December 30, 2009
the procrastination of pleasure
People who have moved to Chicago, Dallas and London get to fewer local landmarks during their entire first year than the typical tourist visits during a two-week stay, according to a study conducted by Suzanne B. Shu and Ayelet Gneezy, who are professors of marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, San Diego, respectively. The Chicagoans in the study had visited more landmarks in other cities than in their own, and even their relatively small amount of local sightseeing was done mainly in the course of entertaining out-of-towners. Otherwise, the only time Chicagoans rushed to see the local landmarks was just before they were about to move to another city, when that deadline inspired sudden passions for taking architectural tours and going to the zoo.
Would this be true also of New Yorkers?
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I know that was definitely true when my wife and I lived in New Orleans. You don’t feel the pressure to see as much (“oh, the swamp tours will always be there”), and when you leave, you realize there’s so much you didn’t see.
Since we’ve moved to DC, we’ve made a conscious effort to get out as often as we can and see the sights. We haven’t seen everything, but we’ve seen alot.
K
There’s something to be said for the effect crowds of tourists can have on the experience of seeing the city’s sites. I enjoy the parks and museums; they attract a mix of locals and visitors. But you couldn’t pay me to get on a ferry to the Statue of Liberty, or to ride to the top of the Empire State Building.
I think there’s a difference between living somewhere and just having moved somewhere. When you’ve just moved there, you probably want to convince yourself that you belong, so you avoid doing touristy things that make you feel like a n00b.
Also, I think it’s a pretty wild assumption that seeing one’s local landmarks is an enjoyable activity. More enjoyable than having lunch, say, at an embarrassingly cheap Vietnamese restaurant, with friends? No. I would almost always choose some social activity over going to see a landmark, whether I’m at home or away. This is how I’ve been to Paris so many times without entering the Louvre or standing under the Eiffel Tower. Am I “procrastinating pleasure” by doing so? Positively not.
And as for the gift certificate thing, my problem with gift certificates is that I go to the place and don’t see anything I want, so I have to keep going back. It took me four years, I think, to spend a hundred dollars at Pottery Barn. There’s just not that much generic-looking aspirational household crap that I need. And I have a hundred bucks worth of Bloomingdale’s credit that I know it will take me forever to spend, because they never have anything I want in my size. I think the last time I had a Bloomingdale’s gift certificate, I ended up grudgingly spending it on tights that were so expensive I would never have bought them had I been using cash. Often when I receive gift certificates, they’re for places I don’t shop in the first place, so it’s a chore to spend them. Bloomingdale’s is way out of my usual travel zone, so I have to make a special trip there. (I’m not counting the SoHo store, which is a joke.) And then I get there, and even on sale the shit costs more than I think it’s worth.
Or they’re at places that have atmospheres I don’t like. My mother once gave me a big gift certificate to a place that sold very expensive handmade clothes. I had to go in there several times, because I’m not in the habit of shopping for that kind of stuff, and I didn’t see anything I wanted. Meanwhile, the staff were always such assholes to me—because they could tell at a glance that I could not afford the things they sold, and they didn’t know I had this gift certificate to burn—that I hated going in there. Finally I bought something just to get rid of the gift certificate, so that I could stop going back. I’ve never worn it, and it makes me unhappy just to look at it. I keep thinking I should cut it apart and refashion it into something else, but I don’t think there’s any way to make it something I’ll like, so I’ll probably just end up giving it to Housing Works. A $300+ blouse. Fucking hell.
When I do “procrastinate pleasure,” it’s because I’m supposed to be doing something else. Like, all semester, I wouldn’t let myself watch the Netflix disc I had checked out, because I was supposed to be working. There were more two-hour periods when I wasn’t working than when I was, obviously, but that’s the game I played. And now I can’t find the disc.
Does that answer your question?
spectacularly.
I love you, India.
I finally completed the tourist two-week trip over the last four months of my time in New York. All’s I’d done before that were a few museums, one or two musicals, and Central Park. Like India noted, when I moved there all I wanted was to blend in and be a New Yorker. Tourists are n00bs.
I don’t think of museums as either a tourist activity, nor n00b-op. Museum visits are a regular part of my life, and the way that the world has ended up is that you can get to see paintings that were once always squirreled away solely for the rich to ignore, but you have to travel around to see them, and you never know when you’re going to have another opportunity. Going to MoMA or the Met or the Louvre or the Tate or the National or the Hugh Lane are never chore-like, for me. I only go when I am hungry for them, and it is a lot like sushi: the very availability of them makes me salivate. But then I don’t try to spend the whole day in any of these places and ‘see everything’. I’m usually done in about 3 hours and a small few paintings. The Louvre is fucking ridiculous, of course, dizzying. Flying past a Botticelli fresco or two on the way to see a handful of Leonardos. Christ.
I do recognise that pleasurable museum visits appear to be a minority activity, even though most people visiting museums are well above parental control age, and I just wonder at that. I stood in front of Desmoiselles d’Avignon for about 20 minutes once, while streams and streams of people came to stand with their back to it, and get their picture mobile phone-took. I coulda made some cash that day.
Also, Mike: you could definitely pay me to do either of those things. You can probably pay me to do most things except work in an office.
I agree with you, Lucy, about museums being more than just a tourist activity… I didn’t mean to imply that I only visit museums when pressured! Aside from regular dates with MOMAs and national galleries, I always join a museum with a good stretch of lawn* whenever I move into a nearby apartment (ie. shelter with no yard). I’m a lingerer in museums too …and I almost never see a full museum’s work in a single day. But I tend to stick to exploring two or three museums in a city per year — it’s more cost-effective. I guess that’s what I meant.
* In Manhattan, the Cooper-Hewitt; out here, the DeYoung.
Shu Gneezy?
Oh Christ, is this one of those times when a clusterflocker thought I was criticising him/her? I really hope not. These things ambush me. I’m talking about the hordes of people who can be seen in any large museum (the smaller ones tend to have more engaged visitors) who don’t look like they’re having a good time there but go, perhaps because it’s an item on a shopping list to tick off (and God knows I know the satisfaction of scribbling things out on lists, I just don’t have that approach to cities) or because there is ingrained in our educational systems a sense that we will be improved by the experience of being around great art. But you know, all that said, I think it’s hard to really see how people are responding to work, unless you are a numbskull running around inside their heads (I only do this on Tuesdays). They just don’t spend much time in front of paintings is all. I think great art is very often too big for the human head.
All this regular museum activity began when I lived for a short while on Park and 83rd, a couple of blocks away from the Met. I went there every day, sometimes in my pyjamus. That was the start of museums being fun. Before that, I just never went.
All I’m saying is that when my rap career takes off, I’ll be performing under the name of Shu Gneezy.