Are You There, America? It's Me, Tourist.

Buy 'Em By the Bag: The first McDonald's, circa 1940, in California on Route 66.

Tourists are not cool. In general, the population—and especially college-age adults—tend to agree on this fact. There is a reason why no one wears a fanny pack. There is also a reason why “real” New Yorkers don’t visit Times Square or eat at Lombardi’s or smile on the subway. Because the word “tourist” implies fake—that terrible label of not knowing the REAL insert-popular-travel-destination-here. Part of that fakeness comes from the emergence of unified brands gentrifying America for the ease of tourists (i.e., Wal-Mart instead of the local deli) and the insulating bubble these comforting brands create around the wandering tourist. While reading our texts, I thought about things like Wal-Mart, and how increased travel in a population sometimes has the effect of blending everything together to create a “deadly uniformity” Jackle mentions. And what kills local flavor faster than anything? Fast food. This industry, along with the psychology of materialism and fast-paced leisure that tourism created, leads to the manic, visor-wearing tourist we know today.

I wasn’t sure exactly when fast food started, but Wikipedia confirmed that the increased popularity and affordability of cars (and, I would assume, the emergence of the paid vacation) led to the introduction of the drive-thru restaurant in 1921 that modern motorists know all too well. Welcome to America, White Castle! Even the diner cult contributed to a rise in fast food, but the first real “fast food restaurant” emerged in our very own New York City in 1912: Horn & Hardart’s Automat. The franchised restaurant came in the 1930s, when Howard Johnson’s standardized menus, signs and advertising for all their branches. Mmm, nothing tastes better than a uniform America.

Jackle notes that “speed exerted a tyranny.” This is true on and off the road—and in the kitchen. Sure, Americans were getting paid vacations, but Berkowitz explained that they weren’t too long. And in order to keep workers from being idle, companies urged employees to “go on vacation.” Berkowitz also notes that the 1941 United States Travel Bureau’s slogan was “Travel Strengthens America. It promotes the nation’s health, wealth, and unity.” It’s no wonder that by the second World War “Americans had come to view vacationing as more than a trivial diversion…[they] considered tourism essential to their personal pursuit of happiness.” Well, yeah, it seems like by that point not going on vacation would be downright un-American. And in order to both see America and eat during their one-to-two-week vacation, it seems obvious that travelers would resort to the drive-thru’s and fast-food chains the modern traveler knows so well.

Jackle mentions how “tourists rushed from destination to destination validating experiences.” This led to the theory that rushing through things like Yellowstone is not, in fact, the best way to experience them—hence, camping emerged as a new travel tradition. Jackle, in fact, recounts the birth of many anti-tourist ideals we have today: drive off the beaten path, commune with the Earth, avoid tourist groups. But the “consume, consume, consume” attitude stayed with America into the fifties—the emergence of leisure also marks the emergence of materialism. And consuming vast quantities quickly and effectively can also be traced back to the birth of fast food.

Today, we have things like the “Slow Food” movement, and cleverly-concealed maps so you “don’t have to look like a tourist.” Jackle, Berkowitz and even Agee (when we consider how fast food billboards claim the modern roadsides) all discuss the birth of tourism as an industry, something which I think also marks the death of travel. Since then, the nation has been unraveling fast food and the manic consumer attitudes created by the initial tourism advertising—we are still searching for the real America.