But let’s move on. I’ve been wracking my brain to think of actual “unwritten rules” for Northern Nevada that outsiders might not grasp right away, and I didn’t come up with many. But here goes:

It’s not rude to keep your favorite spots a secret, even from friends and family: Got a favorite local park or Lake Tahoe beach? You’re not even required to tell your own mother about it, because word will get out and everything will be ruined. We value our personal space, and the community is too small to keep anything under wraps.

Side note: You can’t do this with businesses, because you need your burrito spot to stay crowded and busy. If nobody goes to your secret hot springs, it’s not going to suddenly go out of business and turn into a vape shop.

On Tahoe beaches, you can claim one beach towel’s worth of space per person, and that’s it: If word gets out about your favorite beach, you’ll have to start your day battling for a parking spot (bonus unwritten rule: You can’t reserve a parking spot by standing in it.)

The slightly less annoying ― but still difficult ― territory battle will be on the beach itself. Everyone but you will have a pop-up tent, several coolers and some sort of sound system. But societal convention dictates that any group can only claim the square footage of one beach towel per person, and leave ample space to walk between their beach site and the next one over.

Twenty minutes is a long drive in Reno-Sparks, but four hours is completely reasonable if you’re heading out of town: Recent transplants from more urban places like the Bay Area or Las Vegas will drive for 45 minutes to get to the one Target they like best. Around here, that sounds like hell.

On the other hand, driving for several hours to go see ichthyosaur skeletons or attend a Basque festival or go to a Giants game is completely reasonable. I can’t explain why this is. It might have something to do with hatred of stoplights.

Settle in a bit before complaining about outsiders: Yes, we know you just got here, and you want to prove your worthiness by complaining about Californians or Southern Nevadans, because that’s our local sport.

On average, we’re not nearly as closed off as people say; only about one-quarter of Nevadans were actually born here, so most of us know what it’s like to be the new kid. But at least wait until you’ve unloaded the last box from your U-Haul before you start griping about how new arrivals are pricing everyone out.

You, on the other hand ― you, the person reading this article right now! ― know a lot more unwritten rules for Northern Nevada. Either that, or you have ideas on what should be unwritten rules. Send them my way at bmcginness@rgj.com, and we’ll debate all of them next week.

Guys, we’re bringing back Shopko

What lost places in Reno-Sparks should we bring back? That’s the question I posed last week; here’s what you said:

Let’s start with department store ShopKo, which had the highly underrated slogan, “Say hello to a good buy.” We had three ― on South Virginia, Mae Anne and Oddie Boulevard. Lauri Ferguson wrote in to compliment the selection, and noted “their products lasted too.” Sadly, the entire chain disappeared nearly a decade ago, so bringing them back might be the heaviest lift ever.