We’ve turned our towns into tourist traps, and made ourselves into court jesters, all for money and vanity.

I’m from Pittsburgh and have lived here my entire life, but I’m not a “yinzer.” It’s funny, because many of my 11 siblings (all of whom moved from Pittsburgh years ago) call themselves the y-word, considering it a sort of badge of honor. I love them, nonetheless.

But it’s a class-biased pejorative and still used that way, while also being marketed as a Pittsburgh “style” that’s really a mix of a vague blue-collar ethic with a sports hero-fixated civic pride.

“So you’re a real Yinzer, then?” I’ve been asked while working on stories and interviewing out-of-town contacts who like the Steelers. These fans call me yinzer as a compliment.

I’m not a yinzer anymore than I am a “drunken Mick” or “stubborn Slav.” 

My hometown, its culture, and local dialect are not cartoon characters, despite the schtick of people like “Pittsburgh Dad” (a guy born in West Virginia), and his strange appeal to some.

Pittsburgh should not be a tourist trap, because it encourages bad jokes and condescension towards others, lawbreaking in many forms (like employing illegal aliens to build more Airbnbs), and it tears at the humble roots that keep this city centered in a true sense of itself.

Tourism is devaluing our collective sense of ourselves as Pittsburghers. It’s made us into a clan of backwater clowns, overeager to please visitors. This loss of culture has been encouraged most aggressively through sports.

Part of our American weekend-tripping voyeurism is a result of the internet, part is due to our tendency to move from one hometown to another repeatedly over a lifetime, and part is a result of consumerism that objectifies and commodifies experiences and people. Our rootlessness leads to a grasping for authenticity, which we think we can buy.

Americans now have a voyeuristic, peeping-through-a-keyhole perspective, often towards other people as well as experiences, which degrades life and is dehumanizing. We cannot respect those we regard with a prideful and selfish spirit.

Sports tourism in American cities generally cheapens, commodifies, and falsifies local culture, replacing reality with a dumb jersey or garish cap. It prioritizes tourist desires over local needs, like fighting crime.

Left unchecked, local tourism becomes surreal. You end up with downtown Pittsburgh tour guides with crisp British accents watering down local history for boozy tourists, you get a bad mascot called “Steely”, and you get adults dressed as walking pierogies racing around the bases during a baseball game (and worse, you get furries here annually).

It’s a taxpayer-funded expensive stupid-fest promoting simplistic and often wrongheaded views of Pittsburgh. It also promotes weekend-tripping, wherein visitors treat this locality no better than any beach resort they’d visit, including by trashing their Airbnb and leaving it for neighbors to see and smell for months.

But it’s like that everywhere in America now, or at least in the places that are supposedly succeeding in the global economy.

In Pittsburgh, over my lifetime, due mostly to “deindustrialization” (it was not a natural weather pattern, but man-made), our region lost some of the greatest corporations ever, much productivity, much wealth and many jobs, and many people who fled.

Now options and opportunities are scarcer here, and many jobs are handed to cheaper “migrants.” Mobility is nonexistent in some industries. But the sports teams, hospitals and many nonprofits seem to get richer annually, thanks to taxpayers.

All of this, as locals got poorer and after sports teams were given hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars (otherwise they’d move).

But we’ve still got our football, baseball and hockey teams, right? And a soccer team too, though most don’t know or care.

Yet, tourism is a growing part of our economy which is always good and never bad, right? Wrong. It worsens an already clingy local inferiority complex.

Unlike many here, I prefer a local populace that doesn’t Uncle Tom for tourists, many of whom are former residents of this town (how belittling, to play the clown for former neighbors and classmates). I’d like to associate with those who won’t play the dumb hick to satisfy the leisure traveling class.

Tourism stinks for a lot of communities in the U.S. It’s a drain of public resources and funds. Pittsburgh Council didn’t even know the Mayor had promised the NFL $1 million to grace us with its presence for the NFL Draft, yet all but one council member voted for it and slashing police numbers after they learned.

Tourism cheapens and degrades local culture, and commodifies that which shouldn’t be hawked by people who shouldn’t snob on anyone (like our local dialect being expounded upon by a nonnative, manly-dressing homosexual woman academic).

These calculated misperceptions are partly why people think it’s ok to call Pittsburghers “yinzer.” Because it’s a fun thing, right (piss off if you don’t agree, man)?

It’s cultural appropriation by intellectual thieves, beggars, merchants, and snobs. 

You can’t love your neighbor by calling him a bumpkin and qualifying it with: “But it’s cool—I’m a Bumpkin too!”

Tourism in Pittsburgh is an old-boy system in which local government uses taxes to fund obligators who lord it up while visiting the Steel City (or to fund locals lording it up while hosting visitors). It’s promoting false narratives that enrich the wealthy.

Enough publicly funding tourism, and the inhumanity and financial waste that goes along with it.  Let tourist destinations carry their own weight—especially pro sports teams.

We also should be more careful about historic presentations that are allowable, if receiving taxpayer funding. Marxists, DEI types, and haters of humanity and truth needn’t apply.

Support old-school locals , not rich millionaire athletes and billionaire sports team owners.

Jonathan Barnes has been a reporter for 30 years. He started out in newspapers in his hometown of Pittsburgh and has written and reported for ARTE TV, Reuters, Fortune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and many other legacy media, as well as for many trade magazines and tech corporations.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.