[MLUG - DISCUSSION] car prices and Columbia weirdness

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Neil Bradshaw wrote:

> SUVs are nice when you live out where the snow plows don't go,
> or like to go four wheeling. Beyond that, they're just expensive
> gas guzzlers.

Four-wheel-drive is often a very good idea in places that have 
actual weather (Missouri qualifies).  The combination of 4wd and 
improved ground clearance is probably handy in some places where you
drive on pitiful unpaved roads (and I sure know of some of those 
around here).  But in reality, the SUV belongs to somebody who 
uses it as an excuse to drive too fast in poor road conditions and
never goes off road.
 
> The one thing I really dislike about Columbia is the SUV-to-car
> ratio. I've pulled up to intersections with 15 SUVs waiting to
> go. It's a bit scary.

Columbia is certainly getting up there, but for true bizarreness,
you really have to see Southern California.  (Both for the SUV/car
ratio and the traffic congestion problem.)  

We could still get there, alas; maybe 3 of you noticed in the papers
that there was an HGTV (Home and Garden TV...stop snickering)
half-hour show on Columbia as part of their "A Place to Call Home"
series.  After the fact, I found out that this is a weekly show that
tends to focus on your potentially tonier relocation possibilities
among medium-sized cities (e.g., Boulder, Colorado; Monterey, CA;  
Santa Barbara, CA; Boise, Idaho)  and places that want to be like
that (e.g., Asheville, NC;  Columbia, MO) I was curious about how
well they could spin the Columbia experience, so I watched the 10 pm
re-run.

All I can say is: yikes.  These people are the pros, all right.  
They could make the South Bronx look spiffy, and given material like
Shelter Gardens, joggers on the MKT trail, the downtown festival on
a nice September Evening, the houses and yards of people with
seriously good taste, and the photogenic MU campus, you can make
Columbia look arbitrarily good.  (Heck, they didn't even bother to
show telegenic horse farms and they didn't even have the new library
to fawn over...yet.)

If anybody much really watched HGTV, this could have led to some
serious inflation on the SUV/congestion front.

jking

--
To unsubscribe, go to http://mlug.missouri.edu/members/edit.php

Archives are available at http://mlug.missouri.edu/list-archives/