Meade County, South Dakota...... Duh...

Okay, I haven't written an opinion on local government in awhile... So... I will today.

First, I'm going to talk about the Annual Motorcycle Rally we have here every August.

For those of you not from around here in Western South Dakota, let me explain what "the Rally" is. Every year in August since the 1930's, the town of Sturgis holds motorcycle races. These races attract motorcyclist from all over the world. This Motorcycle rally has gotten bigger and bigger every year since the mid 80's. Today, the town of 7,000 people can attract up to 400,000 people for one week in August.

Sturgis, which used to be a typical small town with a main street full of small mom and pop businesses. Main Street in Sturgis is now mostly vacant for 11 months 2 weeks out of the year. I blame this on poor management skills on the part of civic leaders, The idiots who run the company who run the rally, and the fact that property is being bought by people from out of state who give 1 shit about Sturgis 1 week out of the year. All in the name of "quick, fast , easy money. Sturgis has more bars per capita than Rapid City.

Now, the rally has hopped outside the city limits in the form of concert venues and campgrounds. More out of staters are buying land around Sturgis so they can get rich easy. One such person wants to open a bar at the foot of Bear Butte and hold concerts with big named acts to attract thousands of people to come. Bear Butte is a large hill that juts out of the prairie from a height of 2,900 ft. to about 5,300 ft. Bear Butte is a State owned Park but is revered by Aboriginal Natives as a place of worship, a church if you will. The new owner of the property that sits on the northern edge of the Butte tried the old sneaky "I'll honor the Indian" tactic knowing damn good and well that the natives will grow restless concerning his idea. And restless they grew. They cried foul about the bar and saw through the bullshit this bastard was trying to divy them. I compare it to the way the natives were ripped off in the 1800's.

Since the fine folks of Meade County have no zoning laws. Land deemed agriculture in other counties can be changed to commercial and anything can be erected on that land no matter how much complaining adjoining land owner bitch. So seeing this opportunity of stupidity, out of state business owners are grabbing up real estate deemed agriculture and creating campgrounds & concert venues all over the country side outside Sturgis. And enivitably around Bear Butte.

The question is... would you want a shop that sells Porn and booze with a full strip club right next to your church? With the exception of a few folks I know...most likely not. Well, even though the standard, garden variety anglo saxon Christian who shuns at the idea that others worship different than them would probably have a sacred heart attack annointed by the pope himself if that were to happen. Think of it that way and you can see that this out of state owner is in the wrong and should be denied a liquor license.

Eric