The controversy around Jason Aldean’s “Try that in a Small Town” got me thinking. What are some things that you wish you could do in a small town that you just can’t?

I was in the mountains, Hendersonville NC I think, trying to find a place to eat after 7 pm on a week day. Was impossible.

  • Verity_kindle@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    1 year ago

    Buying groceries in bulk. You’d think this would be THE place for it, but the nearest good shopping is 70+ miles away. The grocery store here is boring AF as well as expensive. If you want to make sushi for dinner, you’re SOL.

  • irotsoma@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    Be anything other than a macho straight cis white male without being hunted.

    Not own a car.

    Go out for fun that doesn’t involve alcohol and/or sex.

    Go out for a drink and not have to drive drunk to get home.

  • LetMeEatCake@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    1 year ago

    Lots of things.

    Use public transportation.
    Have multiple experiences available nearby to do as a day activity.
    Have a large pool of people available to meet and know.
    Walk to anything interesting.
    In general just have lots of options and variety for anything: work, groceries, eating out, etc.

    Some small towns might have some walkability for downtown but nothing more than that.

  • mikiao@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    1 year ago

    Buy groceries that aren’t from a gas station. Find a place to eat that wasn’t the gas station or the only bar in town.

  • MrFagtron9000@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’d be willing to bet that 80% of the people that have a very intense emotional reaction to the small town song live in the suburbs less than 20 to 30 minutes away from whatever city they work in.

    Actual small towns like that have less than a couple thousand people suck ass. There’s nothing to do there and no jobs and that’s why people leave.

  • arthurpizza@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    A friend of mine moved to a small town after high school. Everyone treated her like shit until she became a member of the local church. She is an atheist but she was tired of getting the stinkeye every time she went to the grocery store. She told me she felt like she had no choice.

  • Can we define a small town? The ones in his video have populations of around 150k which I would argue isn’t a small town. That’s a little over the combined population of seven counties were I live or about 165% of the combined population of all 11 “major cities” in the Eastern Kentucky Coalfields. I say anything much over 10k in population doesn’t qualify as a small town.

      • Drusas@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        It would be nice if it were that simple, but a lot of “small towns” have a few tens of thousands of people but are located in a sprawling, rural area.

          • Drusas@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            No, suburbs are towns surrounding cities. It’s not a suburb if there is no city around.

            • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Sprawl is a city term in my experience.

              New York is vertical. 5 bouroughs, one city.

              Los Angeles is sprawl. Hundreds of “little” cities in Los Angeles County that all combine to ‘make’ L.A.

              • Drusas@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                When people think of sprawl, yes, they think of urban sprawl. But semi-rural towns can sprawl quite a lot, I assure you. Go drive through Oregon and you will see.

                • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Been a while, but Los Angeles is orders of magnitude different.

                  Imagine if the area between Salem, Eugene, and the coast was all strip mall, subdivisions, gated communities, golf cousres, malls, city parks, freeways, etc.

                  That is urban sprawl.

                  And the San Diego version is only 40 miles away.

      • Drusas@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Did you have any stop lights? I had some friends I met in college who had come from a town that didn’t have any stoplights, and they sure struggled.

  • marciealana@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    1 year ago

    I live in a town of 4500 in the California coastal mountains. We have a library, a dispensary, a volunteer fire department, and an ambulance. We’re open about diversity, and the mountain skinheads (NAZIs) are disliked and can’t get a foothold. Internet connections are touchy and max out around 50mbps. The power does go out so often that most folks have backup generators. Mine will handle a two week outage.

    The only thing missing is a decent night life. I may be a biker, but the local biker bar is very sketchy.

  • son_named_bort@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    One of my hobbies is doing improv. There aren’t a lot of small towns with improv theatres. A lot of small towns don’t have theatres at all.

    • Drusas@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Having lived on both for extended periods, I’m very much a “West coast is best coast” kind of person, but that does not apply to comedy. If you like stand-up comedy, you want to be in New York or Philly, obviously preferably New York. Number one location in the world. Chicago might argue, but they would be wrong.

    • Boiglenoight@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      That does sound challenging. I mean, lack of culture in general probably makes this kind of thing difficult for so many different types of performance art.

  • pudcollar@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    For a lot of people, it’s getting out. Moving is expensive and they can’t get enough work at the Wal*Mart or the prison, and all the other employers have gone out of business or offshored their labor. That’s why a lot of people enlist in the military.

    • voidMainVoid@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      When you’re so desperate to get out of a place that you’re willing to kill people to do it.

  • souperk@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I was in the village of Lungern in Switzerland for the day, it was impossible to find anything vegetarian to eat.

  • xkforce@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    I was raised in a town of around 200 people for much of my life. The biggest issue with towns like that is that theres very little in the way of civilization in those areas as a small population cant support much. All this town had is an elementary school, a post office, a church and one small business that burned itself down once because they worked with a lot of varnish and solvents.

    The town was closs knit, fairly quiet and laid back which was nice but the town was not at all self sufficient. Anyone that was not content with outdoor activities driven by your imagination would be bored to tears.

  • archaeologist@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    At some point my parents bought a home in a small town for the land and privacy. When a big storm came through and knocked out power for most of the state, guess which towns were restored last? The small towns with hardly any people in them!