City Government

A Dirty Little Boise Secret?

A reader sent us a story he found in a national magazine about Boise. “We didn’t read it ma, the big boys showed it to us.”

We haven’t had a press release from city hall– or even heard of one being sent to the legacy media–about another “National Magazine Poll,” but MEN’S HEALTH rated Boise just one slot off the TOP TEN rank for smuttiest cities in the USA.

If they get us up there with “most livable” and “bike friendly,” there may be some socially redeeming value.

Comments & Discussion

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  1. So many ways to “view” these statistics. Questions: Does it mean that we are actually #1 per population? And is porn a replacement because of lack of the real thing? Boise is a bad singles town.

  2. I saw bike ride naked through Garden City on the Green Belt to celebrate this distinction.

  3. I would guess we received this label because of the high rate of child porn and sex offenses per capita, this state and city is on a perpetual “witch hunt” to punish anyone who has sex, and so much so that the topic of sex has become taboo. I think this whole deal is similar to the “preachers daughter” syndrome, if you keep it from us, we will crave it more an more….
    But this is all just speculation…

  4. It’s pretty disappointing to find ourselves in the second tier.. maybe with some concerted effort we can improve. Off to do my part.

  5. Is Garden City part of Boise?

    EDITOR NOTE–No. Surrounded on three sides, has land on both sides of the river, they have a police dept, but fire is North Ada which is now contracted by Boise FD.

  6. Dean Gunderson
    May 9, 2012, 10:10 am

    Also note that San Francisco (often touted by locals as a den of iniquity) is ranked 23rd (12 steps “cleaner” than Boise). Porcupine, given the way the magazine collected its data it might be hard to isolate individual cities from the Boise MSA (the geographical area that it most likely sampled). The Boise MSA covers all of Boise, Garden City, Meridian, and parts of Nampa. But, since such a standard sampling criteria would be used universally (for all the cities cited in the article) it’s kind of irrelevant whether Garden City (or Meridian) is included in the area. What those of use who live in the Boise MSA can take from this is our relative ranking among other cities. I tend to agree that this represents a general closed-mindedness to sex in our area — not, as some might offer, an open and freer attitude to human sexuality. If, as a state, we were more capable of speaking openly about human sexuality I imagine the legislature wouldn’t have had any problem authorizing a bill to Add The Words in the last session — keeping in mind that authorizing a bill doesn’t mean that one agrees with the bill’s content. We seem constitutionally incapable of acting like adults when it comes to sexuality — that’s what I take from this ranking.

  7. EDITOR NOTE–No. Surrounded on three sides, has land on both sides of the river, they have a police dept, but fire is North Ada which is now contracted by Boise FD.

    Dang.
    I was hoping we could blame this survey on them…

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