They walked in like they owned the place. A little clique of fanny pack wearing gentlemen in San Francisco tourist shirts covered by European soccer warm –up jackets, bottomed off with black socks and open toed sandals.
Huddling together like a rugby scrum they soon cautiously approached the bar.

“We shall have ze Petite Chablis,” said the newly appointed leader fingering his selection on our predominantly Californian wine list. 400 plus wines and they picked the only white wine that we had from France.

Tourists, you can spot them a million miles away. Why people visiting locales far from their homes feel the need to don garish and blatantly obvious, cheaply made, location specific t-shirts, is beyond me. Are they trying to fit in? Are they trying to stand out? Who knows? All I know that in the midst of a recession, I for one, am sure glad to see them. That’s right I said it. “Recession, recession, recession.”

“You’re just a bartender, what do you know?” some may posit. Well I was also a bartender during the recession of 1990 and the signs are almost identical. How do I know? Let’s look at the evidence:

1) Parking near work has gotten increasingly difficult to find. A commuter parking lot that had once been half full at best is now filled to capacity nearly every weekday as people struggle to cope with rising gas prices.

2) The restaurant where I work is selling far more house wine, draft beer, and low-end liquor than anything else. Today it’s less about quality and more about economy.

3) If the restaurant ever appears slow, which is occasionally, people are quick to jump on the fact as if it validates their own company’s struggles.

4) People are tipping less, a few years ago 25 percent was not uncommon, today 15 percent is considered quite good.

5) Finally, there are gobs and gobs of European tourists throwing money around like it’s nothing. Well not like nothing, but more like 50 percent of what it is actually worth, which to them is exactly what it feels like.

It wasn’t that long ago that people were turning up their noses at the French, but these days a continental accent means that the tourist’s dollar is now worth about double what it was a few years ago.

In the past I would have tried to steer my T-shirted tourist friends to perhaps some expensive local wines, a Russian River chardonnay, a Napa Valley Cab, but these days I’m thrilled that they are buying foreign. As a result of the decreasing value of the American dollar, many foreign wines, particularly French wines, cost twice as much here as they used to. Many Frenchies only tip 10 percent, but since that wine is now twice as expensive, the net gratuity works out to the same as 20 percent on what that same wine would have been three years ago. And in a recession, that makes me happy.

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Jeff Burkhart is an award wining bartender and an author and columnist. Currently he works in a Bay Area restaurant.