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.
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.
Small town should be <10k and not part of urban sprawl
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.
That’s a suburb.
No, suburbs are towns surrounding cities. It’s not a suburb if there is no city around.
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.
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.
Shops close early. Not as bad in a town on a major highway or other transit route, but definitely slow. And you need a car to go anywhere unless you live near downtown.
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.
If I’m going home to do anything around the house for family, I must plan ahead for the typical DIY snafu’s that happen. I can’t just run out to the Home Depot or the MicroCenter to get specialty parts (or even not so specialty just barely more niche than Walmart and Dollar General). Amazon Prime next day is not available.
Grandma has a leak under the sink but Walmart doesn’t carry 1/4" ferrules for the compression valve? Get a bucket, Grandma, and prepare to wait 3 days for the parts to come in the mail. Can’t call the plumber because he’s off this week on a fishing trip.
Getting quality groceries is hit or miss. On one hand, the produce available is excellent. Yet all the restaurants in town offer some version of deep fried. I like the 2 Mexican joints the best because they are the less greasy options.
- Get a majority of goods without shipping it or driving out of town.
- make use of services like Uber or Hello fresh
- Walk around town without running into someone who knows you
OH man. I wonder if our Bark Box would arrive in a small town. Probably not. Our dogs would be less happy. :( 🐶
Those would probably be okay. They don’t usually contain things that need refrigeration. HelloFresh and other things like it, on the other hand, send cold perishables. If they’re too far away, it would be unsafe to ship even in their insulated packages.
Walked into a small town restaurant the other day. Literally everyone looked up from their plates to clock who it was. Beat them all with the game. Caught a few Peter gazing as a consequence.
Around here, find fast reliable internet.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Being a discreet swinging couple is probably tricky
There has to be somewhere a small town of swingers.
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.
Oh man, having grown up in a small town (one stop light, baby!):
Be visibly neurodivergent
Be visibly gender nonconforming
Not have worry about someone at the doctor’s office/hospital who knows your family breaking HIPAA
Be able to just be an anonymous person in public, and not Jody-Anne’s cousin’s kid
To not be reliant on owning a car
Some of these you can’t do in some cities either.
I grew up in New York City, my pops is fairly well known, we’re part of a large family, most people knew me as his son or one of my female cousins cousin.
Also I’ve seen LGBTQ folks get bullied, same with “neurodivergent” and other folks with mental and physical disabilities.
The only difference is that in a city you can find your “people” because in a small town there may be one or a few of you, in a large city there are many, but there are also many many assholes there too. Also public transportation is an absolute “plus” when it comes to a city.
Now I live in a coastal area of Florida that likes to think of itself as “small town” while being incredibly busy traffic-wise and having more population than Iceland, and that HIPAA thing is a real problem. My kid took in a friend who wanted to escape her crazy and abusive Jehovah’s Witness parents, well the mother works where my kid went to the doctor a few times, she looked up my kids medical records and then showed up at our house. I gave my kid so much shit about how the mother violated HIPAA and how she should get her fired, and my daughter wouldn’t, she just didn’t want to get her friends mother in trouble, but that was a serious breach of trust and this woman shouldn’t be working in the medical field if she can’t follow the regulations governing the field, if I did similar in my career field I would be completely unhirable.
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So being well known in your 'hood isn’t like being well known in a small town? Maybe you need some perspective on the discussion and the differences? I’m just trying to point out that the similarities exist.
Also, I’m just generalizing NYC as a region to avoid specifics, why would I want to dox myself?
Also let’s be real, there are far more well known families in NYC than just the Trump’s, the Trump’s are outcasts of high society, which contains people who are actually wealthy, also there’s another term for the Trump’s and that term is infamous.
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You’re still just putting words in my mouth, I already explained that wasn’t what was meant, but whatever go off chief.
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Nah you’re just being an obnoxious douchbag ruining engagement on this site because you want to feel better about yourself by being a judgemental prick towards others, sorry your life is so small enough and sad enough that you have to try and tear others down to feel better about yourself.
I hate that for you. But you speak to the lack of social services that are typically not available, which is a pro of living in a large city.
Two light town here. It’s not just social services. Hell, with sizes, sometimes (not always) they have it a bit easier in certain regards for the common services due to reduced workload (YMMV: it’s been a while since I’ve been back).
The bigger issue is lack of exposure to anything non-conforming. Not enough people simply being people in slightly different ways. Makes it easy to fall into tribalism, as well as no one wants to shake the boat when someone says something racist (for example).
It’s bad enough dealing with crippling depression in a small town, where everyone’s going to tell you that A: your condition is a moral failure rather than an illness with physiological underpinnings, B: religion is the answer to your condition, C: (for males, anyway) your condition makes you weak and effeminate, or D: a combination of the above or more likely all of them. Adding those things on top of it is a recipe for suicide.
Don’t forget that if you’re not in the in-group, people will try to drive you out of the area. I’ve lived in small towns most of my life, and while there’s exceptions it’s still common.
And this isn’t even race based. Just not being related to one (or more) of the main 3-4 families in town will get you on the shit list, especially if you’re not from the area. Going to a different church than the one in town will do it too
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.
It’s also a social thing for them and the non-believers raised out there still go.
There is no way i would movie into a cult town
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.
For me it’s the video. Song is good and catchy. The video…it’s just Fox News set to music.
