Gastro Gnome - Eat Better Wherever

Well There Goes Idaho

Growing up in 1950's-60's CA post war , it was a pretty good place to live ,minus the air polution. Started to get out of hand when all the idiots in the country came to go to Dizzyland and never left....
 
I’m laying in a bed in a $2 million house in Venice right now. It’s not a nice house and it was built in 1924. No wonder people are leaving.
there are homeless right outside sleeping on the sidewalks . If I were to move here, I’d be one of them. A search of Zillow shows 0 homes under 700k in this city.
Nice place though. good oysters.
 
People swarming Montana.
I moved to Montana 33 years ago.
My daughter is a native....though obviously not a magical 4th generation.
Most 4th generation Montanans are actually relative new comers ,likely fresh off the boat to take advantage of the new open West.
My ancestors can be tracked as far back as 1607 in America.
So far...common theme is people immigrating.(invading)
Gotta make the best of it.
 
Dale is right. CA isn’t the only state flocking to MT, we have immigrants from all over. Have had for quite some time.

The fun part is when immigrants complain about immigrants.

I don't think that anyone has a problem with the immigrant part of it. The problem is when they bring all the bs with them, that they are fleeing to start with. They need to immigrate and become part of the society that is there, instead of creating another mess.
 
I’m laying in a bed in a $2 million house in Venice right now. It’s not a nice house and it was built in 1924. No wonder people are leaving.
there are homeless right outside sleeping on the sidewalks . If I were to move here, I’d be one of them. A search of Zillow shows 0 homes under 700k in this city.
Nice place though. good oysters.

This is probably the real issue around me with people from CA moving to ID. Selling a hugely inflated home in CA, buying high in Idaho with cash and then having no mortgage and lots of disposable income. Real estate near me is increasing at a stupid rate. Additionally it’s almost always thought that the CA moving here is very liberal but that hasn’t been my experience especially in the northern half of the state.
 
A podcast I have gotten hooked on recently is The Portal with the mathematician Eric Weinstein. It is high level stuff,typically above my understanding of anything. The other day I listened to one where he discussed immigration, and some very economic reasons why it necessarily needs to be limited. Modern discourse seems to be you either let everyone in or you're a xenophobe, which is bullshit, but is the typical level of complexity modern partisan hacks exhibit.

Something he said that resonated with me, when talking about some of the change in policy positions in Scandanavia, was that to Norwegians it means something to be Norwegian. Public opinion on immigration is changing in the direction of a more restricted model in many European countries, because they feel like their compassion is being taken advantage of. So, within our group identities, there is a characteristic there beyond legal citizenship. It’s identity, one could argue that is mere tribalism, while another could argue it is a rich layering of ancestry and fitness. It has worked and folks take pride in it and are attached to it, and I think that is an understatement.

Which brings me to Idaho, or anywhere really. If it means something to be "Idahoan", beyond just living in Idaho, then that essence will necessarily be watered down by a mass increase in folks who have never known what it means to be an Idahoan and what some of those unique characteristics/attitudes entail. That's an unpleasant fact to folks who identify as such. It is the slow inevitable death of something they once loved. One could argue that such an identity is bullshit, and maybe they'd be right, but I can understand it. I have felt an identity tied to geography myself, and in fact loved, and then watched that geographic-identity morph out of my control. I watch it now.

Norman Maclean wrote, "You talk about a man without a country, but I am a man with two countries. Montana has always been one, no matter where the other one is."

To be clear I'm not arguing for anything, I just think there is something to that in terms of explaining attitudes, whether it be for Americans or Idahoans or Texans or kids from Clancy, Montana.
 
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One of these days, like maybe tomorrow- we will hear of people cashing out in Bozeman and invading eastern MT. The HORROR!
A man ahead of the times, Parker Heinlein, a semi-retired Bozeman Chronicle journalist, relocated to Malta, Montana, to hunt and fish away from the SW Montana masses. Parker's oped piece is published each Thursday in the Chronicle and consistently expresses an interesting and entertaining perspective of hunting and fishing in the area to which he relatively recently "migrated".
 
Definitely some good conversation to be had! I also agree with you Nameless Range, you bring up some great points. Maybe someday we could all sit around the table at a small town Idaho coffee shop and talk about these things... I promise when (if) I move there, I won't introduce all the hipster items to that menu! I'll order the house coffee that has been sitting on the Bunn Coffee maker for the last 3 hours, and I'll drink it with a smile.
 
I am a recent migrant. We moved to SW MT almost 3 years ago. I was drawn by the mountains, but we wanted to move to a place where people shared our values. I love Colorado and it made more sense for us to move there, because we would be much closer to family, but I couldn’t get past the liberal transition that had taken place over the last few years.

The biggest problem that I see here now is the cost of housing and that’s one of the reasons that you are seeing more people from the west coast moving here, than from any other location. The price of an average home has gone up by about $100k since we were looking to move here less than 3 years ago. People from California and some other places are selling their homes there for huge prices and paying cash for high priced homes here. Most people from down south, where I moved from, can’t do that. That means more people from liberal areas are moving here than conservative areas. I don’t think I could afford to move here now and many people that share the values of native Montanans have been priced out of the market.
 
Hell we had a Governor in Oregon back in the 70s that pleaded with Californians to visit but don’t stay. The add campaign didn’t work. Look at Portland. Boise is next, read it’s the fastest growing city in the west.
 
I've encountered many more immigrants to CO from the Midwest, than from CA. Lots of Texans also. I've only kept track for 50 years, though. CO Springs has the 3rd highest population of veterans of any US city, and is much smaller than the 2 cities w larger Vet populations. Vets who served here, are drawn to retire or live/work after discharge here.

There are all kinds of reasons why people immigrate. We have a huge population. As it grows exponentially, people go where they can have a better life by making more $, Okies to CA during the Dust Bowl. The financial/gov't brain trust of your town recruits and welcomes immigrant people and business. These Chamber of Commerce boosters have one catchphrase: Growth. Turns out that growth is a Ponzi scheme benefitting the developer, the banker, the politician. Read John Nichols' Milagro Beanfield War, or even better, The Magic Journey. Read it w an indigenous person, to whom you and your ilk are immigrants uprooting the wonderful place this used to be. When that land of milk and honey gets too full, the ones who can afford to, leave for a better place. Once they have their nest egg, they can move for quality of life. So if you live somewhere w an attractive quality of life because it is small and outdoorsy, there is an immigration target on you. Jackson & Cody WY, Montrose & Durango CO, Flagstaff AZ, Reno NV, Bend OR, Taos &, Santa Fe NM, Spokane WA. Now ID and MT, it is your turn, and it comes as no surprise. Figure out where this wave is going next, get there early. Enjoy the financial success roundly available as the new place catches on and takes off. Then it is time to start looking for the next last great place. Abbey wrote, Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. Word to your Chambers of Commerce.

Pumping the brakes on growth in favor of preserving quality of life and the natural world is not on the platform of any Republican committee, state or national. Many Democrats aren't fully invested in having growth pay for its impacts, either. When the West was an infinite garden of Eden, so underutilized by indigenous tribes that they didn't deserve to keep it, unencumbered growth was the tool and mindset Americans embraced. Early on there were signs the great infinite, wasn't. Read Stegner's Beyond the 100th Meridian, about the inconvenient drought realities of the West. Climate Deniers abounded, even then. They broadly promised rain would follow the plow, meaning a magical weather phenomenon would increase rain as soon as the native prairie grass was cut by the plow. Government homesteading programs guaranteed it.
Some great prospectives in this..
 
Still haven't seen a "California money not welcome" sign..
We know you are from California. Sometimes the "boost" from out of state money isn't that. It sucks when property values skyrocket and local kids that want to buy property and raise a family where they are from isn't possible for them. The best "California" money I guess is kids that leave, then come back able to afford it. But, they lose decades of living here. No shame in being proud of where you are from. I'm a Montanan and I don't much care when I offend transplants. mtmuley
 
The political posturing here is pretty funny. Fringe elements of the right wing have moved into rural locations in an effort to build their "redoubt," a place that they can fall back too and declare sovereign apart from the US. They've been running in races for school board up to congress. MT, ID both have some whacko's who moved here from elsewhere to tell us how to live. WY too.

When I started working in Gov't Relations, there were distinct differences between the parties, but everyone was genial and willing to work together for the betterment of the state, and the people who live there (certain exceptions apply, obviously). Now, it's tribal beyond belief. The bulk leadership of the MT GOP is largely from out of state extremists who make the party platform a litmus test. Transfer of public land was the job of the former VP of the party, in fact.

Matt Shea in Washington is calling for open warfare against the U.S.and to install a Christian Caliphate. He has friends in the Idaho Legislature as well. Wyoming's legislature went hard right as well, and now they have groups that are well funded and try to take out anyone who abandons a fringe interpretation of the 2nd amendment, or who don't tout a hard line evangelical note.

Yeah, some of the liberal transplants are just as whacky, but when it comes to sending people to legislatures, to county commissions & to school boards, give me moderates of both parties who are willing to share ideas and work together. That's the real part of the west that we've lost that I miss.
 
Hell we had a Governor in Oregon back in the 70s that pleaded with Californians to visit but don’t stay.
It's funny how we like the outsiders to visit and spend their money, but not to stay and influence our lifestyle. No disrespect meant to our neighbors to the north, but my dad, active in the Great Falls Chamber of Commerce as a businessman, welcomed the Canadians who came to Great Falls for the shopping and entertainment back in the day ... but was known to say, "They're like hemorrhoids ... when they come down and then go back up, they're okay ... but when they come down and stay down ... they're a real pain in the butt!"
 
I took this picture last night...
Walking distance to the beach, great vegan restaurants, oyster bars, legal cannabis and homeless encampments.

Assuming that the $4500 Starting price is for the smallest units which are 575 sf it’s hard to imagine why anybody would have to move...

BBDBFDB0-F5D6-4885-A96F-938D943077A2.jpeg
 
The political posturing here is pretty funny. Fringe elements of the right wing have moved into rural locations in an effort to build their "redoubt," a place that they can fall back too and declare sovereign apart from the US. They've been running in races for school board up to congress. MT, ID both have some whacko's who moved here from elsewhere to tell us how to live. WY too.

When I started working in Gov't Relations, there were distinct differences between the parties, but everyone was genial and willing to work together for the betterment of the state, and the people who live there (certain exceptions apply, obviously). Now, it's tribal beyond belief. The bulk leadership of the MT GOP is largely from out of state extremists who make the party platform a litmus test. Transfer of public land was the job of the former VP of the party, in fact.

Matt Shea in Washington is calling for open warfare against the U.S.and to install a Christian Caliphate. He has friends in the Idaho Legislature as well. Wyoming's legislature went hard right as well, and now they have groups that are well funded and try to take out anyone who abandons a fringe interpretation of the 2nd amendment, or who don't tout a hard line evangelical note.

Yeah, some of the liberal transplants are just as whacky, but when it comes to sending people to legislatures, to county commissions & to school boards, give me moderates of both parties who are willing to share ideas and work together. That's the real part of the west that we've lost that I miss.


Well, if we’re going to get political.....anytime you comprise, you lose ground! The Founding Fathers wouldn’t recognize our Republic as it is today, certainly “not” as it was designed! The right has compromised and given to the left since Woodrow Wilson! It’s time to start making the leftest compromise their political agenda! memtb
 
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