Hippies para turistas

En alguno de los libros que he estado revisando en la etapa final de redacción de la tesis me encontré con esta joya: un proyecto turístico que pretendía (tal vez lo logró a largo plazo) cambiar a los viejos hippies del barrio, ya demasiado sucios, por nuevos hippies –actores– más amables con los turistas. Es una de esas ideas que lo deja a uno pensando en todo tipo de cosas (conflictos generacionales y de clase; el turismo y las clases medias; el simulacro y la posmodernidad) sin lograr sacar ninguna conclusión clara. Les comparto el fragmento:

"When I lived in the Haight Ashbury (San Francisco), tour buses visited my neighborhood to afford the tourists a look at the street life, old hippies, middleclass kids on summer vacation playing at being homeless, casual street dealing in recreational drugs, and sometimes me. In the mid 1990s someone in city government became concerned that the hippies had become too scruffy, and perhaps scary for tourists. The city floated several suggestions for cleaning up the Haight without reducing its value as an attraction. One idea was to round up and deport all the old hippies and another undesirables to Mendocino County while hiring actors as street performers to act out the role of (presumably somewhat more clean-cut) hippies for tourists. This solution was seriously discussed before it was ruled out because of costs".              

Dean Maccannell, en The ethics of sightseeing