If you’re the type of person who likes to belittle others as they enjoy a moment of simple joy because you are no longer capable of feeling such feelings—if you ever were, you can’t really remember—then we’ve got an afternoon’s entertainment for you. (Also, welcome home.)
Abbey Road Studios, the London recording studio that has become an international tourist destination thanks to its association with The Beatles (and Pink Floyd, and Badfinger), has installed a webcam at the famous “zebra crossing” outside the studio. This means you can now watch tourists re-creating The Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road album cover in real time. The action slows down at night, but during British daytime hours a steady stream of pilgrims trickles past the crossing and the nearby graffiti wall, many of them stopping for a group photo. (We saw two groups in fifteen minutes.)
“Oh look, they’re crossing the street,” you can sneer at four friends who have traveled halfway around the world for the photo opportunity of a lifetime. “How original.”
“They paint over that wall every three months,” you can shout at no one, secure in the knowledge that you are smarter than these rubes. “I read it on Wikipedia.”
Also, occasionally a group of tourists almost gets hit by a bus, which is pretty gratifying.