But. I'm blown away by property prices. How the hell is a shack with a collapsing roof and a sagging lawn and rotten walls worth a gazillion dollars just because it's on a coastline? And why does a three-story, well-equipped 1990s family home in Nowheretown, USA sell for $100,000?
Waterfront
500 miles from the Pacific Ocean
There's something about water that apparently makes people believe that paying out the nose for property is okay. The thing that's hilarious about this water-obsession is what it's doing to parts of the country that used to be reserved for bears, cougars, moose and old men with no teeth.
I'm talking about Idaho. You mention Idaho to someone from Florida or New York and they'll say "yuck" because they don't know better. However, people in California, Washington, Oregon and probably Nevada (really, yuck) know that there are some parts of this weird state that are becoming highly desirable. And that makes for some strange little societies, especially in Northern Idaho.
The stereotypical person from the backwoods of Northern Idaho is thus: Toothless, uncouth and trigger-happy. Drives a truck. Flies a Confederate flag. Talks about "them dang liberals." The problem is, North Idaho is quickly filling up with them dang liberals, who are building enormous "cabins" and resorts all over the area. When lakefront property in Western Washington became unobtainable for all but Microsoft's founding fathers, people moved inland in search of those coveted waterfront locales.
Imagine Jim-Bob and Jethro's shock in seeing Honda CRVs and Audi wagons rolling through their heavily-wooded countryside, en route to lakes Coeur d'Alene, Priest and Pend Oreille. What must Jumbo and Jessimay think of Malibu wakeboard boats and decked-out Winnebagos with California license plates? How many Idaho bartenders know how to make a raspberry cosmopolitan martini?
I'm constantly in awe when I visit the bars in North Idaho's resorts and see the flannel-clad locals drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon alongside citified family-men and their perfect wives. You'll see Gun Toting Nascar Jack prop up the bar with blonde sorority girls and their metrosexual boyfriends.
What would their conversations be like if they ever spoke to each other? I don't think twenty-two year old college girls like being talked about in the lingo of the area, which (if memory serves me rightly) consists of phrases such as "pretty little lady." I don't know if Sam and Sally Socialite from the city would agree with Jim-Bob's views on the Iraq war or Roe v. Wade. The fact that they don't talk is almost as entertaining, however, as it's fascinating to watch them strategically ignore each other, too.
The number of gargantuan homes on the shores of these lakes keeps going up. The "lake cabin" is a thing of the past and we're now blessed with the "lake mansion" instead. I like to laugh at the newbie landowners up there who frown disapprovingly at lake kids who've been spending their summers there since before land cost more than Idaho silver. These kids, who are always between sixteen and twenty-four, love to float around on their Costco inflatables, drink copious amounts of alcohol and wakeboard dangerously close to the mansions' docks.
They seem to think that there's nothing funnier than wet, angry rich people.
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bgkimzey
JaneCopland
bgkimzey
JaneCopland
dillivered
NavtejKohli
anneliese
JaneCopland
anneliese
unbelievable
Ringwurm
JaneCopland
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