The street gained mass attention and even became a landmark after The Beatles named their 1969 album ‘Abbey Road’, with the album cover featuring the four members crossing the road.
Now, every day, dozens of eager and excited tourists head to the location to recreate the iconic album cover.
However, it seems some of those tourists expect a bit more than just a road when they make the trip to St John’s Wood and often end up disappointed.
Many of those tourists have taken to the online review site Tripadvisor to share their upset.
One visitor titled their review “disappointed doesn’t cover it…” explaining: “On reflection, I think I may have been expecting too much. My disappointment in not finding street sellers, either side of the road, selling cheap t-shirts and merchandise was a surprise.”
They added: “It’s just a zebra crossing and you’d save yourself some money by just standing on any of the millions in the UK and just photoshopping the background in.”
Another upset Beatles fan shared that there’s ‘nothing to see’: "I am a massive Beatles fan, but there really is nothing to see here.
“It’s just an ordinary zebra crossing. It’s busy - crowded with fellow tourists trying to work out if they are even at the right place, and with annoyed drivers trying to drive down a busy main road.”
One visitor titled their review “disappointed doesn’t cover it…” explaining: “On reflection, I think I may have been expecting too much. My disappointment in not finding street sellers, either side of the road, selling cheap t-shirts and merchandise was a surprise.”
Wait people actually want the tat sellers?! Did they ever stop to think it would ruin the photo spot if that were the case?
They added: “It’s just a zebra crossing and you’d save yourself some money by just standing on any of the millions in the UK and just photoshopping the background in.”
Why travel and take photos at all? You can just Photoshop anything in
What is wrong with people
Why travel
To bring home cheap souvenirs you can use as proof you sent there to your guests, duh
They’re so dumb. The Beatles’ Abbey Road recording studio is just a few steps from that crossing along with their souvenir shop.
What’s next? They’ll be disappointed they didn’t turn Penny Lane, Liverpool into a Beatles theme park?
What’s next? They’ll be disappointed they didn’t turn Penny Lane, Liverpool into a Beatles theme park?
No, they are disappointed by the lack of pennies.
Were they also upset that St John’s Wood isn’t a wood?
Next you’re gonna tell me Piccadilly Circus isn’t a circus 😔
but it is…
Or that mountain oysters aren’t really oysters.
It’s better than that.
They’re probably upset that St John’s Wood isn’t Abbey Road.
Because both exist on the London mass transit network, and one of them is nowhere near Abbey Road (the road).
Imagine my disappointment when I got to The Dark Side of the Moon
And it doesn’t even have the decency to stay in the same place. According to this guy’s estimate you’d have to move across the surface at about 9.5 miles or 15.3 kilometers per hour to stay in the Dark Side at the equator.
Thats not what “dark side of the moon” means. From Wikipedia
The hemisphere has sometimes been called the “Dark side of the Moon”, where “dark” means “unknown” instead of “lacking sunlight” – each location on the Moon experiences two weeks of sunlight while the opposite location experiences night
I’ve only ever heard boomers, racists, and idiots use the word “dark” to mean “unknown” or call it the “dark” side when they meant “far” side.
It doesn’t mean “the far side”. It means “the side we can’t see”. Like you can’t see when it’s dark. Idk how you even managed to crowbar race into this but I’m a little impressed by the audacity of it.
Your privilege is showing if you seriously have never confronted the racist undertones of the white colonial idea of darkness. Just for a start “The Heart of Darkness”, the dark continent, the epithet “darky”. There’s so many more it’s often practically it’s got own college class devoted to the subject.
Fine, but there’s none of that here. You’re looking so hard that you see it in places it’s never been.
Yeah, I’ve also only ever heard that from racists and fools too.
The common phrase “in the dark” denotes being in the unknown. What about Captain Li Shang from the film Mulan describing the dark side of the moon as “mysterious”, an approximate synonym of “unknown”? It seems like you’re being very reductive.
I imagine most people don’t consider the specifics of astronomy when using the phrase in reference to the moon; it’s even common in media today to see crescent moons with stars located where there should be shadow.
Maybe it’s about being radio dark, in which case you can stay put on the far side /s
It’s not that either.
I’m willing to be literally any amount of money on these tourists being American. who the hell else actually wants a tourist trap?
I would doubt that for any of the ones above saying “zebra crossing”. Never heard that here in the US before. Seems like a big clue to where they may be from.
Yeah, I only know it from Hitchhiker’s Guide, where Oolon Colluphid follows up his famous proof of the non-existence of God with a proof that black is white and gets run down at a zebra crossing. I was a kid when I first read it so I took it literally, haha. It does kinda fit with the other absurd bits of that series.
who the hell else actually wants a tourist trap?
Me, but only if it was an actual trap.
Hmm. I wonder how much money you’d make if you did start selling merch on the side of the road?
there is a souvenir store next to the studio
Pretty sure Westminster would descend on them within the hour.
One of my favorite past times at places like this is watching people almost get hit by cars not realizing these are active roads. I’ve seen it there and at Dealey Plaza.
Paris Syndrome for boomers
I feel like I’m missing something here, did they not see the big building called “Abbey Road Recording Studio”? It’s probably the most famous recording studio in the world and I believe they occasionally do tours and events.
Found it
Did it used to have some cool shop or something in the 60’s or did they really just walk across a random street?
Wikipedia could answer this but I crave human interaction.
Nope, just the zebra crossing that was closest to their recording studio.
Hm. I guess they can be satisfied with knowing they’re standing in the same spot as one of the beatles. Like using the same toilet as King Louis XVI.
But they’re not. They moved the zebra crossing up the street in the 1970s.
They originally intended to photograph in Penny Lane, but on the day they’d hired the photographer and rented the equipment, the bus drivers in Liverpool were on strike. They didn’t want to pay the photographer for a second outing, not because of cost but because Lennon realized the photographer was a family friend who he had slighted in the past - this is also why he look socially awkward on the album art. Instead, they had a backup plan to walk across Abbey Road and then find a rotoscoper to give it a “cartoonish” feeling, but time pressures and a miscommunication with the label about which picture to use lead to the Abbey Road we all know today.
Note: I have never listened to a Beatles song outside of a commercial and have so little knowledge about the subject that I googled to see if Penny Lane is a location or a person
Despite Penny Lane being 200 miles away from Abbey Road, the photographer being Scottish and having just been introduced to the band by Yoko Ono, and did later work for Lennon in subsequent years.
They originally planned something bigger but then decided to just walk across the road outside the music studio.
A needed laugh! Thank you!
