Underrated that ("blue"-coded) college towns are increasingly the only reason to have any human concentration outside of "big...
Underrated that (“blue”-coded) college towns are increasingly the only reason to have any human concentration outside of “big cities” since we shut down all the (“red”-coded) Cold War military bases in the BRAC process of the ‘90s
Also red coded tourist traps that increasingly have to cater to blue tastes (really interesting to see with “which towns in flyover country got really into COVID precautions and which didn’t.”)
Now I wonder if I ever visited a red-coded tourist trap. I think I have, as a child, but that must have been before the current red/blue colour scheme was established.
Yeah living in Oregon near Idaho and Montana this last decade and dreaming of forming my own community I’ve been noticing the potential and threat of outdoorsy-recreation as a draw
Bend, the biggest town on Oregon’s red eastern side of the mountains boomed to a point of increasingly blue excess powered largely by the proximity of pretty available nature recently
On the other hand as Portland becomes more generic the last decade’s arrivals (who maybe came to work) are noticeably less outdoorsy, less gear-shell-on-the-Subaru, rare campers, less the type to idealize a warm sundress-clad springtime bike ride to the market and park (bike commuting is down in the last decade)
Then what of the ski bum/X Games local guide cultures, as “chill rural bros who down beers and accept personal risk” is increasingly red-coded? Crossover with that weird “bearded ex-Special Forces” subculture?
Then the thing where taking your motorsports “toys” out is an increasing red-country bourgeois thing – dirt bike trails, mudding, rock crawling, snowmobiling at public “winter recreation areas” in the mountains
Then hunting, which through selling permits to out-of-staters is a significant revenue source in the Mountain West, but even if they make more hunters it’s harder to make more wild land and more wildland prey