Having been born on Martha's Vineyard and then moving to the "main land" to start pre-school, I'm a local on Cape Cod. While you don't have to be born to be given that status, but you do have to live here more than six months out of the year. Yes, so your two-week stay here does not make you a local, just a visitor that's passing through and adding to the traffic. While it's hard to argue that summer isn't the best time of year, by the end of July, I'm ready to have the craziness subside and go back to the usual routine of things. There's just a few things locals are tired of hearing and seeing.
1. "I live in New Seabury, not Mashpee."
This might be the root of my frustration, so I'll have Wikipedia do the talking. "New Seabury is a census-designated place in the town of Mashpee in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, on Cape Cod. The area consists primarily of summer homes for wealthy families."
Here's a comparison of the 'two town's' zip codes.
I hope this resolves any confusion.
2. You're inside on your eighth hour of working AND you work your other job that night and a visitor says "it's so beautiful out, such a good beach day, get outside today!"
Yes, when I get out at 10, I will go soak up the rays from the stars...
3. "You're so lucky to live by the beach! Can you see the ocean from your bedroom?"
While some locals are lucky enough to see the beach from their home, 9 out of 10 beach homes belong to those summer people. We are average and we are proud locals.
4. You get stuck behind a tourist driving.
They are slow. They keep breaking. And have no clue where the nearest beach is.
5. When a tourist asks you for directions and you give them using other buildings and your preferred landmarks.
Heck, even if you use real street names they're still confused. And now you're both equally confused by each other and you slowly walk away, wondering why they don't just use the GPS on their phones.
6. You see them aggressively shopping at boutiques where items are 5x the actual costs.
If you were working at those said boutiques or just trying to get your coffee and leave the commons, you can't seem to understand why the tourists have a minimum of 3 full shopping bags from places you rarely go into, and if you were to buy something, it'd fit in a bag half that size.
There's just something about a tourist that is given away by the way they walk.
See you next year, tourists.