The fabric of time loves American tourists.

December 16, 2025 3:08 AM Subscribe

"So when the American family slows down time to reflect on gianduia, or pistacchio, or arachidi salate, it feels as though they are not reflecting on flavors with us, they are talking to us as if we were curiosities of history, oddities, eccentricities, exotic pralines with the gift of speech. They love to hear us talk, explain our gelato flavors. We are the funny-talking people who explain flavors. They are the protagonists of history; we are not. They are slow because they are the main characters; they own their time. They own time." - Francesco Pacifico: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (The Dial)

Come for the tourist bashing, stay for the criticism of capitalism, gentrification and real estate machinations. Another banger quote:

A better understanding might come from the worker’s point of view. That is the pressure point of this whole scene. The worker’s tasks are: Scoop gelato, make coffee, put the pralines and cookies on little plates, handle the cash register, rush to the small room where the shaker is, and prepare the green smoothies. The worker can only go to the employee toilet downstairs (there is no toilet for customers) if a regular is in the premises and can watch the place while they’re in the basement peeing. This worker is the nexus of all the systemic energy that put money in this shop, and in the American family’s pockets. All the invested money can only bring the desired results for both actors — owner and tourist — if the body of the worker can keep up.

The structure of a tourist’s city is mostly hidden. We don’t read on plaques which funds now own a building or a business. We don’t read about how little of tourism money trickles down to society by way of decent wages and taxes. Here’s what’s not hidden: For the whole enterprise to work, the business owner must employ only one employee at a time, or else they will not reach whatever wealth they were dreaming to get when they opened the place. So only one worker. A worker can be seen as a body that, after it is exerted for hours, comes to amount to a sack of urine. The universal consciousness has gently plucked a teeny tiny part of itself and put it in a human body to see how well it can do under the circumstances. Will anyone come to help the worker? the universal conscience wonders.

Today, the worker can go to the toilet because I’m a regular. In a way, I am being surreptitiously employed by the owner for two minutes. Pull back the curtain, and you start seeing the void over which the entire economy hovers.