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Now, I never actually saw Wall Drug. What I did see what hundreds (yes, literally) of billboards, most of them tacky and/or ridiculous and/or juvenile, marring the scenery for hundreds (yes, again, literally) of miles in either direction. Now, South Dakota is not the most scenic place in the world. But once you get west of the Missouri River, the landscape becomes one of sweeping, rolling prairie. It definitely has a subtle beauty. And every third of mile or so, that scenery is marred by an insipid Wall Drug billboard - you know, just in cast you forgot the last one you passed 18 seconds earlier.
Aside from the fact that it looks and sounds about as fun as setting my hair on fire, I would not set foot in that place just because of what it has done to the natural landscape.
My parents and I had just come from Yellowstone and were on the way back to Chicago. We were lured by the ubiquitous signs. It was fun in 1954 and it's still fun. The rest rooms were clean then and still are today. It's the best tourtist trap I've ever seen. Of course, it's tacky. It's a must stop for young and old. Badlands National Park is their neighbor.
NYC. Trash everywhere. Exhaust pollution. Stench coming from the sewers. A god awful annoying accent. A woman could be one of the prettiest in the world but if she starts talking with that NYC/Jersey Shore accent I'm either running or looking around for duck tape. xD
You're kidding, right???
Trash everywhere? Stench coming from sewers? Where did you visit ... a land fill in the Bronx? Surely you're not talking about Central Park, 5th Avenue, Park Avenue, the Lincoln Center of Performing Arts, the World Trade Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Statue of Liberty, Bryant Park, the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, the Cloisters ...
Okay, I get it ... you hate the New York accent. A lot of folks here in the Northeast regard country twang accents and some southern accents as comical. Like the way hillbillies speak. To each his own.
This discussion is off topic.
We are discussing tacky tourist attractions, capiche???
Marsh's Free Museum (Long Beach, WA). You really have to go there to believe it. Kitschy as all get out. Yet I can't help but stop in there to commune with Jake the Alligator Man and the music boxes every bloody time I'm in town...
That's a great place. I can't imagine it being called it tacky. Although it's not a fancy place I consider it one of the absolute top historical museums in the country.
There are many caves and viewpoints along or near the Blue Ridge Parkway that are tacky.
Here in Thailand there are quite a lot of 'hawkers' trying to get tourists to 'take a ride' to a temple, when their REAL agenda is to take you to a high pressure jewelry outlet. Seems like blatant deceit, but not to them... it is their job and livelihood.
The surroundings of the Great Pyramid in Egypt deserve a mention. Evidently the construction of gift shops and the like was forbidden, because in place of them the place is teeming with hawkers. Men in full Arab garb swarm every arriving tour bus while others lurk nearby in strategic spots. In conversations with people who've been there at various points in time I've learned the shouted chant never changes as they hold up their junk jewelry: "One dollar! One dollar!" (insert appropriate accent)
Stateside, the two "tacky" attractions yet to be brought up which come to mind are now defunct.
In pre-Interstate days the highway through Kentucky south of Lexington was cluttered for miles with come-on billboards for a roadside attraction called Dog Patch. ("See BEAR...at Dog Patch Zoo," and such.) My dad never took the bait. You were past the place in seconds flat, just long enough to catch a glimpse of the "trading post" (kitsch/T-shirt shop) and what looked like a series of chain link enclosures for the unfortunate animals. I haven't traveled that route in many years, but have heard that the "trading post" lived on after relocating to a new and larger building at an I-75 interchange. Happily the zoo no longer exists.
And then there was Aquarena Springs in San Marcos, Texas, a place I deliberately sought out while on a trip to the area. It delivered in the "tacky" department. Your requisite row of souvenir vendors and junk food sellers was a comically poor attempt at Wild West. Most of the rides were shut down for the season (I went during January) but one could still go for an excursion on a glass-bottomed boat. I passed on that, but no way was I going to miss the mermaid show! At regular intervals, the masses were given admission to an underground theater with a wall of glass at the front of the room for an aquarium effect. For a few minutes, a unisex cast of "mer-people" in scuba gear and rudimentary fish tail costumes acted out a scene which more or less suggested a singles bar. Then suddenly "as if on cue" (LOL) all mer-eyes turned toward the surface - for there, running along a low diving board, was Ralph the Pig! Fearlessly the shoat raced off the end of the board and leaped into the water, pig-paddling and not looking at all fazed until a few of the mermaids and mer-men surfaced and held him up to goaded applause. You can best believe I gave in to my baser instincts and hit up a gift shop for kitsch, including an Aquarena Springs pennant and an "Oink if you love Ralph" coozie, after that. Unfortunately I didn't buy any T-shirts, because the amusement park shut down at some point and put the rotating cast of mer-people and diving pigs into the unemployment line. Now all that's left of it are the glass-bottomed boats, which makes sense - after all, the springs themselves were there for centuries beforehand.
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