Goddamn Tourists: Running Downhill On The Cultural Curve

Lorraine scouting for secret beaches – photo by me

There is a beach, in Moulay Bousselham (a small town between Rabat and Tangiers on the Moroccan Atlantic coast) that my parents used to take my brother and I to, along with my Mom’s entire family. And because she is one of eleven siblings (therefore include their wives/husbands, plus all the resulting cousins), these were quite the family events. Moulay Bousselham was my favorite, and the one I wish I could revive the most. Two things fascinated me about that town, as a kid: the horizontally looping motorcycle show (one, sometimes two dirt-bikes racing around in horizontal circles inside a 30 foot diameter wooden cylinder, while you watched in amazement from above, wondering what had happened to gravity); and, naturally, there was the beach, with super strong water-streams, and super high sand dunes, which were SO MUCH FUCKIN’ FUN.

Earlier this week, I was laying down on the very same beach. We didn’t quite make it to the dunes, though. Time wasn’t our friend and we had to make it to Tangiers by sundown. By “we”, this time, I mean my friend Lorraine and our new acquaintances, Julie and Fatima-Zohra, on the second day of our impromptu, on-the-fly, budget road trip through the Moroccan north-west. That’s three girls and one not-quite-so-manly dude, which made for interesting situations at times.

That day, as I was taking a snooze on the Moulay beach, I heard the voice of a kid near me. “M’sieur, M’sieur!” Hmmm? “M’sieur, M’sieur!” Okay, what? Wait… what? This little dude was 12 years old at best when I looked up at him; he was miming a cigarette to me, pretty much asking me for one.

Let’s be clear. What bothered me wasn’t so much that he smoked, or that he lied about his age when I asked him. Many underprivileged children do that there, and that is the least of the problems they go through. Not that it should be disregarded either. I sent the little bastard off on his way empty handed and pissed off… What got to me, though, is a bit more selfish: he thought I was a Gaori – a local, benign slang for ‘Westerner’ – called me “Monsieur” and MIMED a cigarette; little fucker wasn’t even bothered to speak to me. To say that I felt out of place in a town I used to go to with my entire family would be an understatement. Moulay Bousselham isn’t exactly a touristic hub. Yet there I was, getting my tan on, with 3 French girls. Why the hell wouldn’t some kid, or anyone on that beach, call me “M’sieur” upon seeing us?

It was a small, bitter, yet predictable reminder of the big question mark surrounding how much I fit in inside my own country. This type of scenario would repeat itself in one way or another throughout the trip, in Fez, Seffrou, Tangiers, in various food joints, cafes or beaches along the way… Every once in a while I was to be reminded that I not only appeared as a tourist, I basically WAS one, and every time I attempted to shake the feeling off, take charge and talk to the locals like the local I was, things spun out of control: I would stumble on my words, completely mutilate some of them, my thoughts went back to what I was wearing, how I must’ve appeared to them; shit, I even had to rehearse some basic colloquialisms in my head before saying them out loud. The discomfort was obvious and apparent. At one point some less-than-subtle guy laughed out loud at how I butchered one particular word.

At the end of the day, I must admit that my Gaori trip-mates fared way better as tourists than I did as a local… Actually, they fared better than me, period. If I hadn’t just landed from 12 years in the US, I would’ve hid in the closet for months, out of shame…

Yet I have a feeling I should not only brace myself for more, I should pretty much embrace it. To my knowledge, I haven’t been able to assimilate Moroccan culture as my own ever since Punk Rock took over some 15 years ago. I mean, for fuck’s sake, why can’t I write this post in Arabic? Or even in French? I can’t! Not easily, at least. At this point in time, I may as well start referring to Morocco as ‘exotic’ and look out for camels and palm trees. My childhood memories are just that: childhood memories… Hey, at least I have those.

All I know is that you can’t beat racing down those sand dunes at full speed simultaneously with 25 or so family members, all holding hands. Even if we weren’t tourists then, we certainly looked like a bunch of absolute dorks, and I don’t really think anyone gave a shit.

So why should I?

Moroccan couple taking a dip at a small beach East of Tangiers – Photo by me

they take away our jobs

(photographs taken at West Fest, in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood by Damen and Chicago Ave, summer 2008)

the story:

I belong to a kickball league (yes, kickball, I’m 27, sue me) which, to oversimplify it, consists of a horde of drunken degenerate punks that gathers every summer sunday in the Chicago area known as Humboldt Park. Why I do this is completely irrelevant at the moment (but it’s a whole lotta fun, lemme tell ya).

Humboldt park is a predominantly Puerto Rican area a little north-west of town and the main park is always a busy place come summertime. You would think Puerto Ricans would choose perhaps tuesday (or “toozdey”) to swarm the parks, but noooo. It just so happens that, just like the rest of us, Sunday is their day of choice to show up… all speaking Spanish and whatnot… A good time for family and friends, a good time to show off your 1950′s red Ford Crown, and a good time for small, mobile and portable business.

Thus, every so often in between kicking a ball and chugging a Pabst, we’d hear the jingling bells from a good old ice cream vendor‘s cart – we’ve all seen them . Some guy strolling slowly through the park with his cooler. So slow in fact that you wondered whether he came there to sell anything at all… Those dudes have no marketing strategy beyond the fruity stickers garnishing the cooler and the tiny bells, and for good reason: most of them do so without a permit, against city laws; so discretion is key. Unmistakably, however, they look happy; or satisfied at the very least. Selling cold treats on the street – and street food in general – is no novelty in Latin American culture or in any culture for that matter, and it must be a humbling experience to see tons of children everyday, all excited about a bunch of frozen sugary stuff, a universally bonding experience for the kid in us. And yet, though, I am sure that, somewhere inside, they wish their best days were worth a little more than $50. Just a bit.

Cut to about 6 short blocks east of that area one evening, in the Wicker Park / Ukranian Village neighborhood – once an industrial area; a hub for punks and artists; and now recently an upscale yuppy self-important Prius driving mecca – I suddenly heard one bright shiny bell ring in the distance as I was crossing the street. I turned my head in the direction of the sound… and there she was. The lady (trying hard not to call her “the blond chick”) with the ice cream cart.

Or “gellatto,” I should say. Because that’s what she called it, in her overly sweetened inquisitive voice, extending that last syllable just painfully enough to make it sound like an “eww.” Yeah, there she was; strolling down the street at a busy intersection, selling what surely must be some sort of organic ice cream made with milk from south-eastern France; and I am not exactly certain I thought those things had ever existed before that night. Let me clarify what I mean by “those things.” We’re not about to enter a debate on ice-cream ingredients.

A squeaky clean, blond haired, tank-top wearing, capri-jeans sporting, former sorority girl with a “college degree” and a tan, pushing an ice-cream cart with a business logo on it is nothing short of an anomaly in my book, and it quite honestly made me cringe. In a very odd way, this was borderline insulting. I am not so much upset at the girl as I am at the people who decided to implement that idea in that area, and using such a protagonist. But the ultimate anger goes to the ones who decided to ratify and allow a business permit for this shit just because they could afford it. These are the same people who handed out countless other permits, giving green light to ludicrous projects amounting to cultural snobbery. This most notably includes the handing out of permits to build overly-expensive, frankly unattractive “affordable housing” developments and overpriced “organic restaurants” that offer a choice of 12 different buns when you order a goddamn hamburger, thus resulting in the displacing of those (ethnic minorities mostly) who can’t afford soaring property and hamburger values.

The invasion of the suburbanites is upon us… and they want us to eat healthy, be clean, and go to bed early.

Gentrification spreads fast and while it may improve certain things, these improvements almost always come at the cost of something, or someone else at all levels of the cultural spectrum. Even at the ice cream level; and I am sorry, but until you hand out a decent job to our Puerto Rican kids and integrate them in your plan, I’m gonna want my street ice cream poorly packaged, made with basic ingredients, and stored in a dusty sticker laden cooler pushed by a guy who loves doing it and hates it at the same time. That’s why they call it street food. And while we’re at it, guess what, it’s supposed to be noisy too. You don’t whisper sweet “gellatto’s” at passer-by’s ears, you shout it the hell out, and we shout back! Because food is something worth celebrating with others.

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UPDATE: This is exactly the kind of bullshit i’m talking about. This time in Pilsen, another slowly gentrifying neighborhood.