How long was it since my last visit to Albany’s Tulip Festival?
Not long enough.
Yes, this sounds like the rambling of an increasingly crotchety old man, but hear me out.
If you’ve been to the festival, you know that the area around the Moses statue is tulip central, the best spot to take in a riotous assortment of blooms like you’ve never seen. Sure, there’s fair food and music and craft booths all over Washington Park, but this is the shit. It’s called the Tulip Festival, for a reason and here are the tulips.
Naturally, this area was mobbed, but oddly, nobody seemed to be paying attention to the tulips, they were paying attention to themselves. Albany had a bad case of the selfies.
Everywhere you looked, people stood with their arms in the air snapping away. If you wanted to take a picture of the tulips it would have been impossible to do it without seeing someone taking a selfie in the background.
It was… bizarre.
It used to be that you’d go somewhere and walk around and take in the sights. Now you go and take pictures of yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that everyone now has a pretty good camera in their pocket. It’s never been easier to to take pictures and share them with friends and family, and that’s a big positive. But what does it say when we’re so obsessed with the selfies? Look at what I saw has turned into look at me.
We fled the festival and headed for Thacher Park, where we saw not a single tulip and not one person taking a selfie.
We stay away when the festival is going on.
It felt much more crowded than in the old days.
I liked this post so much, I almost took a selfie with it.
I’d very much like someone to extend their selfie arm and be hit by lightning.