August 5, 2012
Let me preface this entire post by stating two slightly embarrassing but also slightly awesome facts.
1. I'm a history nerd.
2. I really enjoy a well-researched and well-executed walking tour.
So, knowing this, you can imagine how excited I was this morning, waiting for the walking tour of San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter to begin. You can also imagine my disappointment when a pastel wrapped grandma hobbled over to our group, binder in hand.
Of course, I wanted to give this lovely lady a fair chance to prove herself. However, after the first fifteen verbal disfluencies within the first five minutes, I was growing skeptical. (Having been forced into taking a public speaking class, I'm probably extra picky about other's communication skills.) Coupling this with her constant referring back to the fact-packed binder, further upsetting the flow of her speech, I was less than thrilled. When it comes to learning history, I expect to be told a story, and I expect to be told it like an eager child sitting in front of the fireside in awe of her storyteller. I've been spoiled by amazing history teachers and past walking tours, so I'm sure that, to someone with lesser expectations, it was a fine walking tour. For me, the picky bitch, it just wasn't enough.
My family's last walking tour was in Napa Valley. Our guide was a kindly old gentleman, dressed smartly in a circa 1900 suit complete with cane and top hat. (I was sold on the outfit alone.) Beyond his appearance, he was entertaining, knowledgable, and just simply...wonderful. Not only did he operate in a binder-free environment, but he really loved his job. This woman, bless her heart, did her best to hold our interest but no one really wants a sweet old lady divulging the dirty history of the red light district.
And a sweet old lady doesn't really know how. Drinking, gambling, and prostitution were the defining characteristics of the early Gaslamp Quarter, and the dirty details were pleasantly glossed over. The poor woman could not even bring herself to say the word "whorehouse." Sure, there were kids in the crowd, but there was also a nineteen year old scholar who wanted to hear the good, the bad, and (especially) the ugly. What I heard instead was "bordello," "brothel," and "ladies of the night." It took all I had not to shout "strumpet" helpfully when she was searching for another euphemism. It took even more not to shout "slut factory" when she was doing just fine on her own.
(A side note: I just used thesaurus.com to look up synonyms for both whore and whorehouse, and let me just say that there is a lot. There is no reason why she should have been stumbling around for kiddy-appropriate replacement words. Awkwardly enough, this is kind of what I'm talking about when I say that tour guides should do their research. I'm just saying.)
Overall, the walking tour was a nice, if not perfect, way to spend the morning. And besides, my family is going on another walking tour of the Hotel del Coronado on Tuesday. Southern California has one more chance to prove itself and its walking tours against Northern California. The gauntlet has been thrown down, and, surprisingly, the harlot couldn't "get it up." We'll see if Elisha Babcock, the hotel's founder, has any better luck.
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