I lived in Bozeman, Montana for two years. A nice sized college town that offered entertainment, sports, fine dining, health care, transportation - you name it, Bozeman had it. And you didn't have to pour through your options when it came to anything, because city planners made it simple. Once we had one, we didn't need 19 more just like it.
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Bozeman offered:
-One shopping mall. You could live on the far end of town and it would take you five minutes to get there. None of this "do I go to the Galleria or to the Beverly Center? What about the Fashion Center in Northridge? Maybe Topanga has it? Perhaps the Burbank location. Eagle Rock Plaza might. How about the Camarillo outlets?" No. One mall. Know what it was called? The Mall.
-One university. It offered any class you needed and a brain dead monkey could get accepted, yet it would still graduate as an intelligent, well-rounded student. One university. Do you know how many colleges Los Angeles has? 103. Google it. Who needs 103 institutions of higher learning in a city with a high school dropout rate of 35 percent?
-One Taco Bell. I mean really - health food experts would consider even that to be one too many.
-One freeway. It's called Interstate 90 and it runs from Seattle to Boston, and is 3,084.61 miles from end to end, making it the longest interstate in the country. And it's 1,100 miles from Los Angeles, which by my last count had 87 freeways, 19 state routes and 41 junctions so confusing NASA had to stop taking satellite pictures of them for fear of the camera melting from overload.
-We had two grocery stores. I have to explain that we had Town and Country, a nice little mom-and-pop operation that had turned into something decent, and then we had Albertsons because corporate evil had somehow made its way into Big Sky Country.
-One mountain. It was called Bridger Peak, it stood 8,583 feet high and it was majestic to look at. We didn't need this whole range of ridiculous hills to trap the smog in and cover with radio towers and fire in the summer time.
-One phone company, Internet company, power company, water company, gas company, you get the idea. You took the TV deal that they offered to you because that was your only choice...and when you live in Montana you don't watch TV. You go outside because you have no fear of being stabbed at the park for wearing the color red.
-One high school. The football team was undefeated because they had no one else to play. How many high school graduates in L.A. can say their team never lost a game in history? The answer is none - no high school football players in L.A. graduate from high school. Fooled you there.
-One Denny's, which existed until the manager got in over his head due to massive gambling debts, grabbed $40,000 from the safe one night and left the state. Ironically, they then converted the Denny's into a casino. True story.
-One news station. NBC. The station was run out of an old brick building and had a Subaru to send out the reporter. Breaking News referred to something interesting happening, like the explosion that rocked downtown and took out a restaurant and an art gallery. None of this KTLA/KCAL/KNBC/KFML garbage where every single story has the Breaking News title in the lower third. Lindsay Lohan being arrested for snorting cocaine while driving topless down the 101 on Christmas Eve is not breaking news - it's expected. Bozeman news covered stuff you actually cared about, and the evening sports guy was 19 and wore basketball shorts when he was on the air.
-One court house/police station. If you had jury duty, which you didn't because there was no crime, you drove to the same building as everyone else.
-One hospital. When you got run over by your own tractor, your family didn't have to call all of the hospitals to try and find you. Your detached limbs were lying on the one table in the one exam room of the one emergency care facility in town, and it was up on a hill above Main Street so everyone could see when the one ambulance arrived with your torso.
-One funeral home with one hearse. The car had a vanity license plate with "DROP DEAD" written on it. No joke.
-One "busy" intersection, at the corner of 19th and Main. At "rush hour," traffic would sometimes back up five cars deep at a red light.
-Zero parking meters. Zero pay lots. Zero valet options. When you wanted to park somewhere, no one cared if you had cash on you, or how long you were going to be there, or whether or not it was a street cleaning day. You parked, you left your car unlocked, and you were worry-free. Yes, even at the airport.
-Zero night clubs because night clubs are stupid. If you wanted to listen to loud music and dance to funky lights, you drove your truck into an empty field (a 40-second commute from anywhere in town,) blasted the stereo and stared at the most stunning night sky you could imagine. L.A. has movie stars; Bozeman had ACTUAL stars.
-One airport. None of this nonsense about Burbank versus LAX versus Ontario versus John Wayne. The airport was built out of old timbers and looked like an oversized log cabin, yet was still serviced by American, Alaska, Delta and United. Arriving at the field, checking in for your flight, checking your bags, going through security and reaching your gate was a five-minute process. The last five-minute process I had at the airport was the length of the sigh I let out when I saw the security line at LAX. I passed out due to lack of oxygen and it took 1 of the 18 ambulances they called 6 hours to get staffed by 3 graduates from 1 of 103 colleges, travel 7 freeways, sit at 14 busy intersections, find 2 open spaces to fit into in 1 of 9 different parking lots, pay the 8 bucks to park, locate me at 1 of 21 terminals spread out over 4 airports, stop at 1 of 207 Taco Bells to refuel, call 1 of 8 different news stations to report the story, and figure out which of the 19 hospitals to take me to. In Bozeman, if I passed out on the sidewalk, the man robbing the 1 local bank would stop to give me CPR. Ironically, while sprawled on the ground at LAX, I was stepped over by 13 doctors, 9 lawyers, 49 wannabe actors, 1 actual actor, 16 mechanics, 52 college students, 31 Armenians, 104 Mexicans, 72 Jews, 19 African Americans, 25 Asians, and 1 white guy...and zero of those people stopped to revive me because while Los Angeles has too much of everything, the majority of the stuff we have too much of is already pretty useless.
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