Wicked Misleading

Mankind has executed many an excellent con through its long history of thinking and using tools–tricking animals into domesticating, breaking the bank at Monte Carlo, wearing leggings as pants. We are generally a sneaky animal. But no con thus far has proven as egregious, successful, or difficult to expose as the one executed by the tourism board of Salem, Mass.

Many of you may be considering visiting Salem for Halloween. Go. By all means, do. Enjoy the craziness, the costumes, the revelry. It’s going to be awesome and inimitable, just like they told you it would. Take the ferry or the commuter rail, bring your sluttiest slutty witch costume, and party like it isn’t the 1690s.

And then never, ever go back there again.

Ever. The nefarious Tourism Board will try to dupe you into returning. You’ll remember all the dressed-up people, all the drinking you did, and you’ll think to yourself, “What a cool place Salem is.” But remember what you learned from last weekend’s hook-up: everything looks good in the dark wearing pancake makeup, but once you turn the light on things get a lot less cute. Salem is no different.

Because if you really think back, what was actually there to see? The House of Seven Gables? It’s a house. With gables. The Salem Maritime National Historic Site? It has a U.S. Customs House complex. Which is only famous because Nathaniel Hawthorne set the first chapter of “The Scarlet Letter” there, a chapter that is so agonizingly boring that most teachers don’t make you read it. The West India Goods Store? The Pickering House (The oldest house continually occupied by the same family!)? The New England Pirate Museum? Which is full of compasses and sashes (compasses and sashes!!).

Let’s not and say we did.

Or, if you are as unlucky in your friends and as unsuspecting in your dealings with tourist traps as myself, let’s get suckered into going and waste the commuter rail fare. Let’s walk around a bunch of old buildings we aren’t allowed to enter. Like touring the Newport Mansions, but without the mansions. And also without the touring. It will be the most funnest, right?

No it will not. This level of boring is and should be obviously atrocious. Even Salem itself isn’t trying to hide it. Just look at how they advertise the attractions in their town.

“A rich maritime heritage.”

“An impressive display of historic architecture.”

“A culturally diverse population.”

Two of these aren’t even tangible. One of these is also true of North Korea. And none of these is interesting. For all that they’ve been milking Massachusetts’s middle schools for field trip money all these years, Salem hasn’t been lying to us. Minus the positive connotation of words like “impressive” and “rich,” the above is an accurate description of what Salem has to offer. The tourism board is keeping it real.

So where in creation are we getting this idea that Salem is awesome? Who is feeding the lies machine? For a long time, I couldn’t figure out whose dark dealings had landed me in that 17th-century shantytown. Of course I’d seen Salem listed on the roster of important historical Massachusetts sights. But I’d also seen the Nantucket Whaling Museum, and I’d still been smart enough to stay away from the land of “Moby Dick” dioramas. The “rich maritime heritage” of kerosene and Captain Ahab hadn’t tricked me. So why had I decided that the “rich maritime heritage” of a shipping city was cool enough to make Salem worth a visit?

It was you people. You people and your Halloween trips to Salem, talking about how haunted the House of Seven Gables is and how much fun it was. You people with your tales of Wiccan temples and costumed crazies. You’re the source of the problem. So this year, when you go there for Halloween, have fun. Go crazy. Fall in love with Salem and become convinced it’s awesome all the time.

Just shut up about it afterwards.