Some Old Videos of the DR

[drstock]

Many people refuse to accept that what attract tourists to every Caribbean island with plenty of resorts are the beaches. This is the case even in Puerto Rico where the San Juan area is the area with the most available hotel rooms. Even in the USA.

The main attraction to Miami? Beaches.

Orlando is much more designed to appease snd attract tourists than Santo Domingo (clean streets, sidewalks in perfect shape, professional landscaping left, right and center; overall a very beautiful setting in downtown and elsewhere. Yet, most tourists that “visit Orlando” never set foot in the city. It’s all about the mouse, “Free Willy,” and “The Hulk.” Really what attracts most tourists there and was the reason Orlando became a very successful tourists destination was Disney. This is with Orlando itself being better prepared than Santo Domingo to attract tourists in its own right.

Sure, NYC, Paris, Rome the city themselves attract the tourists, but those aren’t any cities. Most places with successful tourism the cities aren’t the main magnet, regardless how nice of a city it’s.

The DR in general and Santo Domingo in particular will not be reinventing the wheel, doesn’t matter how hard they try to do so.

I think many people let their desires blind them on the actual potential of a place. Santo Domingo needs a lot to look as nice as Orlando and yet, the situation with tourism in Orlando was already mentioned. If the city was the main attraction there, tourism would be considerably less than now and by considerably, this is a serious considerably less.

Santo Domingo needs a lot of work and a major clean-up, even in the Colonial Zone, to make it anything like a decent tourist city attraction. Anyone who has visited any of the hundreds of historic cities in Europe can see that. That's the way it seems to me, anyway.

 

[Liberator]

My in-laws had a house phone, every neighbor used to come over and ask to use. My FIL said no more after they were constantly getting calls all day long for neighbors. I remember when cell service first came, it was constantly "out", the service was really bad. Miami Vice was one (there were very few) of the only American TV shows (in Spanish) I remember being on TV.

Landline... you had a heart attack if you called the DR for an hour from the Netherlands in de late 80's

 

[AlterEgo]

Landline... you had a heart attack if you called the DR for an hour from the Netherlands in de late 80's

True. I remember buying phone cards to make the cost palatable. WhatsApp was a godsend when it was created.

 

[NALs]

Santo Domingo needs a lot of work and a major clean-up, even in the Colonial Zone, to make it anything like a decent tourist city attraction. Anyone who has visited any of the hundreds of historic cities in Europe can see that. That's the way it seems to me, anyway.

Most tourists are from Europe and North America. Santo Domingo doesn’t really impresses most of them. Some people like to buy¡ry their heads in the sand than coming to terms with that.

 

[MiamiDRGuy]

I found this amazing old video in DR

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[Farmer]

1973. Go to the Post Office/telegram (yup, used to get those back then) office in Sajoma. They had the ONLY phone in town. Make collect call...Ma'am will you accept a collect call from your son? Yes. Ok, go ahead. Hi mom, over. Long pause. Hi son, over. Long pause. You sound good mom, over. You get the picture. Just a small exchange would take several minutes. And the cost? Overseas collect. Ouch!

 

[MiamiDRGuy]

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[JD Jones]

God, does that make me feel old.

Back then every time it rained the Autopista turned into an ice rink.

Who remembers the country markers every kilometer? They should bring those back.

 

[MiamiDRGuy]

This is way too cool

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[JD Jones]

That was a holiday for sure. Probably the reason they made the video. Even in the early 80's SD was already having major traffic jams every day.