Tourism in Mendocino County is the ship that never docks, the train that never slows, the freeway exit always closed for repairs.
Tourists in Ukiah: the dream that will not die, the hope that won’t come true, the colossal waste of money that gets flushed every fiscal year. We should know better. Some of us do.
If these are days requiring fiscal belt-tightening and eliminating ineffective county expenditures, then all offices, bureaus and centers dedicated to tourism should turn off their lights, empty their travel brochure racks and go home.
They will be missed by everyone. Except tourists.
Which brings us to the inevitable question: (What tourists? What indicates people from places other than Willits and Redwood Valley ever visit Ukiah except to buy gasoline?
Imagine, if you can, arriving here for the first time and rolling up State Street from the south end of town. Does Ukiah look similar to what most people imagine to be a tourist-friendly place, with the relentless graffiti and the dazed, dangerous and pitiful homeless population staggering about?
Would you and your family interpret the lonesome fruit peddlers standing on corners with their oranges, flowers and sadness, as Napa-like welcoming ambassadors? Our motels do not give the appearance of oases of comfort and relaxation, and that’s putting it in the most delicate manner possible.
The tourism industry is forever telling us, and more to the point telling our elected officials, how vital are its services and how great the strides they’ve made in luring the unsuspecting to town.
From a certain perspective it’s true that the travel industry is booming, because there are more people employed in the tourist-based “visitor” industry than there are actual tourists.
In the teeth of all this futility the expensive game goes on, and in fact the city and county appear to be doubling down on their mistakes. Witness the two offices within a couple blocks and a couple hundred feet of each other in downtown Ukiah.
Improbable as it is and as redundant and pointless as can be, it’s true: We have two shops dedicated to increasing tourism in this barren land of boarded up shops, a dying marijuana world and streets on which homeless, with their dogs and shopping carts, are the only pedestrians.
I recently visited the California Welcome Center office, which is paired with Ukiah’s Tourist Alliance, the Main Street Program, the Chamber of Commerce and the Visit Ukiah office in the downtown Conference Center. Do you wonder if any of their limited services overlap with each another?
The lush oriental-style carpet and expensive furnishings cry out for visitors, and if tourists don’t visit, who will? So I did.
I paused and browsed the numerous brochures on a rack outside the office, and it’s a good thing I did. Entering the grand and spacious (for Ukiah) lounge I interrupted a woman deeply involved with a cell phone. She looked up.
“Help you?” she asked, a greeting warm and welcome as a hole in the ice. I groveled, knelt and stammered. She waved a hand, directed me back out the door to the brochures, and got back to business with the phone.
She must have known I was pure Ukiah, not a tourist from somewhere swanky like Rohnert Park.
Yes, I’d tasted defeat, but I had my other card to play. To 105 West Clay I headed and 60 seconds later I arrived. But failed. I tried twice more that week and all three times was thwarted, it being thrice closed. Your turn.
I did spend time peering between slats of ill-closed blinds and spotted the inevitable travel brochure rack, the coffee pot and a big sign that said something like “Magic is Real.” Honest.
This carries on the area’s rich tradition of silly stupid slogans meant to reel in credulous people with nowhere to go, but hopefully persuaded to come to this adventure-laden land of weed, wine, and weird.
Who remembers “Hometown Days” or “U Know It’s All Here” with its coded U K I A H letters cleverly embedded in the slogan. More recently, “Near By, Far Out” which impressed city council members, but not tourists.
Well, what shall we do? How about taking our abundant supply of figurative lemons and making lemonade, with maybe a heavy slug of vodka? Why not peddle Mendocino County as Mendocino County, not just a chunk of geography north of Sonoma County?
If tourist offices are inevitable, and apparently they are, let’s have them focus on our history: Jim Jones, Charlie Manson, Hell’s Angel burial grounds, the pot farms and meth labs, the depraved Leonard Lake and partner Charles Ng.
Hire Bruce Anderson to write their pseudo-histories and have Martin Brown draw up colorful, pseudo maps.
At minimum the racks of local travel brochures won’t look like all the travel racks in all the other counties.
Amen. Waste of taxpayer dollars.