put on the façade of nostalgic Americana, a kind no one sees in their home town anymore (and which probably never truly existed to begin with), and they present it as if that is the neighborhood’s unique identity. The ruse won’t fool you if you are visiting from another big city (or from anywhere else), because every such strip has a lot of the same stuff, viz. a wax museum or Ripley’s museum, a store selling chintzy statuettes and glass figurines, a house of mirrors, a tchotchke shop, a taffy shop, a nautical-themed shop, a hot sauce shop, and many souvenir shops whose items are way too generic to be identified with the city you are visiting and which you can find in souvenir shops from any other city. You will also likely find seafood restaurants, greasy spoons, and stores to supply you with beachwear, digital cameras, mugs and shotglasses with the name of the city on them, and humorous tee shirts that you will definitely purchase but never wear again after you return from your trip.
Like I said, it won’t work on you, you jaded cynic, with your jaded big-city values. But gosh-darn it, it sure does work on me. I don’t care how fake and hokey it is. It still isn’t as phony as Carmel by the Sea or Disneyland. Its character may not be unique to the local city’s culture, but it is unique to the broader big-city waterfront tourist-trap culture (or WTT culture, for short). Rarely a month goes by when I don’t walk — yes, walk — down to Fisherman’s Wharf and get some shrimp and crab cocktail from an outdoor vendor. What isn’t magical about walking down a waterfront strip on a day that’s cloudy enough and breezy enough to make you want to talk like a pirate (not that I do that) and seeing all the pretentiously exotic kitsch about you, while at every step you smell seafood and salt? In fact, that last part isn’t even kitsch. You can’t fake seafood and salt! The smell of salt water is for me what a madeleine is for Proust.
On Corn Dogs, Churros, and Soft Serve
What idiot thought sliced bread was the baseline for greatness? People should instead be saying “That’s the greatest thing since corn dogs!” This is an acceptable abbreviation of the more correct “That’s the greatest thing since they started selling corn dogs, churros, and soft serve from the same stand!” None require a plastic straw, so even in a city as oppressive as San Francisco they are attainable. (Farewell milkshakes.)
This presents a dilemma to me. As a child I used to think of all the attainably-not-too-expensive things my parents were either too poor or too responsible to get for me. I promised myself that when I become an adult and have my own money and the freedom to do what I want, I would buy all those things myself. Now that I am an adult, whenever I see a booth with a striped awning and hopeful seagulls hovering about and all the other telltale signs of churros, corn dogs, and soft serve (one exists at Fishermans’ Wharf near the end of Pier 39), I instantly get triggered by my recollection of a time when I always wanted those things but almost never got them. My next feeling is frisson at knowing that now I am an adult and can spend my money on what I want.
But here’s the catch: between the three treats — corn dogs, churros, and soft serve — I don’t know which will kill you fastest. If you twisted my arm, I would put my money on corn dogs. I have no spouse, so there’s no one to nag me and restrict me with their tyrannical health leash, but it doesn’t matter. My own treacherous inner adult is doing that by proxy. I have visited Pier 39 many times, but I still want a corn dog.
Carnyostasis
That’s carny, not carnal, you dirty-minded, illiterate clodhopper! Nor is it carney as in Art Carney, that actor your grandpa sometimes mistakes for Tim Conway. I mean carny, a term referring to that most exotic form of Americana: the carnival. Well, I really mean the carnival-slash-circus, since the two have so many similarities.
And yes, I am aware that neither carnivals nor circuses are uniquely American, or even “from” America, but like Italian food there is an unmistakeably American variety, and also like Italian food the American variety is the only one many Americans know. That is the variety you see in the great tourist traps of the American coast. Less La Strada and more Enoch and the Gorilla. Less Stromboli and more Pleasure Island. Actually, less Pinocchio overall, and more Dumbo. Less Commedia Dell’Arte and more an outdoor alternative to Vaudeville. And by “Vaudeville” I mean less the music hall show in The 39 Steps and more the dive bar in The Blues Brothers. (Hmm, after re-reading that last sentence, I’m getting the idea there really isn’t any difference which side of the pond you’re on. Anyhoo…)
Like I said, it’s a paradox that the waterfront has such a carny vibe despite its static location. Brick-and-mortar stores are transient these days and pop-up shops might be more than a fad now, but the vibe of a city district still changes at only a glacial pace.
But really there is little connection between people who work at these places and travelling carnies. That is even true for many of the street jongleurs who do things like put on puppet shows or balance bowling pins on their nose or paint themselves silver and pretend to be robots for tips because apparently that’s impressive. (An exception might be the Find the Lady tricksters. Those guys are basically carnies who are too lazy to get a carny job.) It’s part of the same intentional façade I mentioned before, in which a vaguely familiar old-timey style is being imitated, in this case the style of a carnival.
Do I mind? No, not really. Not when so many of the tourists (who are always in season in a city like San Francisco) willfully buy into it. How can I not buy into it also?
The only things that take me out of it are certain tourist remarks. For example, the best thing I ever overheard from a tourist while strolling down Jefferson Street is: “Oh my gosh, look! It’s the Applebee’s on Fisherman’s Wharf!!!”
On the Greatest Tourist Trap of All
Admit it. You know darn well that when you saw Pinocchio you wanted to visit Pleasure Island too. Even after you saw what happened to those kids you wanted to go there anyway. Don’t pretend it isn’t true. And don’t be ashamed of it, either. Own it!
But why? Maybe it’s because the scene’s background paintings were so rich and colorful. Maybe it’s because most of Pinocchio, including Pleasure Island, takes place at night. Maybe it’s because you enjoy cigars and pool.
Or maybe it’s because of none of those things. No matter how old we get, there will always be a part of that kid inside us who was an explorer. And Pleasure Island looked like a place to explore.
Pleasure Island is like the dollar bin at the vinyl store. Both are colorful and visually stimulating. And no matter how many Kirby Stone Four, Judy Collins, Smothers Brothers, Diahann Carol, or Shelley Berman albums flitted in and out of sight as you flipped through them, no matter how many times you saw yet another copy of Liza With a Z (seriously, how many did they print?), you clung dearly to your conviction that the next album would be a diamond in the rough — one that’s worth all that time you spent and all those VOC particles you inhaled from the fug of deteriorating vintage cardboard.
Another comparison is that shop in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. It had so many “curious things” on its shelves, but Alice didn’t know what they were, because “whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold“ (Project Gutenberg). Such is the allure of Pleasure Island and all waterfront kitsch. In such a place, everywhere we look we see something a little disappointing, but the idea of what we might discover — even one that we cannot name because it keeps to the tip of our tongue — is enough to excite us for being there.
…well, no, not Pleasure Island. Pleasure Island is the exception. There it is more than an idea, it’s real. Brawling! Cigars! Home destruction! And not least — please don’t brand me a menace for this — Pool! And best of all, no obnoxious kids there after the first night! A.I.’s Rouge City can take a back seat. Send me to Pleasure Island! See you there!