Where I work in central London, the streets are full of tourists and busy office workers, in roughly equal quantities. The office workers and tourists are instantly distinguishable from each other by their clothes and behaviour. The tourists are somewhat oblivious to the office workers, who for them form part of the background architecture of the city, and the office workers march around feeling superior to the dull cattle-like masses of tourists who gawp at red phone boxes and double-decker buses and don't know where they're going.

This idea then is based on the notion that adopting the outward appearance and behaviour of another group of people allows you to better appreciate their perspective and motivations. So, for one day a year, all the office workers would swap their smart clothes and purposeful marching for a tourist outfit of their choice and a slow, uncertain walking pace, looking around at every opportunity. London displays several distinct tourist 'uniforms', so, for example, Italian tourists are easily identifiable and are different from German tourists; Californian tourists are dressed differently from Japanese tourists - the office worker would be able to choose from any of the 'looks' on offer.

By doing this, the office worker may start to understand the perspective of the tourist and gain a renewed appreciation of the city in which they work, and an understanding of how it must look to one who had not visited it before.
-- hippo, Mar 21 2011

It is less to do with the clothes, though, and more to do with the behaviour. If the scope of the day were simultaneously extended and narrowed to, I dunno, "Dress like a tourist and act like a gormless fud day" then I suspect office drones would get a better feel for life as a tourist than they can by merely carrying a large camera and wearing a Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap.

Incidentally, back in the dim and distant days of playful civil unrest (i.e. 2008), office workers in Edinburgh were advised to dress down so as to avoid being informed of the questionable morality of their jobs by the massed miffed who had gathered in the capital to whinge about the G20 at Gleneagles. The problem with this camo-plan was that Edinburgh professionals are in deed and dress entirely perjink: cork-soled boat shoes, chinos and pink Pink shirts did not allow the unhindered mingling they had hoped/feared. All of which means this: on DLAT(AALAGF)D there should be city limit stripping and clothes exchange, to ensure tourist-drone bonding and, more importantly, verisimilitude of dress.
-- calum, Mar 21 2011


//gain a renewed appreciation of the city//

I moved to the Big Smoke about 6 months ago and I see the need for this daily. I commute in to London town and then walk 10 minutes (or recently, take the bus for about 120 seconds) and have a great view of the Palace of Westminster, the London Eye, the Gherkin, and St. Paul's Cathedral to namedrop a few sites. However, the vast majority of folks walking on the bridge across the Thames have their head down and are trudging or ploughing their way to work.

Not me - I'm still gawping at the sites like a village idiot (nothing changes there then!).
-- Jinbish, Mar 21 2011


[hippo] how do you know that this isn't already being done by every company except yours, but on different days?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 21 2011


Perhaps an elite bus load of tourists, after suitable training and a visit to the right clothing shop for business attire, could march and gawk in formation on that special day. ( Californians would obviously have to rent the clothes. But some tourists might find a suit and tie of use back home. )
-- popbottle, Jan 17 2016


[hippo], I spent two weeks in London doing monochrome street photography in '99 - it's a city well worth gawking at.

Sign me up for the clothing exchange.
-- normzone, Jan 17 2016



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