Until you’ve gone to Amsterdam and spent a day or two walking around the city...do you realize the various issues. The amount of petty crime around the city is serious. Tourist will be selected and followed by local dopers just to steal a camera for the equivalent of twenty bucks.
I sat one day in a decent small resturant. Some twenty-five year old gal was sitting there and eating. She was alone, and spent almost 90 minutes eating from a plate of chicken nuggets. She was continually amazed at the size and shape of the nuggets....gazing for six to eight minutes at each one before eating it. Almost every customer in this shop was watching her. It was summer and probably 85 degrees....but she was wearing a fall jacket as she sat there. After she left, the owner came up and apologized...he had to serve people like that but he considered them “less-than-human”.
I got the impression after a weekend there that most of the locals had grown tired of it’s two-percent problem in the city. They hate the tourists. And they’d prefer to modify the city’s behavior...even if it costs them tourism.
I don’t understand why the authorities there can’t deal with petty crime, even if drugs were tolerated. I suspect someone in LE there wants petty crime to be a problem, possibly for ulterior motives.
Have been to Amsterdam on my travels and yes tourists generated the money but they leave and the city has to clean up afterwards..
San Francisco is doing the same crap and it will bite them in the ass....
“I got the impression after a weekend there that most of the locals had grown tired of it’s two-percent problem in the city. They hate the tourists.”
I’ve lived in and traveled all over SE Asia and the same is true there, but the target of locals’ discontent is more aptly termed there - “the backpackers.” Those scum ask/take anything and everything, never leave a tip but always leave trash and plenty of odor. PLUS, they chase out the desirable clientele.