Butte High was playing football the night the great comedian Aaron Foster performed in Butte. So, I drove to Helena to catch his show the night after.

Aaron was my guest on the ButteCast a couple of weeks before the show, and he left me a couple of tickets in Helena. During the post-show mingling period, I was talking to Aaron about his performance in Butte. He said he had good turnout.

I told him that the comedy scene in Butte had not been great, but it is now starting to gain some steam, at least in part, because Brittani Ferris founded Uptown Comedy and started bringing in great acts like Aaron.

As soon as I mentioned Butte and comedy, this guy with a hipster beard decided to weigh in. The guy, who seemed to be trying too hard to impress with his colored tattoos down one arm and the opposite leg, snickered as he looked at his girlfriend.

“Nothing to laugh about in Butte,” he muttered, intentionally loud enough for me to hear as I proudly wore my Butte Muckers hoodie.

Now, that is a very poor characterization of our town. In addition to being perhaps the most caring folks on the planet, Butte people have a very good sense of humor. Maybe it is the prolonged exposure to lead, but we really do seem to laugh a lot.

I bit my lip and held back the urge to engage with a guy who was displaying the same snobbish sentiment that we have all had to deal with from time to time. You know, the “oh, you’re from Butte” attitude.

I do not get why some people are so condescending to our town. Sure, we have an open-pit mine filled up with contaminated water. We have a poor history of our leaders giving in to the oil company that owns the cleanup responsibility.

But don’t these people who hate on us like to turn on a light when they use the bathroom? 

Well, they might not be able to do that if it wasn’t for the good ol’ Mining City. The copper that was extracted from the “Richest Hill on Earth” helped light the world. It also helped save it.

As my friend Fritz Daily says, if it wasn’t for Butte, we’d all be speaking German. That is because Butte helped the good guys win a pair of world wars —with our precious minerals and the many brave men and women from the Holey City who fought for our country.

Sure, we recently had another “dirty water” scare, and so many around the state laugh at us about that. Even Missoula laughed about it, and that water is heading directly toward them. No matter the laughter, though, the contribution Butte made to the state, country and world cannot be disputed.

In recent years, Butte Rat Rob O’Neill killed the world’s most notorious terrorist. Butte cousins Robert Lester and Braxton Mitchell took a canoe from Butte to the Pacific Ocean to make a documentary, “The Columbia River Project,” which shined light on the importance of dam removal and cleaning up mine waste in the watershed.

The city that gave you Evel Knievel also produced an Olympic bronze medalist in Bryon Wilson, and it turned out a couple of football stars in Colt Anderson and Tommy Mellott.

Colt has given back to his hometown, state and beyond more than any athlete I have ever seen, and Tommy is such an incredible human that he won over Montana Grizzly fans while playing for the Montana State Bobcats.

Yet, so many people around the state still seem to dislike us. Matt Vincent calls it “Butte envy,” and that must be it. It has to be the only explanation.

We could drain the water from the Berkeley Pit, fill in the hole, build a new version of Disney Land, and let everyone in for free, and a large percentage of people around the state still would not like us.

That is why I decided to not say anything to the hipster in Helena. Our reputation precedes us, and that status seems to be cemented in stone. There was no use trying to change his mind.

However, when I see talk about the State of Montana potentially choosing Butte as the site to build a new women’s prison, I see so many people talk about what it would do to our reputation.

Really? Since when did Butte people worry about our reputation?

Now, I don’t know if building a prison in town would be a good thing. It just seems so ironic when I look at some of the people speaking out against the potential project.

When Vincent and I laughed at Destination Montana — that plan to turn Butte into Branson, Missouri with a bunch of music halls, golf courses and wide-open gambling in 2003 — we were accused of hating the hometown we love so much.

When I spoke out to try to stop Butte-Silver Bow from running the Silver-Bow Drive-In out of business by changing zoning laws to build a gas station next to the only outdoor theater in the state, I was accused of pushing jobs away.

Now, some of those same people are arguing that we do not need all the jobs that will come with building and running a 400-bed prison because it will hurt our quality of life or tarnish our reputation?

I just don’t get it. We are talking about good, union jobs with benefits, too.

One argument I have seen repeated by many is the claim that we don’t have the people to fill the jobs. Or, as they say, “nobody wants to work.”

That claim is so unbelievably shortsighted. Trust me, if you offer pay worthy of the work and benefits that a worker can raise a family on, you will never have a problem finding quality applicants for your jobs.

Another argument I have seen was that we “already have the Butte Pre-Release Center dragging us down,” and that is just completely ridiculous. In a lot of ways, that center helped save our town after the mines closed and the Montana Power Co. parachuted away.

I shudder to think where we would be if we did not have the jobs and services provided by Community, Counselling, and Correctional Services, Inc.  

Others make arguments against the prison as if they don’t seem to understand that the prisoners will be locked up. It isn’t like they are going to be walking around town competing with the homeless for our spare change.

And our town is strong enough that it will not be “ruined” by the families of the prisoners moving in. I’ve seen that argument made, too.

Deer Lodge has long been home of the Montana State Prison. Not only is Deer Lodge a lovely town that is always nice to visit, the community has embraced the prison. Their high school sports teams are called the “Wardens.”

Now, I will not pretend to know if building a prison in Butte will be a good thing or a bad thing. I am not an expert in economics or sociology. Maybe the prison would push away businesses. Maybe the influx of jobs that come with the prison would entice someone to build us an indoor movie theater.

It is, after all, pretty sad that we are the only city in the state where you won’t be able to watch the new Bruce Springsteen movie when it comes out.

There are real, legitimate concerns that people have about the prison, and all those concerns should be addressed before the final decision is made. They probably will not be, but they should be. The people of Butte — and the citizens in other cities or towns also under consideration for the prison — should have their voices heard.

If it is not the best thing for Butte, then it should be built somewhere else.

But, please, do not base your opinion on whether the project will hurt the reputation of Butte. The rest of the state has been looking down on us for decades, and that has never hurt our feelings.

Part of the true beauty of Butte is that we have never cared what Helena hipsters thought of us.

 — Bill Foley, who really wants to see the new Bruce Springsteen movie, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.