The Littlest Big City — slackermama . com

According to Kile’s standards, I’m a “city girl”. I was born in a fairly large metropolitan area, around the hustle and bustle of busy freeways and crowded malls and urban landscaping. I think I great up in a rather suburban area (the extreme southern end of San Jose in California), an area replete with golf courses, strip malls and snooty public schools. I think it’s not entirely “city” but I can concede that perhaps I was more accustomed to urban environments than he was growing up. I knew about homeless people, crime rates, gangs and graffiti and San Francisco’s mass transit system. On the other hand, I see him as a “country boy”. He grew up smack in the middle of Wyoming. Which, if you’ve ever been to Wyoming (and the little corner that houses Yellowstone and Jackson Hole hardly count), should tell you what you could expect to find there. NOTHING. Now, I don’t want to bag on the place because I found it perfectly pleasant when we visited there several years ago. But it wasn’t like anything I was used to growing up either. For one thing, the town was located on an Indian Reservation and literally had a main street where all the primary businesses were located. The whole thing is surrounded by ranch-land and well… nothing. Nature. This and that.

The whole point of this is that there are these commercials on television here done by the Fallon Auto Mall. Fallon is a teeny little thing located east of here and (I’m sorry to anyone who might read this blog and is from Fallon, but…) that town gives me the heebie jeebies. Not the sort of place I look to be spending a lot of time. I’m constantly teasing about their high school mascot (the Fallon Green Wave… the “Green Wave” refers to the fields of alfalfa that are grown nearby and I’m sorry but how is that the LEAST BIT INTIMIDATING??). There isn’t much there, outside of their “auto mall” where they purport to sell cars without the pressure and high prices of the dealers here in Reno. Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the commercial says it’s so. And the commercial keeps referring to the Reno dealers as “Big City Motors”. Uh… WHAT??

Reno at night

Now, I guess, next to FALLON, Reno would be a bigger city. I guess I can agree to that. But, categorically, a BIG CITY? I don’t think so. Not by a long shot. In fact, I would hesitate to suggest that any city here in the great state of Nevada would qualify as being a “Big City”. And yes, that includes Vegas. But then, there’s a Reno/Vegas feud going on and I can’t resist digging at Vegas a little bit. Anyhow. My point is: Reno is NOT a big city. I’ll give you that it’s a city. And I feel that is being rather generous. But big? Bigger, but not big. Kile is far more likely to agree with Reno being a big city, but I hardly think his vote counts since he is a “country boy” as I mentioned before. Even having lived here for almost fourteen years, I still can’t think of this place as being a big city. I mean, for one thing, we still lack an IKEA store. SERIOUSLY? We have a Cabela’s and will soon have a Scheel’s, plus we already have a Sportsman’s Warehouse and an REI and about a bazillion other sporting goods stores but we have NO IKEA? How is that fair?

Somehow, we also only have two Target stores. And one of those stores is a Target Which Will Not Be Named. It’s located in a not-so-good neighborhood, is small and dirty and unorganized. I don’t think I know anyone who ever goes to that Target. It’s just not spoken of. So that leaves ONE Target store. It’s a larger store, thank goodness. Much better location (though still too freakin’ far from where we live for my liking) and generally a joy to shop at. I’m thinking we could use another Target or two, don’t you? And how is it we only have ONE Sephora store? And that it moved from MY mall to the snooty, high-falluty mall way south of town? Can we have two?? We have two In n’ Out Burgers, I think we can support it.

You know, not that I’m bitter or anything.

So yeah. Reno is so not a big city. Not even close. Sure, we’re getting more crowded all the time, the roads are getting more jammed and more shopping centers are popping up all over the place… but it’s still not a big city. And I’ll argue to the death anyone who tries to tell me it is.

Get the word out: