I kept having to remind R to stand right on the escalators (didn't help that we were on the metro during rush hour.) She was the first to admit she's lost all her big city savvy. I was a little surprised at how much she stood out.

Me, I get asked for directions by tourists even when I am a tourist. Sometimes even natives to the region, but not the locale. And everyone seems to assume I speak their language. Sometimes they are even right, sometimes not. It even happened in Nepal, but that was fellow tourists of all flavors, not the locals, for obvious reasons. It's mildly amusing.

Cassandra Cla(i)re: [link]

Me, I get asked for directions by tourists even when I am a tourist.

Me, too. I have no idea why, although when I can actually give the requested directions it feels like a very happy accident.

Cassandra Cla(i)re: [link]

Thank you. That site looks like one more rabbit hole I can fall into. Yet another tab left open...

Fandom is weird. It's like soap opera, only less believable.

I work in River North. Tourists bother me. I am bothered.

Yes, that would be one of the areas. Pretty much anywhere north of the river and near Michigan I swear off for the summer. I'm right by Millenium Park but just enough off the beaten path that we don't get the traffic.

Plus I get lazy or behind and drive to work a lot these days, so it's all underground.

You ever have days when you think "One more TV Tropes link, one more, and I will snap and hand you the keys to the closet where we keep the Nilly of the pseudicide. One more. Try me."?

Yes. I also fantasize about it being a story on This American Life

aigh quadrant, what does that even mean. no wonder I get lost in DC every damn time I go there.

Zen, DC is purposefully plotted in a way, that once you know it, makes navigation pretty easy. It just takes a long time to grasp that there are FOUR of every numbered street. Northwest, northeast, southwest, southeast.

Numbered streets are north/south, hinged on the Capitol. Letters are east/west, also hinged on the Capitol. Named streets are progressive by syllable, a-z. State names are diagonals.

There are exceptions...for instance, there is no B St.

The problems stem from there being several major attractions on the same numbered street as mine but people don't pay attention to the letters after the number. I feel so bad for bedraggled people who really need to be on the exact opposite part of town.

There are exceptions, the quadrants aren't symmetrical, and then there are the diagonals. DC only makes fake sense! And I lived there for four years.

Lately, the people who have been feeling my Tourist Rage are the people standing in the bike lane on the Brooklyn Bridge to take pictures.

Mine used to be the folks standing in the middle of a major highway to grab snaps of the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin. My solutions? I don't go there March-May.

I am a directions giver on a pretty regular basis. It intrigues me the percentage of people who actually seem offended that I ask, even when it is obvious they are lost. All I ever say is, "Can I help you find something?" Not any kind of snarky 'you look lost' or anything.

eta: on the other hand, there are plenty of people who seem surprised and relieved to get the help. There was that one couple from Denmark who offered to take me to lunch for saving them from a huge navigational error. (I declined. They looked beat lower than a gopher's belly.)