Tacky Tourist Photos

Amidst the statues of all your favorite Mongolian military heroes are Paul, John, George and Ringo!

SUBMITTED BY: Sharon McHale  LOCATION: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (2011)

Any run-of-the-mill rock star can get immortalized at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but how impressive is it to have a shrine in downtown Ulaanbaatar four decades after last topping the Billboard charts?

Mongolia’s Beatles monument is a tribute to the role that the mopheads played in bringing democracy to the nation, according to Minister of Parliament E. Bat-Uul.

Of course, the cast of Glee recently kicked the Beatles’ butts on the all-time music charts — they now hold the record for the most appearances on the Billboard Hot 100 list, also beating out Elvis Presley.

How long before Lea Michelle gets her own statue at the Ulaanbaatar Mall?

(Imagine there’s no tourism… TTP also recently discovered a John Lennon shrine in Havana, Cuba, which apparently still prefers Soviet-era surnames — Lennongrad? — over Starr, McCartney and Harrison.)

Yukking it up with Beatles icon John Lennon at a Havana park.

SUBMITTED BY: Tammie Lowry LOCATION: Havana, Cuba (2004)

Probably not too bright for a silly Web site to take a controversial political stand, but Tacky Tourist Photos hereby calls on the Obama administration to IMMEDIATELY lift the Cuba travel embargo so we can go see 1950s cars, see some raw baseball talent and eat sugar cane!

That being said, we can’t understand why Beatles legend John Lennon’s music would ever be banned here. “Imagine there’s no heaven… Imagine there’s no religion…” HELLO, FIDEL? Isn’t the anti-religion thing the perfect theme song for Communist Cuba?

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Castro government denounced the Beatles and their solo artist subsidiaries as a dangerous Western influence. But 20 years after Lennon’s assassination, Fidel commissioned a bronze statue declaring Lennon a fellow “Dreamer.”

Again, we’re dreaming of antique cars, baseball and sugar cane.

Fidel Castro says sorry to John Lennon for banning him.

(Tammie Lowry is an avid photographer and wildlife rehabilitator, who dreams with her husband Jerry and four dogs in Virginia. She visited Cuba with an educational group from West Virginia University.)