![]() ![]() But for businesses that involve moving around town, such as the plumbing company Darrell Brown works for in nearby Murrieta, California, the #PoppyApocalypse is much more dire. At Jack’s BBQ Shack, the head of human resources, Leslie Lloyd, reports that the restaurant had its “best weekend out of five years because of the poppies”. The overall economic impact of super-bloom tourism has yet to be determined. “They pull over and get out of the car.” (The city later surrendered control, posting on Facebook, “At this time, it is not feasible for us to keep visitors away from #WalkerCanyon.”) “For the most part, they don’t care,” she says, referencing the closures that were meant to slow the traffic of influencers. “They’re going out there with wedding dresses on, Sunday best, Easter clothes,” says Sharron Tolbert, who lives two miles from the trailhead. But the hordes found other places to park and walk in, and the city lacked the manpower to enforce the closure. After a Lake Elsinore official was hit by a car, and a visitor was bitten by a rattlesnake, the city shut down access to Walker Canyon, the main trailhead, from the nearest roads and set up a $5 (£3.70) shuttle service to bring visitors from the local outlet malls. Within three weeks, so many people were influenced to come to pose in the flowery hills that the city had to figure out how to intervene. And yet, as more people posed for poppy pictures, and international news outlets picked up the story, influence the world they did. “You’ll never influence the world by trying to be like it,” reads Smith’s first poppy photo caption.
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