Freedom Ain't Free

Looks like Becky is going to make any description of our recent Massachusetts explorama redundant with her epic post on the subject, but I did want to add some quick reflections on historical tourism in our nation's crucible.

Living in Oakland, just a bridge crossing away from San Francisco, whenever we'd host first time Bay Area visitors we knew we'd be subjected to the baseline area tourism experience for at least one day. As any resident could tell you, this includes such attractions as Chinatown, maybe a Cable Car ride, Fisherman's Wharf, and the almost universally loathed Pier 39. I'm sure many residents resist the tourism loop completely, but we feared dissuading visitors from the experience would just be selfish of us. As lame and misrepresentative of the area as some of those tourist-trap sites could be, how could we send our visitors back home without that common frame of reference, some content for conversation with any past or future Bay Area tourist or resident?

There are just those things you have to see when you travel somewhere for the first time, even if they are utterly corporate. To avoid them would require an almost comical act of repression. Ghiradelli Square? La la la la la, I can't hear you! Luckily, the standard crappy Boston tourism experience is a lot more interesting than the Bay Area's, in my opinion, because Boston's is built around US history rather than pretty scenery and shopping. In fact, it's downright moving at parts.

At the center of the experience is the Freedom Trail, a walking route starting from Boston Common which hits dozens of sites somehow relevant to the colonial experience and the American Revolution. Other popular Massachusetts attractions we hit last week were Salem and Plimoth Plantation. These sites may be more historically meaningful, but, as I found out, they are no less commercial than those SF hot spots. Now, I'm not naive. I know that wherever there are a mass of people there will be entrepreneurs hoping to take advantage of them. I suppose I just wasn't prepared for the high cost of even entering certain national landmarks. Aside from a few public areas like the Common, various burial grounds, and any landmark now inhabited by a shopping mall (like Fanieul Hall), walking the Freedom Trail is potentially rather costly.

Official Freedom Tour guided walk: $12
Paul Revere House: $3
Old State House: $5
Old South Meeting House: $5
Old North Church ("one if by land, two if by sea"): donations encouraged, and you can't go up to the steeple.
Historic Cambridge self-guided walking tour map: $2.50
Trinity Church: $5 self-guided tour
Salem Witch Museum (in no way official): $6
Plimoth Plantation and Mayflower II (both private "recreations"): $24

They haven't figured out a way to charge for the Holocaust Memorial. Yet.

I don't know, I understand the cost involved with maintaining all of these attractions, and that some of them are privately owned. The Old North Church is still a working church, so why sacrifice the living history for the mythology? But there's something pretty irksome about touring American heritage sites and being confronted by admissions fees at every turn in addition to the tacky souvenir shops. Don't Americans deserve some competent and, most importantly, free propaganda about the founding of our nation? Isn't it our birthright to visit gratis a convincing recreation, complete with LARPers, of the Puritan plantation where we launched one of our most impressive East Coast land-grabs?

Seriously, though, why doesn't the Federal Government feel it important enough to subsidize visits to the landmarks where our democracy was forged? Or is it completely fitting that our most primary landmarks reflect the characteristically American tension between democratic and capitalistic values?