NOTES FROM DOGTOWN'S DOG POUND (Or, TWO LANES AND AN OFFRAMP)

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[DOG POUND NOTES are simply random thoughts, ideas, and maxims that have occurred to me. I am totally convinced of the merit of some of them. Others may merely be food-for-thought or even outright Doggy Doo-Doo. I'll let you guess as to how I categorize each of them.]
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Below are two comments (combined and slightly edited) which I posted yesterday on THIS website:
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For decades — literally — I had wanted to move to Reno. But apparently it took me too long to get here, and by the time I did, it had already degenerated into “The Biggest Little Disappointment In The World”. I have met Reno natives who have told me that the Reno I thought I was moving to in 2015 really did exist, but that was some time ago.
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By sunset on the 4th day after I had moved here, I realized that I’d screwed up. And the atrocious drivers here add insult (and injury) to injury.
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In Reno, the highway rule of thumb is: Keep one inch of distance between you and the car in front of you for every 10 MPH you are driving. Going 60? Then just to play it safe, you should have at least 6 inches between your front bumper and the back bumper of the car ahead of you!
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I’m not kidding. I’ve driven all over this country, including coast to coast — New York City to Los Angeles — and Reno has the worst tailgating I’ve ever seen anywhere. Seriously, sometimes you can barely even see the headlights of the car behind you because it’s so close!
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My commute to work is just 7 miles of freeway driving, and in slightly less than 3 years here, I have already seen more freeway traffic accidents in those 7 miles than I did in 20 years of driving on Phoenix freeways. Gee, I wonder why!
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A huge part of the problem is all these Northern Commiefornians who have brought their lousy driving “skills” with them to Reno. According to an intelligent guy I work with, the drivers in the Bay Area are even worse than those here. I haven’t been there for ages and have no intention of ever visiting again. (I don’t think it’s mere happenstance that Anton LaVey’s ‘church of satan’ was established in Frisco! That place is a moral and intellectual cesspool.)
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For the first year I was here, I kept hearing about the dreaded and dangerous “Spaghetti Bowl” freeway interchange. Finally, I asked someone, “Where is this ominous interchange I keep hearing about?” Turned out that I lived a stone’s throw from it and entered and exited the freeway there on a daily basis.
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Photo of the ominous and dangerous “Spaghetti Bowl” [click to enlarge]:

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When I was still just a teenager in L.A., I was driving this:
[Link> https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/four-level-interchange
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Most of the drivers here in Reno (the majority of them probably from the Bay Area) would pee their pants while getting hopelessly lost if they had to navigate THAT.
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I have a running joke with a friend of mine here. We often refer to the Reno freeway system as “two lanes and an offramp”.
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And yet it’s so pathetic how just two lanes and an offramp seems to be such a challenge for these drivers.
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As for Commiefornia politics — although born and raised in L.A., I’m as Constitutionally conservative as it’s possible to be. And when I was young, L.A. County generally wasn’t any more liberal than most other places. There were pockets of Liberalism, like in Santa Monica and West Hollywood, but overall there were plenty of conservatives, just like my family was. But over time, things changed.
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There’s an old, old joke that goes like this:
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One day God took hold of the East Coast, tilted it up slightly, and all of the “loose marbles” in the country rolled down into California.
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Honestly, a lot of these Commiefornians whom we all criticize (and I do, too) didn’t originate in California. They came from all over the country, for the good weather and better paying jobs. And now they’re starting to migrate East again, like a destructive Liberal virus moving through the body of America.
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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