It would come as no surprise to many that I have nothing against a little elitism. Elitism, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is »the belief that some things are only for a few people who have special qualities or abilities«. I would agree with that. For example, I believe that some hospitality establishments, especially if they are small and have been successfully running in specific, mass tourism-free ways for dozens of years, shouldn’t be spoiled by sudden overcrowding because an idiot with a fat Instagram account but otherwise the most discerning standards posted charmingly attractive pictures of them. There,
I would make a case for this type of place to be only for people who have the ability (and quality) to inspect, blend, and circulate on a real-life basis only. The reader is restless: he knows that authenticity can be easily spoiled when becoming a mainstream aesthetic.
I see you coming with your legitimately whiny, easy-jetted tone: there is no correct way to enjoy something, it is personal and suggestive, and these places are lucky to see their revenue increase, et cetera. You would be absolutely wrong. In the spotless wording of David Foster Wallace in »Consider the Lobster«: »To be a (mass) tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in ways you can never admit. IT IS TO SPOIL, by way of sheer ontology, THE VERY UNSPOILEDNESS YOU ARE THERE TO EXPERIENCE. It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economical ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: as a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome; an insect on a dead thing.« For better reading comprehension, I put the part that is important to remember here in capital letters.
To put in a less phony formula: what these places gain in revenue, they lose in veracity. Le Petit Vendôme is an otherwise normal café near the Place Vendôme in Paris, selling a very respectable jambon beurre sur place ou à emporter just a few steps away from The Ritz. It has Formica tables, sickly neon lighting, and staff prone to spontaneous combustion. Everything you’d expect of your quick Parisian lunch. They are not fearful of the proximity of high-end luxury; they are not impressed by brand new rivers of diamonds fresh out of Chopard and handsome Hollywood actors wearing small gnarly dogs who are themselves wearing ostrich leather bags. They do not, and I cannot stress this enough, give a damn.
Sometime in the last four years, some Tik-Toker or other posted many a charming shot with many an American commentary in a video that went viral. I must remain meticulous here and outline that an idiot with a TikTok account is a much bigger idiot than one with an Instagram ac-count (albeit increasingly frequently they merge). Since this damned day, as soon as lunchtime approaches, a queue made of tourists wanting a piece of this authentic
Parisian institution stretches all the way to the Ritz. This, and the sandwich price jumped from a reasonable six euros fifty to a silly eleven euros. The consequences are that this place is now, and for most of the day, stripped of its local, regular (meaning: organic) customer base and reserved only for visitors cosplaying as locals. Those who used to find a healthy and budget-friendly lunch of, let’s say, a glass of red, a jambon beurre, and a coffee in a café near their workplaces are now overtaken by the economic and physical cost of an internet video, replaced by people who have the economic means to pretend to be them. I am doing my poor little best not to bang my head on this very table.
I have no doubt the business owners are fine: why be sinister about a sudden revenue rise? And I am also sure that there is still, at some hour of the day, the occasional old timer coming in for a beer and a snack, and I would suspect this one customer would also get a discount on his bill. But how does it feel to turn your neighborhood café into a sandwich factory, a background for tastefully thought-through carousels of pictures, with next-door Jean François from accounting long gone and replaced by people in purple felt berets exclusively drinking half glasses of Sauvignon Blanc? These places had a customer base before our visits; they have been running for many years.
Speaking as a greed-driven and philosophically irresponsible woman, I would like absolutely nobody but a trusted few to visit the places I love. Which is why I practice gatekeeping. Gatekeeping, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is
»the activity of trying to control who gets access to particular resources, power, or opportunities, and who does not«. It would be a surprise only to a few that I would agree with that.
Once a year, on my birthday, I visit a hotel that might be my favorite in the world. This hotel, situated in a beautiful undisclosed location, was built many confidential years ago following the style of some architectural current and is very strangely but also charmingly built over a very specific and unusual commodity, making it truly one of a kind. It features wonderful, untouched this and that, hand-painted murals by someone, large windows of thin glass giving a breathtaking view over a somewhat well-known thing. It is filled with beautiful artifacts, items, articles, devices, and even a few implements. It is decadently beautiful and simultaneously incredibly normal. While I will go on and on about the hotel IRL, I will nonetheless be answering no further questions before having background-checked, tested, and threatened my interlocutor’s life. The mere idea of one of my imaginary enemies having access to this hotel makes my heart jump in new and frightening ways.
In the AmiGo app, taste is commodified: »You get the scoop on where to go and what to do when you travel—directly from your favorite bloggers, friends, and social network. Imagine if Instagram were designed solely to simplify your travel experience. That’s AmiGo.« The app is complete with a false attempt at preserving these places: it is supposedly »invite only« (influencers share their code freely, from which one could suppose they make commissions for each user that signs up). Excellent. On Substack, a majority of users will sell »city guides« for a couple of euros after taking a trip to a new city, often competing for the most tasteful, niche, and authentic places (which often end up being all the same). Limits of supply meet homogenization of taste: how else would you explain that there is a single house shoe in a Roman shopwindow the contours of which I know better than those of my parents?
Bar Farnese is a tiny neighborhood bar near the Piazza Navona in Rome. You would pass it if you were going to the Campo dei Fiori, or if you were awaiting something or someone (aren’t we all) on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which is how I ended up having breakfast there. If you type »Bar Farnese« in Google, you get pages full of TikToks, Instagram posts, and iPhone photoshoots of girls in Trench Coats and guys in Cool Caps. All these posts roar about the authenticity of Bar Farnese: »I went to discover the most authentic café in Rome«, »follow me to meet Angelo, the ninety-year-old man working at Bar Farnese«; there are pictures of regulars, of this old man turned face of the operation, of the front, which has a charming 1960s font and neon lights.
Bar Farnese, an otherwise normal Roman neigh-borhood bar, is now on every travel checklist. The pastries, which are objectively well-intentioned but not quite first-rate, are highly praised: this, my dear friends and followers, is a Good, Authentic time. The visiting customer demands exactly what he has been sold online. One complains about receiving a slightly different pastry than what another reviewer got, knocking one star off his review. Some complain that the »famous elderly gentleman wasn’t there when they came around« (two stars). We see comment after comment with the same photos of Maritozzi and brioches, tables, coffee cups, and this old man that is mentioned, rementioned, described, photographed, videographed, again and again.
I am admittedly easily enraged when good places are turned into full-on tourist spots, but when it involves the elderly, I rapidly surpass my recommended BPM.
On Google Maps and Tripadvisor, reviewers describe Bar Farnese as »a hidden gem«. This is symptomatic of a wish for exclusiveness and the commodification of the unadulterated: Bar Farnese, at this point in time, isn’t a hidden gem, but it is a representation of the unspoiled. Because of this, and because of its very popularity, a tourist customer will never get to experience it for what it stands for, but as a good enough version, and a good enough version is the best we will ever get. It is a frustrating illusion, forever in reach but forever unattainable for the holidaymaker: so remote, so near.
To keep yourself free of all frustration (which is, on most days, life’s purpose), here is my advice: walk. Leave the phone on DND, do not plan. Unless it is to signal to an old boarding school mate of yours proof of his permanent and intolerable presence with you at all times, do not photograph. Be bored. Read. Sit somewhere where you can simultaneously buy liquorice, cigarettes, and crossword booklets, and have coffee. Talk to your neighbor. Flirt with absolutely no intention of closing the deal. Ask recommendations only from your older and funniest friends. Be a sentimentalist. Ease into life watching all good old things crumble and change under the weight of aesthetic homogenization. Ease into life with more gusto, knowing you are of the last remains of civilized pleasure, charming but impossibly pretentious, bathing in the certitude that you will never throw an online tantrum for a lopsided brioche. Do not fail to renew your membership in The Association of Tourists Against Tourism.
