The town I currently live in is an odd mix — a suburb of a suburb in many ways, it’s also the second-largest city in the state. At the same time, there are huge swathes of agriculture not even a hop or a skip from residential neighborhoods. In fact, the land our house is built on was almost certainly the site of a seed burial ground no more than five or six years ago. Family farms are disappearing, subdivisions are cropping up in their stead.

So things are growing rapidly around here, but still it’s a pretty small town — at least coming from years of living in Portland and DC. This is why it was a shock last month to see the Rolling Stones’ list of upcoming tour dates:

Boston, Sept. 20
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Sept. 23
East Rutherford, N.J., Sept. 27
Wichita, Kan., Oct. 2
Missoula, Mont., Oct. 6
Regina, Saskatchewan, Oct. 8
Chicago, Oct. 11
Seattle, Oct. 17
El Paso, Texas, Oct. 20
Austin, Texas, Oct. 22
Atlantic City, N.J., Oct. 27
Vancouver, British Columbia, Nov. 3
Oakland, Calif., Nov. 5
Phoenix, Nov. 8
Las Vegas, Nov. 11
Nampa, Nov. 14
Los Angeles, Nov. 18

See that? Sandwiched between Vegas and LA? One of the guys at work has summed up the local reaction pretty well . . .