Middletown, CT: Tourist Trap?

Now, I’m a big fan of Wikitravel.org, the Wikipedia of travel books, tourist-trap avoidance tips, and international foodie hotspots. (It’s also a pretty damn fine tool for procrastination – who says you can’t waste time productively? Piss off, Youtube.) It saved my life during my semester abroad in Europe, not only because of its helpfulness when it came to knowing about the local public transportation, but also of its “Stay Safe” section which helped augment the paranoia I feel ever-so-comfortable with whenever I’m in a foreign country. (Note to self: Every third guy taller than you wants to and will mug you).

So I was pretty surprised to find the miniscule but somewhat amusing section on Middletown, Connecticut when I was putzing about its digital wiki-filled halls this evening. For example, the last paragraph of the intro section reads:

Middletown is also the home to Connecticut Valley Hospital, the major psychiatric facility for southern New England. So if you see a few questionable people on the streets, relax, they’re outpatients and they’re probably properly medicated.

It’s kind of an odd thing to read in what is usually a pretty reliable (Ayn Rand argues for there being no unreliability) somewhat respectable resource for travel information. But then again, given Wikitravel’s existence as a open-source free-edit information hub to begin with, one can’t possibly expect a wiki page concerning a relatively under-traveled place like our lovely Middletown to have substantial material and tight editing, right?

Well, hopefully not. This is terrible, folks! O’Rourkes is not even in there! So, if you fine kids have time out there tonight in the middle of your paper-writing, quiz-studying, last minute lab-report filling, pencil-chewing, eye-fucking, gummi-bear popping, and God-praying-so-you-won’t-screw-up-the-midterm-tomorrow, lend a hand to sprucin’ up the page, would ya?

GOOD LUCK FO’ YO EXAMZZZ