Stop Fetishizing Locals

Overdone and unreliable

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July 7th, 2020 at 1:15pm

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This is not a rant.

I come not to complain, but to liberate you.

It's not difficult to find travel writers who fetishize locals. Travel like a local! Get the inside scoop from locals! Go where the locals go!

I have defended this minority position with writers and bloggers at travel writing conferences. The look is always the same, a strained combination of disbelief and woke patience.

I read these hoary tips a lot, and they inspire the same reaction every time: taking advice from locals is a crapshoot.

If you come across the right ones, and they want to talk to you, then yes: absolutely, without question talk to the locals. Listen to them. Follow their suggestions. But it's not always easy to know who the right ones are.

Jars of different kinds of honey against a brick wall

A lot of people won't know about this honey, won't like it, or will think it's weird. Photo by Jonathan Farber (Mods)

I have defended this minority position with writers and bloggers at travel writing conferences. The look is always the same, a strained combination of disbelief and woke patience.

Roughly 40% for sure

My main argument is as follows: how many people in your day-to-day life are full of shit? Consider your coworkers and neighbors. Many of them:

  • Are painfully phlegmatic, boring people
  • Think [awful corporate chain] is a good restaurant
  • Are repulsive human beings who believe it's acceptable to put children in cages, or to deny that Sandy Hook happened
  • Etc, etc

If you ran into them on the street, would you ask for suggestions on what to do around town? No, you wouldn't. So why would that change if you were a visitor from out of town?

How many people in your day-to-day life are full of shit?

This critique goes in the opposite direction: a significant share of the population would not enjoy anything I like to do. The scent of ginger in a restaurant would turn them off. A trip to an art museum or conservatory would bore them. Going to see Matt and Kim, or Gogol Bordello would be way too weird. And checking out a soccer game? No way.

Cash register and counter of a coffee shop with various colored woods and an American flag hanging on the wall, and lots of pastries and bags of coffee beans

A lot of people won't know about this coffee shop, won't like it, or will think it's weird. Photo by Ian Baldwin (Mods)

Even if we're talking about other midwestern, college-educated, liberal, middle-class white people, with whom I have a high likelihood of sharing preferences, I still don't have the same tastes. A good friend once told me a local breakfast joint was "epic," but I thought it was astonishingly mediocre.

Let's give locals a rest. They may not want to talk to you, and if they do, you might not like what they have to say. It happened to me a few times when I researched Backseat Cities.

I recommend discovering things for yourself.

Instead, I recommend discovering things for yourself. Go out and see what you can find. Sure, consult a guidebook or Tripadvisor, the travel industry's foray into the Law of large numbers. Those suggestions might still be wrong—I don't always share the wisdom of crowds—but you're improving your odds of finding something in line with your interests.

In the end, though, do what looks good to you, whether it's blessed by a local or not.

 Two Shelves, One Book The Bourdain Paradox 

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