I have a bit of an extreme-anecdote about this from the late 90s. I had a friend who was working part-time as a tourist guide while studying international relations. He normally gave people an accurate description of things, but one day, IIRC on account of being frustrated with the tourism company that hired him, the described a nice downtown square as "This is Plaza <his name>, in honor of an important 19th century artist".
On the flipside, I live in a semi-touristic district myself, and I often find people taking pictures of some architectural detail, which in turns makes me look at it, and realized I had been walking by the place without really looking at it until then.
You can discover many interesting things you had no idea existed.
I did this in Montreal and discovered many little gems in the tourist area I had previously visited, including a lovely museum of the restored house of a 19th century politician. And I found many museums off the beaten track.
I also see tourists photographing my apartment building all the time. It's not really anything special to me, just an early 20th century walkup with a brick facade on a street of similar buildings. But I guess I'm numb to the charm of it because tourists seem to love it.
The tour guides are pretty funny too. I'm pretty sure at least half of what they say is completely made up.
He is a history buff, though, knowing "everything" about every king and fight the last centuries in Europe. So I think what he told would be plausible and rooted in truth. But makes me wonder about the stories he told me as a kid, before smart phones that could rebuff his tales.
I grew up hearing his descriptions on every conceivable historical event, and I was amazed of how much he seemed to know about everything. At the time I felt that he was truly knowledgeable, and I couldn't even conceive of knowing even a fraction of what he knew.
Then, when I grew older, I finally asked how he managed to know so much. His response? Laughingly, he told me that he made a lot of educated guesses on how things seemed to him!
That was a decisive formative experience for me: so that's how he pulled it off? Now I'm much more relaxed with the degree of detail I can know about things, and I also take what anyone is saying at any one moment with a saltier dose of skepticism. We're all humans after all, and telling tales is deeply rooted in our natures.
Now when I go home I see the city through new eyes and it really is a charming place. It feels like it would be a really nice place to live. When I did live there, I couldn't wait to leave.
I still have almost no interest in history, but after living in a bunch of different places I appreciate how Stratford is very clean and well maintained, has no visible homelessness, it is pedestrian and bicycle friendly, and has lots of interesting shops and restaurants. The people that live and work there are shockingly friendly, even by Canadian standards. When I lived there I had nothing to compare it to. I had to leave to find out how nice it really is.
Just in case people don't know, the Stratford Festival[1] is pretty famous in Ontario, if not all across Canada, as a rather prominant Canadian arts event[2]. It's certainly the main reason our school raised funds on occasion to visit during the festival. It was a big deal for us and we were only 2hrs away by bus.
Anyway, those maps could also be that way because locals try to avoid tourists. It's not a big deal where I currently live, but it is very annoying in Barcelona, Madrid, etc, that kind of places. Not only because touristy places become pricey or there's too many people, but because some tourists are... special.
Some years ago I tried to be a tourist in my own city and basically treated my weekends like going on a city break as a tourist (helped that it was a city of several million inhabitants and some centuries of history, so it had some potential). I discovered some really wonderful places, sometimes right next to the streets I drove on every day for work. That made a difference for me in how I looked at the city and made my life there just a bit more content.
I've done that accompanying friends around London. It's interesting, fun and I highly recommend it.
That said, implicit in some of the commentary is that tourists miss the local aspect of s city they visit by remaining in tourist areas. My take is that is the whole point of most tourism. They don’t want to see the same humdrum stuff they have in their home cities, they don’t need to know about boring shitty areas or family residential areas. No, they want some foreign entertainment and feel. They want some levity and some pop on their holidays.
LOVE statue in Philadelphia, 1978.
Spoonbridge and Cherry in Minneapolis, 1985.
Pork ‘n’ Beans in Seattle 2001.
Peanuts statues in Minneapolis/St. Paul, 2003.
Chicago Bean, 2004.
SF Hearts, 2004.
Lion statues at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1893
And now I live in San Francisco's North beach right near Pier 39, I'm surrounded by tourists. I do actually enjoy walking along the touristy area and seeing the sea lions on occasion, although the tourist prices for all the restaurants aren't great, and sometimes the crowds are very annoying if I'm just trying to get somewhere specific.
How do you know how other people perceive these things?
Maybe I’m looking at it through my own bent glasses. One example on my mind was a ‘thing’ right before my building. Imagine like a 2m tall painting in a thick wooden frame and a foundation to hold it, but there is no painting, as if someone cut it entirely. Like empty frame. People make self-shots sitting in it, and it has some plate with a description on it. But it was mounted only last winter. I’ll maybe check it next time, but my pragmatic side tells me that it’s yet another artistic catch for touristic attractiveness. I also know the guy in his 60s who spent his childhood there. The entire area was built and cultivated from scratch as a heritage corner by few powerful mosque rulers (locally famous people still lived there, no doubt, but that’s true for the entire old town).
I probably couldn't point out one interesting historic part of my own city if put on the spot, though I know they exist (while not as old or as large as SF, it's been around a while too).
A lot of tourists here in Memphis come to see Elvis Presley's house (Graceland), but many local residents have never been there, despite having some degree of connection to him. I met a couple from England on the street a few years back. They were eager to hear some stories about relatives and coworkers who met Elvis, but when asked about Graceland, I had to say 'Nope never been there'....
I work across from the famous Sugar Loaf mountain with the trolley between the mountains, maybe familiar to some from James Bond movies. It's really really really expensive to go there.