We Are All Ontarians Now

Or make that “Tijuanans” . . . or “Andorra on the Hudson” — New Yorkers get slapped down, now that Manhattan resembles a very large outlet mall:

This summer, New York is awash with visitors from abroad, who are expected to top last summer’s record number, tourism officials say. Thanks in part to home currencies that are holding strong against the dollar, even middle-class vacationers from Hamburg, Yokohama or Perth can afford to scoop up New York style — the clothes, the hot restaurants, the nightclubs — at bargain prices.

But for New Yorkers trapped on the other side of the currency imbalance, it’s easy to feel ambivalent about the invasion. An infusion of foreign money is welcome in a city faced with a wobbly economy and a possible budget gap in the billions. But even some locals who consider themselves cosmopolitan and internationalist confess to feeling envy, not to mention territorialism, in watching a outsiders treat their city like a Wal-Mart of hip.

Their party is raging just as the hangover has started to set in for Americans. Frictions do arise — especially in a summer of looming recession, where many locals do not feel rich enough or secure enough to travel abroad themselves. (And let’s not even get into their weeks of summer vacation).

“It’s Psych 101 — jealousy,” said Randi Ungar, 30, an online advertising sales manager who lives on the Upper West Side. “I’m jealous that I can’t go to Italy and buy 12 Prada bags, but they can come here and buy 18 of them.”

Steven Schoenfeld, a 45-year-old investment manager who lives near Lincoln Center, said that he welcomes the influx of visitors, in theory, as a boost to the local economy, but “sometimes you feel like it’s going to become a situation where they stop and take picture: ‘Look at that endangered species — a native New Yorker, with a briefcase, going to work.’ ”

Polly Blitzer, a former magazine beauty editor who now runs a beauty Web site, said she believes that a turf war is going on this summer between free-spending Europeans and locals over the chic bistros, spas, boutiques and department stores that she, a native New Yorker, used to consider her playground.

She said the point was driven home to her on a recent trip to Bergdorf Goodman to help her fiancé select a pair of shoes to go with his tuxedo for their wedding.

Wearing the sort of outfit that usually acts as a siren for department store salespeople — a Tory Burch shift dress and Jimmy Choo slingback heels — she instead found herself waiting behind a European couple in sneakers and bike shorts who “had made such massive purchases that we couldn’t get anyone to give us the time of day for our size 11 ½ Ferragamo party slippers,” recalled Ms. Blitzer, 32.

The Europeans, she said, “brought over bags and bags of shoes” while the salesman wrapped their orders and chatted them up about restaurants and travel. “I didn’t want to do the ahem-I’m-sitting-here thing, but we had to sit there for 5 or 10 minutes while these big spenders small-talked.”

She was always used to first-class service, she said, adding, “But now, there’s an ultra-first.”