The Metropolis

Stop going to tourist attractions that don't exist. It's embarrassing

Mike Pollitt | Sunday 18 September, 2011 11:33

Christopher Fowler has a nice line on Platform 9 3/4, the Harry Potter shrine at King’s Cross station:

…it’s the perfect tourist attraction – you don’t have to spend any time there, and you learn nothing from your visit. So much better than those boring old galleries and museums

He compares it to 221b Baker Street, another shrine for those unable to separate fiction from fact. And he’s right, this is madness. What sort of tourists would rather make pilgrimage to invented places than to real ones? What sort of world venerates whodunnits and children’s books, not to mention Rocky Balboa and Robocop, with public artwork? When did statues become just another advert? What the hell is wrong with people?

Future archaeologists are going to be laughing in our skeletons’ faces when they dig all this stuff up, that’s all I can say. Then they will be sad for us, because we chose to venerate meaningless things.

Secret London has rounded up some other memorials to fictional characters, including suspected illegal immigrant Paddington Bear and immature self-aggrandiser Peter Pan, here.

(Photo by andrewl04 on Flickr)

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