Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

SUBURBS:

In defense of the ‘boring’ Vegas ’burbs

They’re newsworthy despite Forbes rankings

So it turns out I may have the most boring job in America.

Forbes.com tells me I routinely write about two of the 10 most boring places in the country: Henderson and North Las Vegas.

While I give the suburban cities plenty of attention, the big, national publications seldom acknowledge the second and third largest cities in Nevada.

“North Las Vegas’ existence barely registers in the national media, though the city has a population equivalent to Reno’s,” a graphic at Forbes.com asserts, accompanied by a photo of dozens of red rooftops.

The suburbs are such an easy target for insults.

Picking on the ’burbs is like making fun of chain restaurants or Britney Spears albums, something elitists do while mainstream America eats appetizer samplers and listens to pop princesses.

Still, few things have been skewered more effectively in pop culture than the American suburbs, places portrayed as painstakingly mundane, passionless and soulless. Ernest Hemingway famously said the suburbs are filled with “wide lawns and narrow minds.”

For 50 years American authors and filmmakers have dissected the perceived ills of suburbia. There’s the loss of dreams in “Revolutionary Road,” the 1961 novel-turned-film, and the adulterous spouses in John Updike’s “Couples.”

And who can forget Lester Burnham in “American Beauty” proclaiming, “I’m dead already,” as the screen shows streets where everything is identical, a place with no name that might as well be Henderson or North Las Vegas.

The suburbs, it seems, never get a fair shake from Hollywood or the media. In this study the most-boring list included, besides the two Nevada cities, three suburban cities near Phoenix and cities on the outskirts of Los Angeles and Miami.

The survey explored 2008 news coverage of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. But the news coverage comes from four newspapers published roughly 3,000 miles from the Las Vegas Valley: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal (based in New York), and USA Today (based in Virginia).

Forbes.com also examined the coverage in Time, Newsweek, Forbes and BusinessWeek (all based in New York).

The study did not include any West Coast publications, not even the Los Angeles Times, which employs a full-time Las Vegas reporter — who lives in Henderson.

It is noted that “Henderson did make it into a number of campaign stories.” That sentence is next to a photo of Lake Las Vegas, a place that’s certainly not boring on the surface — four-star hotels, blackjack tables and fancy restaurants — but that includes a bankrupt golf course and a troubled financial history.

Boring’s not often an accurate adjective for the people in these ’burbs. Yes, their houses look alike, connected by never-ending cinder block walls hiding tastefully landscaped back yards.

But the individuals are an interesting sort, facing the real-world problems of a foreclosure crisis and a rising unemployment rate. They have stories to tell and secrets to keep.

Consider Kevin Spacey’s character rebelling against the status quo by quitting his job and throwing asparagus at the wall.

Besides, boring isn’t terrible.

“I think that boring is good in the right context,” North Las Vegas City Manager Gregory Rose says. “The way they have described North Las Vegas and Henderson as compared to a city like Detroit, I’m pretty pleased.”

Forbes.com acknowledged, “The people who live there might not be bored, and they could be fun places to live, but they’re certainly not in the national spotlight.”

Fair enough. I have fun living in Green Valley with my lack of national-news-making crime.

I even have a dog and a picket fence.

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