The Bozeman, Montana I have known
I moved to Bozeman, MT three years ago and have regretted it.
One of my first hints that I may well have made a mistake came when I told
someone at a Chamber of Commerce meeting that I moved here from Minneapolis,
and she emphatically (and obviously in disbelief) asked: WHY??!
Since then I have come up with several reasons why moving
here seems to be a mistake. I will cover the occurrences roughly in the
order I
experienced them:
First, the first winter I was here the weather was
brutal, with several days an actual -35 degrees Fahrenheit and it was
a
very long, long winter also and difficult in other regards. (Many rich
locals leave here for much of the winter.)
In the winter, it is hard to
see the roads; I drove off the road twice in my own neighborhood one winter.
Regarding roads, in general: They are rough and there
is often no shoulder; worse yet, many ditches are 45 degrees down (and 45
degrees
up the other side (in short, they V-shaped)) and very
dangerous. Many, many road deaths occur here (but life seems "cheap"
to many,
so no one much cares). One frequent problem is due to
bicyclists: since the highways have no shoulders, and bicycling is common,
frequently you and others have to swerve into the other lane (for the
safety of the bicyclists, but at notable danger to you). Of course,
there may be wildlife on the roads and highways.
Rodeo is the favorite sport of Montana, in spite of
its cruelty -- the horses and bulls 'buck' because their private parts are
being
tugged on. Also, the people love to hunt large, rather rare
mammals like bears and buffalo, though the killin' is so easy nowadays.
I have found some of the people to be quite crabby
(though this may be well-justified -- given what I write above and below);
some are very
helpful, though, but finding someone notably friendly is RARE.
The prices are outrageous. We pay double (per
unit) what we paid in Minneapolis for gas and for electricity in Bozeman. You can find
higher than usual prices most places on MANY types of goods -- including, of course,
the 'stuff' at the
'exclusive', super-fancy stores.
The city of Bozeman is nice in many ways (clearly the
best city in MT), but there are clear elements of "exclusivity" because
of disproportionate number of rich people; at the same time there are
MANY, MANY under-paid and low-paid people (lots of
trailer courts).
[ More than once, I have been blocked in my passage through stores because
of rich cliques, rudely acting oblivious to my
existence. Most of the
people I like live in trailer courts or in towns outside of Bozeman; I,
myself, live 8 miles out and try to go to
Bozeman as little a possible
-- partly because the daytime traffic in Bozeman rivals heavy, bad traffic
about anywhere (and the stoplights do
not seem to run well). ]
I have not bothered to mention the many pan-handlers, because I view them neither positively or negatively.
A son of a friend of mine (having gone to school at
MSU in Bozeman) has estimated that only about 40% of people work here.
There are both retirees, but also apparently: a notable number of rich,
lazy bums. I have never seen a place with so many TV ads
for
luxury goods, including luxury home, cars, kitchens, etc. etc.
In my view, it is difficult to find services (though there are exceptions, including certain individual service providers and Sears).
The service providers and other sales people are
quite happy to over-charge you; I feel about half the time I have gotten
services to my home I was over-charged. Examples: final bid way off from the
estimate for mediocre painting; plumbers charging
professional time for the slow
drive to your home; another outrageous example was a community education
course, where a carpenter
charged $27, just to answer peoples' questions
-- he indicated that if we had none, the class would be very, very short,
since he
had NOTHING PREPARED. [ Retail workers never apologize for bad
or defective products: they don't take responsibility for the
stores
they work for; apparently, if they themselves did not cause you a problem,
they feel they have nothing to apologize for and don't. ]
There is so little recycling done, you would think it
was the 1970s and that recycling was a new thing. (Many of the stores
love to
use a LOT of plastic packaging.)
While there are many remarkably nice days every year
(in terms of weather), you pay dearly for
them: Not only can winters
be very long and hard, but in
the last few months (Jul-Aug) (and at other times) at least some of the
time during the day (MANY days,
and likely most days) there have been what I
would actually consider gale-force winds -- so strong, many things I own
have blown away.
[ Example: Outdoor umbrellas will easily be both blown
far away and destroyed, if left open (and winds come fast and unexpectedly).
]
While it is hot for only about 2 months at most and
the humidity is always low, for the 2 months (where it can easily be 85-90
degrees) you
need an air conditioner VERY badly. Also, relatedly,
precipitation is VERY rare and LOW (often you get just .01 inch in a rain
event) and
along with
the wind you need to water the lawn almost every single day, if you want to have a
good
lawn. No lawn at all, with no watering.
(Weather forecasters consider 30% chance of rain, "a good
chance"; they very rarely say much about the extreme wind -- and often
describe it
as "breezy".)
There are literally just 90 frost-free days in
Bozeman. Many crops, like tomatoes and pumpkins, need a greenhouse or
you can't
have them at all. (I have known the heat in the house can come
on even in July, the night are so cool/cold, even after hot days.)
Technologically, the professionals doing web
programming seem about 7 years behind the times, and for the most part
people
have VERY little interest in any customization to their web
sites. At least one leading web programmer very much underestimates
the importance of JavaScript and thinks web professionals can do without
it!! Also, in the same vein, a 'professional' group actually had a
presentation called "Will jQuery ruin the Internet?" (jQuery is a major, and very, very
well-established and well-respected pure JavaScript
library.) I
have given more than one group advice regarding making their new web sites
load at a good speed (3 sec or less on DSL).
No one has ever taken that
advice and some groups/organizations have NEW web sites that take 10 sec or
more to load!!
The people have very little modesty and not
infrequently have much more opinions that they do knowledge. At the
same time, they actually
like to BOAST -- in a most unbecoming manner.
In fact, every several months they have a series of basically boasting
presentations at
a theatre in town -- this set of presentations has a
strange name, "PechaKucha". I walked out on the one I attended, since
I got
very tired of the extreme non-stop boasting.
Everyone is quite independent (and that is good), but
many also expect you to fix almost anything yourself. My wife went
to town
for me once to get a part, and returned without the part because
the hardware man had told her I just need to drill a hole through
the
1/2 inch+ hardened steel !!!! This was an example of my present point
and, at the same time, an example of the strong, not-well-justified
opinion that can be found. More than once we have been told things "did not
exist" when they do; at the same time, some common items
are not
available: for example, Quickie mops (you all know what these are, and that
they are good and should be available).
About home services and other professional services:
I have found some companies to be very fair and honest and admirable; at the
same time, several times I have felt swindled (so I see it about half
and half).
The leading people of Bozeman, in my view, talk up
the town way more than it deserves and even manage to help get Bozeman in
some top 18 best places list (as well as in another similar list in the
past three years). I believe the basis for this is questionable; for
example, they say the utility prices are good, but that is just plain
false. I basically think that, given the population growth, leading
people tend to inappropriately exaggerate the merits of Bozeman, plus
some lovers of Montana may just want to live in their best town.
Housing
costs a fortune and you cannot judge the market because house prices (the
price homes sell for) is NOT public information!
People are moving to the area and building fancy
houses like crazy, many for "investment property". I have seen more
than one
case of a house being left vacant for a long time (for over a
year -- NOT just during winter). Buying investment properties is frequently
advertised
I have dealt with some dentists and doctors who were
not so highly skilled. (Two examples: a dentist referred me to a very,
very
expensive specialist for some work my old dentist of 25 years used
to do himself, which cost me $1200; I have know of a doctor who
over a 3
year period, never used a stethoscope at least on some patients -- I never
saw him with one and he never used one on me for 3 years.)
If you every get seriously injured and accept one of
the helicopter services to get your loved one to a well-qualified hospital,
you
can expect to have a bill of over $40,000.
Some folks (maybe like everywhere) quietly hold a
grudge and are unhelpful and not inclusive in any friendly kind of way.
Perhaps
related to this: you will find very some dogmatic persons, even
those in public service positions, who
are not open to feedback (and will basically
tell you to "buzz off"). In
any case, I almost never find folks especially friendly nor as friendly as
the acquaintances I came to have in Minneapolis.
This has been my experience. I am not comfortable
here in Bozeman, either physically (often) or psychologically. I may well
move.
I am making this web page just to tell of my experience and perhaps to
counter some of the B.S. that keeps Bozeman Montana fastest
growing city (it
IS the nicest city in Montana, but that is a "LOW bar" and one might very well
have to contend with all the problems I have
described).
In short, about Bozeman: the weather is hard, the ground
(dirt, earth) is hard, the work is hard, the water is hard, the hearts are hard, and the heads
are
hard. And, much is hard to find and/or hard to afford. Historically,
it is telling that in the time right after they offered double-sized homesteads
in the 1880s in Montana: 17,000 people came to try to have a life here (in
MT); 16,000 of them left and went back where they came from. On the
positive
side: many of the people are peculiar; if you want to go some place where people
are different, you would probably find Montana people
more different that the
people on other continents (e.g. Australia) -- be sure to try to keep them from
killing you on the roads, though.
Yes. This is Bozeman for me. Bozeman, my final
resting place (when I can rest, with all the construction going on and the
sounds of shotguns).
Oh, did I mention: we have a great deal of random sprawl –
residential developments popping up on agricultural land outside the city,
and this seems to effect the quality of life.
----------------------------------------------
P.S. There are no large casinos in MT, though they
are legal, because they have a peculiar law that only 20 gaming machines can be
in one place.
Even more odd: They have been trying to pass a law so their
medical marijuana places can have only 3 clients each !! Peculiar !!!
Montana is a place you can readily go to prison for a
long, long time. One guy, who in actuality physically did rather little
(except escape from
jail, when he was left TOTALLY unguarded and
unsupervised, and just walked out) got sentenced to many decades in prison.
[ It also does not help my comfort level that those
in-the-know say that 60% of Montanans are going to vote for Trump. ]
Addendum
To give some further indication of the lack of
regular workers and services: 25% of Bozeman Public School bus
routes had to be halted
because of the lack of bus drivers.
Students closer than 3 miles to school would now have to all walk or find other
options.
In Sept 2016, I went to three different stores looking
for saltine crackers. I noticed all three stores had a very limited
selection (1-2 brands) and
in all three stores the crackers were beyond, at,
or near the expiration date. Twice I made purchases of such crackers (near
the expiration
date) and they were stale (one, which I
attempted to eat very little of, I returned to the "major" store and told them
the crackers were stale --
and the all the saltine crackers they had
on the shelf also had the same expiration date; on doing further
shopping at the store, I
found another product all of which was past the
expiration date. The same day, I found a similar problem of expired food on the
shelf at the town's
largest pharmacy. I now religiously
check expiration dates, because of these experiences.