Always wanted to visit San Francisco, but never had the time or money?
Let me be your vacation surrogate! I’ll go to the places that you want to see. Take all of the pictures you would take. Send postcards to tell your friends and family all about the beautiful city by the bay.
And so goes the pitch by Sara Thacher, a self-proclaimed vacation surrogate whose Web site promises to provide all the details of a vacation to San Francisco without actually going yourself. Simply fill out a questionnaire detailing the typical activities you’d do if you were to actually visit San Francisco and Thacher will customize the pseudo-vacation experience to reflect your tastes and lifestyle. This ensures that your friends won’t receive a postcard from the Castro, for example, if that’s not your thing.
I’m not sure what the appeal is about staging fake vacations, but apparently there is a market for it. As reported on Gadling a year ago, a company in Russia will do the same thing for famous destinations all over the globe. They will even Photoshop your smiling mug into all sorts of photographs proving that you did indeed make it all the way to … ____________ (fill in the blank).