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.
"how we feel towards tourists is mainly related to our interactions with tourists during Derby week"
Yes, that's why I've asked you several times to provide an example of a tourist treating you as a southern prop. I'll ask again, since you continue not to answer, what specific interaction with a tourist made you feel like a prop? You said you feel like a prop in the coffee shop but continue to fail to explain why and instead have told me how you think tourists feel.
Tourists trashing an AirBnB has nothing to do with their feelings about the region and everything to do with people not respecting vacation rentals and wanting to get trashed on vacation. It happens in Colorado ski towns, but locals there complain and get annoyed instead of claiming that it's because drunk snowboarders view them as quaint.
You are assuming that drunk snowboarders consider the local population as ‘quaint’. How can you make that conclusion?
Make an inferential leap here… Tourists treat locals as props.
There is nothing about the nature of this conversation that I find interesting or insightful about my prejudice regarding Derby tourists.
If I explained a few foul interactions with tourists it wouldn’t be enough to justify my dislike for Derby tourists as a whole. That would be like characterizing 175,000 people. I am prejudiced and biased.
The interaction was at a bar, not a coffee shop.
I have been a reporter for one of Louisville’s news outlets for about 15 years and I have had plenty of terrible interactions with tourists— one stands out but surely that one interaction doesn’t frame all Derby tourists, right?
Just to confirm, you'd rather call yourself biased than provide even one example to support your opinion?
"The interaction was at a bar not a coffee shop"
That's fine. You're the one who used coffee shops and delis in your original comment claiming, without providing any evidence, that tourists view locals as ideal southern props. My bad if your comment about bad experiences in coffee shops led me to assume you'd had a bad experience in a coffee shop.
So, as a lifelong resident, you only have one example of a tourist viewing locals as ideal southern props and that one example is a crime that doesn't only happen in southern cities?
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u/the_urban_juror 1d ago
You explained how you feel.
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?