any members in Montana

“Missoula is not your typical Montana town. ”

Curious what this means? Thanks

. . . I remember a while back ago I watched an episode of Dateline in which a home owner’s (in Missoula) garage had been burglarized previously. At the time, there was kind of a thing going on in Missoula where apparently the local high school kids would go out at night and enter people’s garages (if they were left open) and do minor pilfering of beer and what not. Anyway, some kids made the mistake of going into the homeowner’s (who I referred to above) garage which he had left open again and set up with a motion detector and alarm and then lay in wait with a (I think ) a Mossberg Model 500 and he blasted one of the kids a couple of time. The kid was unarmed and the homeowner was charged and convicted as the jury apparently decided that it was a premeditated ambush, and I think I remember that he (the homeowner) got a pretty lengthy sentence. (It did turn out that the boy who was killed was not involved in the previous burglary.)

Anyway, @grannyring , I remember thinking to myself that if that had happened in certain other Montana towns, he may not have been convicted or even charged.

“Missoula is not your typical Montana town. ”

Curious what this means? Thanks

@grannyring , I think another way to explain that would be by looking at the results of the last presidential election. In Missoula County the democratic ticket won 59% to 37% for the republican ticket. However, overall in Montana, it was R 58.39% to D 38.46%. I’d also say that by and large, Montana is an agricultural state east of the foothills, and I don’t think the economy of Missoula is based on agriculture. The agricultural culture (no alliteration intended) as opposed to to the not agricultural culture.

@immatthewj My neighbor is from Missoula, She'd be interested (more like I'd be interested) in all this Montana analysis. As a geographer, it's fascinating to me. It's the only part of the country I have not been to, but I sure would love to visit. 

I'd agree with the above statistics. Missoula is a college town with lots of outside influence but  beautiful place to live (like lots of smaller towns once were). 

Work as I recall was very competitive because it was a place where people wanted to live for the recreation. I had an Oxford professor that was there because he loved to fly fish. 

While there in the 1990's I was told that "the Californian's were invading the place", driving up property prices, etc. From what I understand this also happened during covid too. California always has been a population center with many moving to Seattle too. Population and money mecca's produce freedom to move and explore.

Sadly I do remember my mom pointing to a book about rape in Missoula, and the average being much higher, and it went on to say the justice system in the town was broken. Society is so complex and changing so quickly, I even here town's like Burlington Vermont are now considered unsafe. Hard to say how bad these places are without some personal imprint of the place- growing up just outside of NYC in the 70-80's, I saw lots of crime too. NY got much better in the late 90's that's for certain.

From an audiophile perspective I would bet Montana has slightly more watts per audiophile than other places. Big Sky big power, but I could be wrong. 

@bjesien I always found Burlington, VT overrated. There are a lot of college towns that are though.

Also. I always wondered why rural America, while so scenic with breathtaking nature is so depressing, abandoned and hopeless, etc. Nothing like central and Western Europe where tourism thrives in these areas.