A thought on being a tourist in your own town…

As mentioned in the previous post, Lauren and I have decided to attend my law school Halloween party on Thursday night as DC tourists. We have put together the gaudiest outfits we could, the main source of our “flair” being a little touristy shop in Old Town Alexandria and a street vendor in downtown DC. Although, as I pulled the outfits together, I began to think we might have gone just a bit over the edge. That is, people may recognize that we are wearing costumes intended to poke fun at the kinds of tourist we see every day. Much like one wouldn’t dress as a tacky farmer in Manhattan in fear of upsetting the actual farmers, should we really be dressing as tacky tourists in DC? After all, we do have to ride the train from Alexandria to the bar where the party is held (about 25 minutes), and thus will share the ride with a couple hundred people between stops (no doubt some of which will be tourists). What if the very type of people that we are trying to poke a little fun at happens to stand next to us on the train ride? Or, worse yet, what happens when we pass a street vendor on the way to the event, looking like two walking billboards for what they are selling? Will they find the humor in us mocking exactly the items they sell every day to make a living?


Then I realized that there is no need to worry; I am still probably one of the touristiest people in DC on any given day. Each morning I am the one that almost falls each time the train starts and stops (I don’t know how everyone manages to read a book while standing on the train, holding onto nothing for support, while I appear to be having a seizure trying to keep my balance while wrestling with my backpack, books and umbrella). I am the one guy who stops in the middle of 23rd street every day (and subsequently gets honked at by oncoming taxi drivers and nearly trampled by Starbucks donning businessmen) because if you look straight down it you have an uninterrupted view of the Lincoln memorial. I am the one who gets excited every time I get a glimpse of the Washington Monument, or the White House, or the Capital Building while everyone else walks past as if they are just passing a fire hydrant. I am still that guy who asks, “Excuse me, do you know how to get to the nearest Metro stop,” and, unfortunately, I am still the one who gets off the train and walks about two blocks in the wrong direction before he realizes that the street numbers getting smaller means you are walking East not West.


So really there is no need to worry about offending anyone but ourselves. Thursday night Lauren and I will really just be dressed as a slightly more obnoxious version of the tourists we still are at heart. After all, we are still just a couple of Kansans spending a few years in a crazy city. And I hope that “touristy” feeling never wears while we are here. I enjoy being amazed by our surrounding each and every day and continue to enjoy all a new city has to offer us. It will be pretty interesting, though, riding the train Thursday night as it is not yet Halloween. . . I wonder how many people will realize we are in costume?!