tourism needs recycling

It's difficult to make a living in a tourist town. That's one of my latest realizations. Sure, everybody told me about the low wages and the seasonal work, but seeing as I work from the internet, I didn't think it would affect me. Unfortunately, the limited approach to industry also spills over onto the net. Every business in this town seems to operate within a very thin field of expectation - a rather stale paradigm, in my opinion.

Even some of the more common business strategies (such as trying to offer something new to the town) are absent here. Instead, everyone rides on each other's coat-tails. Everyone complains about the high turnover rate of new businesses, and yet every year we get a rash of new motels, bed & breakfasts, art galleries, and knick-knack Ozark shops "specializing" in crude and funny t-shirts.

On the off-chance that they do attempt something new, it is generally a cheap facsimile of something that was profitable in another town. Sometimes I think it has to do with a lack of "new blood", or people with fresh ideas. Part of the problem has to do with the fact that most of the people with fresh ideas aren't the ones with the funding to implement them. The other problem is that trying to get anything approved by the local city council is nearly impossible. Such is life in a small town...