Month: August 2019

The Ten Days of Car Week

The Ten Days of Car Week — Don’t get me wrong, I love classic cars as much as the next gal, but I’d rather see them in the Auto Museum in Reno than in all the venues spread out all over the Peninsula for ten days. Did you look at that interactive map on the website of Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau (http://seemonterey.org)? Lordy, someone bled all over that map.

The Ten Days of Car Week

Navigating Car Week

Just for grins, let us say I needed to go to my doctor’s office at the VA clinic in Marina. What day and time would be my best bet? I have to take Highway One all the way. I count a minimum of sixteen events along that path. Granted, they are not all on the same day. But is there even one day without any events along that path? Amazingly, I found two days with no events along my path to the doctor’s office — yesterday and today. Too bad she isn’t open on weekends.

So what is going on those two days? Hmmm…I am sure many of them are driving up the coast on those days to get their vehicles and themselves to this ten-day Car Week, well, except those who are bringing their obscenely expensive cars in on transports, which will be lined up next to or on the Monterey Fairgrounds, if prior events are any indication. 

Is Car Week the height of hypocrisy?

Nothing symbolizes our love affair with cars and the fossil fuel industry quite like car week. California and Monterey like to hold themselves out as forerunners in the “green” movement and eco-environmentalists, and yet, for 10 days every August, we are anything but. People put their love-affair with the automobile front and center. They drive up and down the Central Coast to show off their “baby” using up gasoline and fouling our air. Yes, they bring in money for a lot of people, from the service industry to the businesses who thrive on tourism, to the County coffers. Is it worth it? Do we sell our clean air and water and environment out to the auto and fossil fuel industries? Apparently, the answer is yes.

How does a local cope?

My plan has always been to withdraw as much as possible during Monterey Car Week. I do not want to endure nor contribute to the craziness of these events. Unfortunately, I must venture out one day this week, as my iPad, upon which I work exclusively, is now on life-support. Fortunately, in addition to the Apple Store in Monterey, there is one in San Luis Obispo. Guess which one I am going to?? I prefer to see my classic automobiles at the Automobile Museum in Reno (https://www.automuseum.org/) or in one of the auction tents in Quartzite, AZ in January. But just in case you can’t get either place, and don’t want to venture out, here are a couple shots of classic cars for you to enjoy.


Bixby Bridge on a Saturday

Bixby Bridge on a Saturday shown without a CHP presence visible and with a visible presence. Apparently, it does make a difference.

Photos by Martha Diehl

Without CHP
150 feet later, around the bend, untangling the parking across the street

Car Week 2019 is really 10 days

Just a reminder, it starts tomorrow. All the events, locations, traffic nightmares can be found on the seemonterey site I linked above on my sticky post. Green for $$ — that which currently drives MoCo. (Tongue in cheek, sorta)

Sycamore Canyon Road Closure 8/8 & 8/9

Residents will be able to get in and out, but the USFS asks that you minimize any trips to allow the crew to work.

August Fire Predictions

Despite a wet winter, California again faces an above-normal chance for large wildfires as the state heads into late summer and fall. That’s according to a monthly report issued Aug. 1 by the predictive services branch of the National Interagency Fire Center. Heat — a major player in the devastating wildfires of the last two years — and the timing of autumn winds and rains will determine precisely how perilous the 2019 wildfire season becomes.

In August, the higher-risk zones are mainly in the inland valleys and foothills in the northern part of the state. By October, the danger zone extends up and down the coast and into the mountains.

Experts sometimes refer to two separate fire seasons in California: summer wildfires fed by heat and fall wildfires driven by winds.

For the rest of this article, see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/08/05/this-years-fire-season-california-could-be-very-active/

The Invisible Burden of Tourism, part 2

As Megan Epler Wood stated in the quote I cited in part one, if local people are engaged in the monitoring of vital indicators to protect local resources AND the policy makers and tourist organizations like https://www.seemonterey.com/ and https://www.visitcalifornia.com/ actually listen and implement changes and develop the programs and frameworks to actually protect the health and well-being of the local populations, ecosystems, cultures, and monuments, then the civil disobedience witnessed in July would not be necessary. When local people do not feel they are being heard, but instead federal, state, and county government, as well as the tourist organizations mentioned above put money above the health and safety of the local population and of the delicate ecosystem, then frustration will lead to the kinds of behavior we have witnessed.

Continuing on with the article by Brittany Lyte from Honolulu Civil Beat, which can be found here: https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/07/how-these-top-travel-spots-are-making-tourism-pay-its-own-way/

“The famous case is Mallorca, where they were down to $30 per night for a hotel in the ‘70s because it was a very overcrowded tourist destination,” said Megan Epler Wood, director of the International Sustainable Tourism Initiative at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the lead author of the study. 

“And I attended a meeting in the Canary Islands where the mayor of Mallorca announced that they were going to tear down hotels and the whole audience stood up and cheered. And, in fact, they did it.” 

Mallorca has since recouped high-value tourism on the island in part by shuttering hotels, and also by establishing a new eco-tax on tourists in 2016 that is funneled into a fund to pay the hidden costs of tourism. Those include managing and upgrading systems for water use, waste disposal, land use, air and carbon emissions, transportation, community values and cultural heritage.

“You can drive a destination over a cliff,” Epler Wood said. “But the way to reinsert value is to properly account for tourism’s costs and then strategically look at reinvestment.”

The Key here is “properly account for tourism’s costs” — in other words, design and implement meaningful ways to collect the data about what tourism is costing Big Sur. (To be continued next Tuesday.)

Tourist Tuesday: Lessons from Borocay Island 8/6/19

I wrote the article below, and the one that will follow later this morning two weeks ago, before the Mill Fire and before yesterday’s meetings with CABS AND Costas Christ. I still think they are valid, even though as Costas said last night, Borocay Island was an extreme solution.

Today, I would again like to offer two separate articles, this first one: Lessons from Borocay Island, The Philippines and then in a couple hours, continue on with my invisible burden series. While it would be difficult for Big Sur to implement some of these practices — we are not an island, most of the time — there is still much we can learn about the extreme measures that have been used and look at whether we can avoid any such extreme measures, in order to save to save Big Sur. (This post was originally scheduled for last week, but I changed the schedule to accommodate the Mill Fire reporting.)

The President of the Philippines closed Borocay Island, for 6 months — no planes were allowed to land, and no tourists were allowed in. The reason (to use the President’s words) was the island had become a cesspool that needed immediate action from political authorities.

While Borocay Island was closed, it was cleaned up and a new strategy put into place. The sudden decision to shutter the island for tourism in February 2018 was very harsh for the locals who depend heavily on tourism. The main idea behind the decision was to use the hiatus to clean up the environment, improve hotels’ sewage treatment systems, and to develop a tourism strategy that guarantees a sustainable future for the island. Hence, Boracay re-opened on October 26, 2018 with a new strategy that intends to restrict tourism to make it more sustainable

These rules are as follows:

  • Quota on tourist visits based on the island’s carrying capacity (only 6,405 tourists per day can land on the island).
  • New regulations regarding tourists’ attitudes and behavior (e.g., smoking and drinking alcohol are forbidden on White beach, the most visited beach on the island) – (click here to see all the regulations).
  • New regulations regarding locals’ attitudes and behavior (e.g. raising pigs or chickens for a living is forbidden).
  • Only the hotels compliant with the requirements of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, and accredited by the Department of Tourism, can open again. Tourists can only come to the island if they reserve a room at one of these hotels.
  • All hotels must be connected to a proper sewage treatment system.
  • Road widening project to resolve congestion issues.
  • Trash and unauthorized buildings will be removed from the wetlands.
  • Buildings within 30 meters of the shoreline will be destroyed.
  • Gambling is forbidden on the island.

These regulations, assuming compliance is widespread, should enable tourism on Boracay Island to become more sustainable. But what has really happened since the reopening? Costas Christ touched on one of the ramifications of this extreme measure last night.

For the answer to that question, go here: https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4094313.html to read the rest of the article.