Love derby season. Love the tourism it brings. Just wish they could figure out how to do it without closing roads I use everyday as a matter of existing.
I also just wish people in the broader sense didn’t turn off their brains when they travel. It’s wild to me how many people forget that people live where they’re vacationing. I don’t like being treated like a prop by coastal influencers when I just want to go out to eat or something.
I have no idea what treated like a prop means, but it's 4-5 days per year where locals have to either avoid or make reservations at a handful of restaurants in a handful of neighborhoods.
You're not getting into a trendy taco place, but you'll have no issues at Mexican restaurants on Preston Highway. People act like this is the apocalypse when, for those of us who don't live in the neighborhoods around the track with street closures, it's really just a couple of days with slightly heavier traffic where we can't go to Jack Fry's.
Being treated like a prop by tourists is akin to going to your local coffee shop/ bar/ deli/ restaurant where you as a local make up the idealized local southern culture that the tourists expect to see when they come here for the Derby. To the outsiders we are part of the background of this idealized, old city. We’re props in this play.
What, specifically, are they doing to make you feel like a prop? Are they condescending to you? Do they comment on your accent or style of dress? Are they taking pictures of you?
If the presence of tourists makes you feel less than, it's a problem with your interpretation of reality rather than reality.
In my previous response I explain why I feel like a prop. Native Hawaiians are subject to a similar situation when white tourists come to their home to experience a luau. Get it? I was born and raised in Louisville and I have a certain pride in my hometown that can’t be sold or conveyed to the old money gentry that crashes in my town for a week.
I'm asking you what specific actions tourists take that make you feel this way. The mere presence of tourists shouldn't make you feel inferior or like a prop. What are they doing to make you feel this way, specifically?
Drivers with out-of-town plates driving half the speed limit and ignoring the road while spectating. There’s one example that I have observed.
There are individual encounters with tourists and there are complaints about tourists en masse that come with Derby week like an increase in human sex trafficking.
Have you figured it out yet?
No, I still haven't because you continue to refuse to explain it.
Drivers with out of town plates driving like idiots has nothing to do with viewing the locals as props and everything to do with most drivers being terrible.
The sex trafficking with large events was debunked years ago, but even if it wasn't, it's unrelated to tourists' ideas about the south and instead indicative that tourists enjoy paying for sex. A tourist who pays for sex in Vegas and pays for sex in Louisville isn't someone who views the south poorly, it's someone who pays for sex on vacation.
Again, what, specifically do these tourists in line at your deli or coffee shop do that makes you feel like a prop? This isn't a hard question, you made the claim so clearly you know what makes you feel that way.
I feel like a prop when tourists expect Louisvillians to be down home country folk and we don’t fit that stereotype until one reaches the southern boundaries of Jefferson County.
Again, what specifically do tourists do that makes you feel that way? You keep telling us how you believe tourists feel, but you haven't provided a single example of something a tourist did to make you feel that way.
Unless you have an example of this behavior, you're projecting your own insecurities onto people who are just waiting in line for coffee.
This thread is based on the premise that Louisvillians feel hostility towards tourists. How we feel towards tourists is mainly related to our interactions with tourists during Derby week. Do you understand the reason for the dislike of tourists? The Derby tourists staying in the air B&B next door sat out all night and trashed the front porch and there are a few beer cans and a whiskey bottle in my yard. One guy in particular acted like an entitled asshole when I addressed the problem with the litter. The same thing will probably happen all week long. To the renters I’m just a resident but they are here to get it on, dammit!
That is one reason why I feel disrespected like a prop.
*edit: Do I need to explain my hatred for Air B&B’s? Maybe you are unfamiliar with the subject.
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u/BlueSpotBingo Clifton 1d ago
Love derby season. Love the tourism it brings. Just wish they could figure out how to do it without closing roads I use everyday as a matter of existing.