Before we moved here full time, I had thought that tourism was a great way to have a good economy. Hah! The downsides are many, when the 50,000 tourists outnumber the 8,000 residents. We now have a quarter of all houses in town as VRDs (vacation rental dwellings). That means that one in every four houses has no permanent occupants, no one to care about what happens in their neighborhood or the town in general. The rental management companies encourage overfilling houses (= more $$$): a four bedroom house often has 8-10 cars outside. Even if no one has brought kids, that probably means an average of two people per car, or 16-20 adults in a 4BR home! There are always rollaway beds and cots stashed in all the closets. By the end of any weekend, trash overflows. Large groups often like to party, with no regard for people who have to work, live a normal life, in the house next door. The other huge downside is that all the low-income workers necessary to keep the rentals and restaurants running have no place to live: the little houses scattered around town have been converted into VRDs for the most part. Tourism workers are forced to live north of town in an unincorporated area where taxes are far less. Also, there are far more tourists during the nice summer months, which means lots of low-income workers laid off as winter sets in. Tourism costs our town a great deal: all the infrastructure to support all those tourists must be paid for by residents.

Yesterday it was so warm that you could be out on the beach without even a sweater, and the beaches were crowded. On Monday, when I walk the quarter-mile to collect our mail, I'll need to take a trash bag to pick up all the litter, all those cute little plastic bags of dog poop left alongside the road. My trash can runneth over!