RSS FeedSecond Tier Tourist Attractions
DC has lots of famous tourist attractions: the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, the much maligned carousel. Pick up any DC guidebook and you’ll find plenty of places where you’ll want to have your photo taken.
But there are other attractions we see tourists drawn to as well. Take the upside-down bike lane sign next to the FBI (on 9th Street NW between D & E). We see tourists having their photos taken with this sign almost every day of the week. You can imagine the comments that go along with photos as they’re being taken (“Our tax dollars at work”).
Tourists also seem infatuated with the Metro escalators. You can almost (but not quite) understand it if they’re taking photos of really deep stations, but the Archives/Navy Memorial station? That has to be one of the more shallow entrances on the Metrorail system. The escalators at their local JC Penney probably go deeper than the Archives entrance.
There must be other second tier attractions in the PQ. What mundane spots have you found tourists to be fascinated by?
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I completely don’t understand tourists’ fascination with the escalators, but if you’re going to take a picture of them, Archives is certainly not the place. Dupont maybe. But not Archives.
Another great second tier tourist hot spot is the fake Chinatown arch. I know for sure that even the Asians that live there are just as ashamed of it as I am.
I once saw a family videotaping the entire crosswalk countdown. That’s 43 seconds of riveting entertainment right there.
I see *lots* of people taking pictures of the Chinatown arch. I see *lots* of Asian people, who I assume are out-of-towners, taking pictures of the Chinatown arch.
frankly, I think the Arch is a fantastic piece that livens the 7th and H intersection even if Chinatown is now a block or two. second tier site? yeah…probably. it certainly isn’t a must see for a first time visitor like the monuments are.
the Archives Metro will likely be in the movie Salt.
I agree the Chinatown Arch is second tier compared to the incredible DC sites. But, this is the first I heard that it is considered fake? Can you tell us more? All I know is it has some sort of record, like widest arch in the world, or something like that.
Other 2nd tier attractions? Any picture next to the “public art” of donkeys or elephants (like the one by the library). Anything at Madame Tassaud.
Babies in strollers going into condo buildings seem to get unnatural attention – Like “what, people actually live here. AND THEY HAVE CHILDREN????”
The Chinatown Friendship Arch was designed by Alfred H. Liu, a renowned architect and an important member of the Chinese-American community in Washington.
that also probably explains why cars never obey the bike and bus lanes and are always in the lane!
Luke
The New Urban Sharecropper
the chinese arch is the largest single span chinese arch in the world. it does need some touch up paint tho. always see tons of people taking pics of it.. when i saw the teeny arch in SF(which has a great big chinatown), i realized we’ve got a really good one.
The Chinatown Arch is “fake” in the sense that people may think it’s a remnant from some long ago, teeming Chinatown that used to surround the current Chinablock. I believe it was put up in the late ’80s.
I personally think it’s a great piece of public art, whether it’s a relic of a lost neighborhood or a more recently constructed symbol of a romanticized past.
I like watching tourists take photos on the National Mall “holding” the Washington Monument with their hands. Highly “original.”
And my dog is a second tier tourist attraction. I constantly have tourists taking photos of my dog. Go figure.
They used to take tons of photos of the previously-colorful 8th st (between D and E), but it’s faded and looks sad now.
I see a lot of tourists turning their backs to the arch and instead taking a picture of the starbucks sign with chinese lettering. No doubt, taking note of the irony.
Tourists take pictures and video of the most amazing things. One of my favorite is the video of the plastic moving around the toilet seats at the Kennnedy Center. Yup, boys come of the restroom with video. The National Cathedral bus parking area has the restrooms with space age hand driers. They take video of that with sound, too!
As a tour guide, I own a world famous umbrella …. at least that is what I call it since people ask to take my picture several times a day, so my umbrella and I must be in photos all around the world!
Riding the Metro is an experience for most groups. They don’t know a deep escalator from a shallow one. But several times a month, I do end up starting or ending a school group metro ride at Rosslyn because the escalator ride is more than 2 minutes long.
BTW Chinese visitors (especially those in the child bearing ages 20’s to 30’s) are amazed by families with multiple children.
Squirrels! I see tourists taking pictures of them all the time like they are some exotic form of wildlife and not rats with fluffy tails.
now that I think about it, I see more people taking pictures of themselves in front of the US Treasury building on the Penn Ave side.
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The archives metro entrance/escalators were in the hit moving about the SPY movie about Robert Hanssen. (Breach, 2007)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/breach,1123197.html