Whether you agree with the distinction or not, the recent announcement about Lake Placid being America’s Most Interesting Town is good for tourism. The current circulation of Reader’s Digest is 5.5 million copies. That’s a lot of people who will be reading about Lake Placid. In fact, phone calls have already started coming in from far-away friends and relatives who realize they know someone in America’s Most Interesting Town.

Some of those people will visit us, many for the first time. If only 2 percent of those readers come here, that’s an additional 110,000 tourists in Lake Placid. If each of them spends just $10 (a very conservative estimate), that’s an additional $1,100,000 spreading through our community.