San Francisco is one of the world's most popular travel destinations for some pretty obvious reasons. We're gorgeous, we're smart, we're never too hot and we're never too cold. Twelve months a year the City by the Bay is packed with tourists, snapping away at our sights on their cellphones. If you were to guess where around town those tourists snapped most of their travel pics, you'd be mostly right—but not completely.
Photographer Eric Fisher began his "Locals and Tourists" project 5 years ago, mapping the photo habits of locals in blue and tourists in red. Checking out Fisher's map, it's clear that tourists flock to Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge (and as well they should—those are all great destinations.)
But check out those red spots at Ocean Beach and imagine the poor souls who came all the way to California to trek across a barren, overcast beach, home to the occasional dead whale and some hypodermic needles. We notice a few red patches in Golden Gate Park and the Castro District, as well as a little red line down Haight Street, and applaud those brave visitors for heading west of the cable cars.
A very close look will reveal a hot red patch in between North Beach and the Embarcadero. It's not quite the FiDi, and it's not really Telegraph Hill. Nope, that red patch is the strip-club stretch of Broadway. Turns out, when the lights go down in the City, some tourists head to the topless bars.
When it comes to locals, Fisher's map reveals that San Franciscans almost exclusively photograph South of Market and the Mission. Other heavy blue zones appear throughout Golden Gate Park, and then over in Oakland. If it doesn't look amazing in an Instagram filter, we won't take a picture of it. See; West Portal.
Fisher included several cities in his "Locals and Tourists" series, and placed each city in order of total local (not tourist) photos. Here's what surprised us most; San Francisco came in third! Just behind London (#1) and New York (#2), we beat Paris (#4) and Tokyo (#5).
Clearly, San Francisco is a city that loves a selfie.