Chicagoist pointed me towards a favorable review of Chicago from an English newspaper Leeds Today. The writer hangs out at the Tall Ships Festival and is surprised that it's not overrun with tourists.

The tall-ships festival's organiser explained to me that the event was not primarily designed to please tourists. All Chicago festivals (which happen more than daily, both downtown and in what they call the neighbourhoods) are aimed at the locals.

This, said the organiser, is because tourists, rather than having things laid on for them and therefore being expected to look pleased, prefer, in a no-pressure way, to join in amiably with what the locals would have been doing anyway.

This sounds exactly right. If a community decides to hold a Hoot N Holler Festival or a Miss Splenda Pageant or a Running of the Bulls or whatever, it's hard to imagine that it's targeted to the locals and that tourists are just joining in; those seem like a calculated plea for tourists.