by KevinFreitas
on 6/28/2007 @ 6:46am
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Here's some interesting perspective emailed to me by Laura Hanan:
We have guests from the Netherlands renting our vacation rental condo for two weeks downtown in the Theater District. When they arrived today - they came through Canada - they arrived a little upset because they were held up at the border for two hours and questioned with suspicion and rather relentlessly about why they were coming to Tacoma - "Why would you go to Tacoma?" they were asked. The visitors answered that they were vacationing and staying in Tacoma. The border people were incredulous "Why Tacoma? Why not Seattle?" Our guests told us that they immediately began to wonder "what is wrong with Tacoma?"
With the incredible investment & effort that everyone is putting forth to promote good things that are happening downtown (Exit133, feedtacoma.com), I found this story rather disturbing. If this is the experience and information people get at the border, why would anyone ever venture into Washington state let alone Tacoma?
It may be time our visitor's bureau sent up some pamphlets about Tacoma so those border patrol folks see there's plenty to do here other than be a terrorist.
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by AP
on 6/28/2007 @ 10:23am | I'm certainly not one to stand up for misbehaving authorities, but I've crossed that border dozens of times, and you never know what you're going to get. I've been equally interrogated on the way to Whistler. Hopefully, they were just suspicious of the people and not Tacoma. If they WERE taking special exception to visitors to Tacoma, then I think we should send that border crossing something rotten, offensive, or both. |
