Do Touristy Areas Exist that Locals Actually Frequent? (Atlanta, Boston, school)
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Downtown Crossing has improved since a low point in 2010 when it was homeless people, that giant crater, Tellos, and many abandoned storefronts. Now some of the stores have gone from Tellos to forever 21, the crater has been filled in with a highrise building and an old navy, there's a Roche Brothers and caffe nero, and from vacant to occupied. Where they used to only seel hot greasy peanuts, there are now a few more people with information/tables, a BID cart, a slight variety of street food. Homeless people dont sleep in front of the FYE anymore but there are still many vacancies and there is more open-air drug dealing now than there was in 2010. But it happens along Boylston street and in alleys.
I think that touristy areas that locals don't frequent may be the exception, especially when the tourist attraction isn't something that you really only visit once or twice in your life. Places like Times Square or the Hollywood Walk of Fame, don't have as much to interest locals and they are crowded.
Historical sites like the Alamo might be an example. I'd guess that most locals have been, but they probably don't go every year. But they visit Riverwalk maybe.
I was in Palm Springs last year and there were quite a few locals that ride the tram daily and hike.
Locals frequent every touristy area in LA, with the exception of the Walk of Fame and Venice Beach. But the theme parks, beaches, Santa Monica, beach bike paths, and nightspots are full of locals.
In NYC, I wonder if locals shop in SoHo? It seemed like >90% tourists, but I wouldn't really know. I think that it's concentrated with stores with mass appeal with lots more mixed it. Somewhat similar to how Times Square is populated with restaurants and stores from middle America. Also, don't lots of locals go ice skating at Rockefeller Center?
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Originally Posted by 2Easy
Yeah, it's the busiest subway station in the system for a reason.
I think that the difference is that tourists like me will go to Times Square just to visit and walk around the area. Locals go to someplace specific and leave. It's like Hollywood Blvd in LA. You won't see locals walking around staring at the sidewalk, but you will see locals at some bars and restaurants or going to the movies.
I was going to say when you mentioned that Angelenos don’t go to the Walk of Fame, pre-COVID Hollywood Blvd was a huge nightlife and theater district. The Pantages, the El Capitan, the Egyptian, the Chinese Theater, and several others all sit on the walk of fame. Even the Dolby theater is inside the Hollywood/Highland Complex. I certainly didn’t go weekly like the OP asked (Other than work, and maybe the grocery store, there aren’t many places I go weekly). But probably 6-10 times a year we went to a show at a theater on the walk of fame, but I rarely look down at the sidewalk other than to make sure that I’m not go into step on a vagrant.
The other place that came to mind was Griffith Park. Pre-COVID, we’d probably make it to some part of the park weekly, but most of the tourists just go to the Observatory, and really only for the views of the city and the Hollywood sign. My kids like the Observatory, and it’s free, pre-COVID we'd go up there monthly, but if possible, we would avoid the weekends.
Center City, Philadelphia seems like it had a lot of locals hanging out there when I went. Same thing with Penn's Landing.
You need to break Center City down to its component neighborhoods to get an accurate picture of what parts are "touristy" and what parts are not.
The residential zone south of Walnut, for instance, gets those double-deck tour buses rolling through it but doesn't really get lots of tourists on foot, except for Society Hill, where the horse-drawn carriages run.
Old City, OTOH, does, largely spillover from the historic sites. And as with the Alamo or the Statue of Liberty, Philadelphians will take their visiting guests from out of town to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, but otherwise, those places aren't part of Philadelphians' everyday lives. I'm not sure the related museums (National Constitution Center, Museum of the American Revolution) are either, not in the way the Museum of Art, Franklin Institute or Academy of Natural Sciences are. (The Art Museum is also a tourist destination, but many visitors limit their visits to simply running up those famous steps without going inside.)
Locals frequent Old City's restaurants and art galleries and make up the bulk of the people doing the First Friday art gallery crawl.
The second-most-popular tourist destination after Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell is the Reading Terminal Market (a smaller version of Seattle's Pike Place, it traces its roots to the 18th-century market stalls that gave Market Street its name and has been in its current location since 1893). That, I assure you, is as popular with the locals as with the tourists, and because of this, it becomes very crowded on Saturday afternoons, when many Philadelphians go grocery shopping. (RTM ads advise that "the locals go" to the market on Saturday morinings.)
You'll find tourists in Rittenhouse Square, true, but that's really a place where the locals dominate. Washington Square may be the other way around, and in any case, it gets less use than Rittenhouse Square.
Chinatown gets its share of tourists — after all, the Pennsylvania Convention Center and Reading Terminal Market sit right next to it — but it's never felt touristy ot me.
For Austin, TX, anything related to parks, trails, and lakes is heavily frequented by locals. Locals also go to the hill country and its wineries fairly often. I'd say the "touristy" dining and shopping areas are fairly well frequented by locals, though South Congress is borderline. UT football contains a mix of locals, tourists, and Texans from other cities.
Locals definitely frequent live music and the various festivals, with the one exception being SXSW, which is widely hated by locals. (I don't agree with this personally; as a live music lover I think SXSW is Christmas).
The main thing that comes to mind for "tourists do, locals don't" is dirty sixth street, outside of a narrow demographic band. There are also some activities that it goes without saying you are only going to do once, like touring the state capital or standing around waiting for bats to fly out of a bridge. But I imagine every city has that sort of thing.
Seems basically touristy neighborhoods are actually touristy because they’re nice. Touristy things like the Paul Revere House or Liberty Bell or St Louis Arch are just for tourists.
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