I have to confess, I’m very interested in going to sites where tragedies took place. But I don’t “enjoy” it in the traditional sense. It’s an almost meditative experience.
I’m cognizant that it’s a place of pain and sorrow, and I’m empathetic, but I feel like I must be there.
The first place I visited in Dallas was Dealey Plaza, and, of course, I’ve been to the Twin Towers.
There is a site I used to visit that put together tours to places where people were murdered. It got really deep down in some specific weeds, like the parking lot where Sal Mineo was stabbed.
I’m not sure I would go out of my way to visit a place like that, but if someone were to say, as we were driving around, “hey, wanna see where Sal Mineo was killed?, ” I’d probably say, “sure.”
Hippie Critic once asked if I wanted to go to the house where the Amityville murders took place. I was game.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“We have turned an unspeakable tragedy into a tourist attraction, a dark one at that. That’s a thing, by the way, Dark Tourism, visiting disaster sites. It is also called Grief Tourism or Thanatourism (from the Greek word for death), an attraction to places associated with death, an upgraded walk in the cemetery…
“We draw lessons from it (sometimes the wrong ones) and it shapes who we are, what we believe about ourselves, and influences the way we see the world. Death, in all its forms, does that.
These things finally expose us to the sheer naked frailty of human life. They assault us, our senses and our persons. And however much we shape death as victorious defiance, with the soldier rushing forward, or as of the innocent whose innocence summons uninterrupted memorialization, these are nothing so much as part of the dark tour each of us will be compelled to take…”
h/t when faced with death…
Lived tragedy, didn’t love it, learned from it. I’m not over it yet completely.
As for visiting other sites? Nope. No interest. Storm damage? That’s from the stoopid not being prepared or over brave. They’ll learn or get over it. Most likely they will move as they are weak.
No phucking sympathy here.
When I was researching Chernobyl last year I learned about tourists to Pripyat who go to see the unmade beds, abandoned toys, houses left, their inhabitants thinking they would return in a few days.
They were tricked into leaving everything behind, the authorities not wanting them to carry radiation to the buses and away with them. The visitors all these years later look for valuables, yes, but many macabre others are attracted by the tragedy, perhaps the haunting feel of the place. There’s an industry in place to cater to people who go where animals are only just returning to.
Even the ferris wheel does nothing for me. I just don’t see the attraction
The Death Road as We used to call it , From Tecate Mex. To The Desrt Floor Was a Scary Drive for Even a Skilled Driver ! If You Looked Into The Thousand ft Deep Canyons There Were Hundreds of Cars- School Buses and even a Fire Truck or Two .
The Feeling I Get Driving There is Fear / Terror , But I’m Never Personaly Scared ! I Just Feel it But it’s not Mine ???
Ever been to Pompeii Italy?
Actually my first thought was of visiting a place where tragedy occurs every day – Congress. Not too many people could handle that place with their eyes wide open (“yes over there is where Maxine Watters sits everyday and so on…)
Actually Pompeii rattles me because I cant wrap my mind around the idea that the location of an entire thriving city could be forgotten. At least Pliny the Younger didn’t forget them.
When I was a student at UCLA, I drove a date up the Polanski / Tate driveway off of Cielo Drive where the Manson gang walked up to the house and killed 4 or 5. It was midnight, I turned the key off, and then told her where we were. Never saw that girl again after that night.
When I was in London in the early 80s, we went on a ‘Jack-the-Ripper walking tour’. The first stop was the alley he killed one of his victims. It was in a pretty creepy area and not much had changed since he was there. It was easy to imagine the scene happening right then. I was glad to leave.
When I was in New Zealand some while back, I joined a group tour of one of their active volcanoes, similar to those in the Hawaiian islands. As we approached the crater rim, a fellow American looked down into it and said, “Wow! That looks just like Hell!” A credulous Aussie turned to him and say, “Krikey, mate! You Americans have been everywhere!”
(said, not say)
As a high school junior I went to a national conference for a club I belonged to that was held in Chicago. Among the sites we toured (Sears warehouse, Hancock bldg, Commodities Exchange) was the location of the St. Valentines’ Day Massacre. I wouldn’t mind ‘touring’ more sites where the bad guys met their end.
Someday, I’d like to go to Food Town in Webster, TX. On September 16, 1989 (coincidence?), the grocery store was visited by Boris Yeltsin during his trip to Johnson Space Center. Yeltsin “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” according to Houston Chronicle reporter Stefanie Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.”
In my opinion, this spot is where the Soviet Union began to die.
After winning the Super Bowl – “I’m going to Auschwitz!”
From 1990 to 2007 I traveled to Eastern Europe four times. Especially interesting was Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo where the reminders of war were everywhere. I saw what remained of the “death camps”, blown up cities, segregated cemeteries (Sebrenica in particular), and shell-schocked people. It’s definitely a learning experience but not for everyone.
If you wait long enough, most inhabited places on Earth will qualify.
I don’t like slasher films and I have no desire to see recent murder sites. But ancient sites like Masada or sites that show human determination agains’t evil I would like to see.
I also marvel at sites that show the power of nature but would never visit a hurricane or tornado site. Pictures are good enough.
I confess as a former firefighter I do visit an occasional fire aftermath and just think “what would I have done had I been there.”