In the spirit of if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, perhaps it is time to overdose on blue pills from “The Matrix,” the better to accept the assertion of tourism being the savior for Johnstown’s downtrodden economy.
For those unfamiliar with the movie, taking the blue pill keeps one in a state of blissful ignorance to reality; fitting since blue is the defining color of the Democratic Party.
And Democrats are in the forefront of insisting that the Johnstown area can be Disney World, Cancun and Hawaii all rolled into one when it comes to attracting tourist dollars. Why, we have miles and miles of trails, not to mention streams and rivers and mountains.
It is fair to note that Ukraine can make the same claim, yet not many tourists are headed there these days. But I digress.
If we are to become a tourist mecca, flush with money-is-no-object free spenders visiting us, we’re going to need to appeal to more than hikers and kayakers. Dare I suggest we play to our strengths, those being violence, drugs, decaying infrastructure, blighted neighborhoods and elitist nepotism.
Imagine the demand for Moxham Ninja Tours, held only after dark, during which tourists are outfitted with portable police scanners and set out with the goal of being first on the scene of those radio reports of crimes – perhaps beating the police there.
I can see the ads now, dramatic chase images played against the soundtrack of the William Tell Overture (Lone Ranger theme song) showing tourists racing about darkened streets in the pursuit of criminal activity.
Forget video games or virtual reality experiences, this would be reality unfiltered. What a rush! Zip-lining through the Amazon is kid’s stuff compared to this.
Our tourists would tend to be explorers, so offer them the chance to don helmets and other safety items and allow them to roam at their leisure through our abundance of abandoned buildings and residences. They’d have to sign waivers in advance, of course, just in case.
Another angle might be themed scavenger hunts – residents excluded because of their home-field advantage. We could have hunts to find expended ammo casings, discarded drug paraphernalia, or specific types of litter such as as outdated political campaign signs or posters for previous Johnstown tourism events.
Bus tours could be mounted so that tourists could ride around on our washboard streets, many still in disrepair due to our never-ending sewer upgrade project, or subpar repairs to the roads performed after the sewer work was done there.
Ads would need to stress the bus ride angle. No tourists in their right mind would want to drive their daily transportation on these streets.
More sedate entertainment for tourists might be an educational angle, with seminars to show our visitors family trees demonstrating the generally incestuous nature of local governance, both nominal and shadow.
If you’ve ever visited San Antonio, Texas, you no doubt are familiar with the River Walk there. Restaurants, cafes, watering holes of all description line the canals that snake through the downtown, those canals being traversed by small passenger boats.
Access is as easy as walking down a flight of stairs from street level. Our tourists would need to settle for bars and restaurants being up top. But those wishing to partake of the boat rides would have the added experience of needing to rappel down our steeply sloped flood control walls, which would only add to the experience.
Final point: In a nod to the Myopia 2025 partisans, we could bring in planeloads of Afghan refugees to man those low-paying, seasonal, part-time tourism jobs our locals never would accept.
Talk about a win-win situation!
Sam Ross Jr's site 