I'm attempting to start do the whole solopreneur online make your own business passive income thing, and it hit me one day that I was spending a whole lot of money in expensive places to sit in front of my computer and type. So this year I moved back to smalltown Indiana. I have a relatively giant apartment above a storefront in one of these small town main streets. It is mostly quiet and costs a whole $360 a month.
There is a coffee shop with 2 tables and a nice owner to talk to, and a couple of my friends work at the one webdev shop in town. I live two blocks away from a tiny little dance studio where I take dance lessons once a week, and am close enough to a city that I can drive there if I have to. Also the internet here is better than many large cities I've been to.
My relatively small savings from freelance should last me way longer than it would have in Chicago where I was before. I kind of wonder if there is an opportunity here to start little startup colonies in small towns.
Sure, it's no cultural center, but I've been pleasantly surprised at the friendliness of the people I've met here. The towns around this one certainly vary in quality of life, but if you look around you may find some cool places.
The main street may not be able to support a grocery store with Walmart down the street, but it is supporting a custom bike shop, a funeral home, and several local insurance companies. Maybe one way to revitalize these small towns is to bring in tech jobs that can be done from anywhere. It's certainly working for me so far.
This was wonderful. I love small town America. I grew up in a town of about 3000 and currently live in one that is population 30k or so. Popular sentiment in a lot of tech circles would have you believe that these places are solely filled with backwards, racist people. That can be true, but often times isn't. Small town life in the US lies on a very big spectrum.
The other belief is that these people live in lost provinces far from the all important metropolises and long for being able to move to a place with meaning-ignoring that most of existence that's how people lived in rural communities.
Having grown up in a country where nationalism kind of harks back to nazism, it's always weird for me to see all the flags everywhere. It's just not something I can get used to, even after all these years of seeing US flags everywhere.
People have a really basic need to bond over shared characteristics. Throughout the world, countries are glued together based on ethnicity, religion, or language. E.g. Pakistan separated from India over religion, and Bangladesh separated from Pakistan over language.
Americans' proclivity for displaying the flag is a way of expressing unity in a country that doesn't have a common ethnicity, religion, or language.
Nationalism also facilitates integration in a country that has tons of immigration. My family is from Bangladesh, where group membership is determined by ethnicity. A white American could move to Bangladesh at a young age, speak the language fluently, marry into a Bangladeshi family, but he'd never be Bangladeshi. Here, you step off the plane, put that flag up in front of your house, and boom you're American.
Yeah the US experience has been very different from many places in Europe. So much so that, for many people in rural America, waving the US flag harkens back to the defeat of Nazism and the end of WW2.
Many of those charming small town main streets like the ones in some of the photos, and the independently owned businesses along them, are in decline, if not already dead. Wal-mart and other big, chain businesses, often located down the highway, are getting all the business, so the small businesses in town cannot survive. Recently, I saw an incredible video about a main street in Mississippi that was basically dead, but has been resurrected on a fairly modest budget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kChc7PVQFwA
I grew up in a small town (rural Tennessee fewer than 10k people) and Walmart is a godsend. Their scale reduces cost and gives easy access to a myriad of products that local mom-and-pop shops could never provide. It's good for people with limited income to get more for less of their money. I know it hurts some local businesses whose models can't keep up, but that's business. The people in my small town were better off because of Walmart. Amazon has taken over where Walmart started; Amazon Prime is a one of the most amazing and practical innovations.
Yeah I was going to say. All those quaint American towns that look like they came out of a time capsule are that way because they've been in decline since those buildings were built and nobody has invested money into new buildings or businesses.
You're absolutely right. I recently took a road trip through the South, having never been before, and felt the overwhelming death of these small towns. Cities like Selma, Alabama once had vibrant downtowns, but now almost all of the buildings are boarded up and most people (and businesses) have moved to the suburbs, seemingly driven by Wal-Mart et al.
I'm working on a piece like the OP's actually to show more of these forgotten small towns. I think there's a lot of opportunity still left for some of these historic, beautiful town centers, if only more people (especially from the coasts) knew about them.
God bless Water Valley. My folks used to buy beer there, back when Lafayette County was still entirely dry. We'd stop in Taylor on the way there or home, at Taylor Grocery, and eat what still to this day is some of the best fried catfish I've ever had. Even then, Water Valley seemed like a tired place, like it'd had too much weight too long on its shoulders. Next time I'm home, I'll have to spend some time seeing for myself what it's become - in the meantime, I'll hope it's survived with more of its dignity and sense of self intact than Oxford.
One thing that sticks out in my mind is how utterly empty small towns feel late at night. I grew up in a rural area but have lived in larger urban areas since going to college.
Small towns seem like another world after midnight. The lighting is all wrong, there's no sound in your immediate area, there's no life. Unless it has a 24-hour convenience store, it might seem like the place is completely abandoned.
During the day, there's people and life and things happening, but at night, you want to pull your jacket tighter and hunker down a bit, maybe.
Once, while on a road trip, the wife and I ended up walking around Roswell, New Mexico at 2:00AM on a Tuesday. The town was completely lifeless as you described. We didn't see a single person for hours. The dark, empty town coupled with the alien/UFO decor literally everywhere you looked is still one of the more surreal things I've experienced. I have sort of a warm nostalgia for it, though.
Several times I've driven into the small town where I grew up at 4 AM. Aside from the odd semi or car on the major roads (even near the chain stores), it looks like it's abandoned; or maybe a huge empty basement with most of the lights broken.
I live in a place like those. Its great photography, but the mundane subjects make it hard to get into.
Trying to locate any of those, I settled on one with an unusual street sign - 'Coolbaugh St'. There are 2 in the US, both in Pennsylvania. Neither has that building along it! Strange
Two more appear to be in Red Oak, Iowa. I googled for "red oak printing" that is visible in one of the photos, which led to coolbaugh lane on the map, which is also visible in another photo.
[+] [-] dcolgan|9 years ago|reply
There is a coffee shop with 2 tables and a nice owner to talk to, and a couple of my friends work at the one webdev shop in town. I live two blocks away from a tiny little dance studio where I take dance lessons once a week, and am close enough to a city that I can drive there if I have to. Also the internet here is better than many large cities I've been to.
My relatively small savings from freelance should last me way longer than it would have in Chicago where I was before. I kind of wonder if there is an opportunity here to start little startup colonies in small towns.
Sure, it's no cultural center, but I've been pleasantly surprised at the friendliness of the people I've met here. The towns around this one certainly vary in quality of life, but if you look around you may find some cool places.
The main street may not be able to support a grocery store with Walmart down the street, but it is supporting a custom bike shop, a funeral home, and several local insurance companies. Maybe one way to revitalize these small towns is to bring in tech jobs that can be done from anywhere. It's certainly working for me so far.
[+] [-] vogt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pizzetta|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treve|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|9 years ago|reply
Americans' proclivity for displaying the flag is a way of expressing unity in a country that doesn't have a common ethnicity, religion, or language.
Nationalism also facilitates integration in a country that has tons of immigration. My family is from Bangladesh, where group membership is determined by ethnicity. A white American could move to Bangladesh at a young age, speak the language fluently, marry into a Bangladeshi family, but he'd never be Bangladeshi. Here, you step off the plane, put that flag up in front of your house, and boom you're American.
[+] [-] cvwright|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonsarris|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] droopyEyelids|9 years ago|reply
They don't feel the same as they did when I was a kid, and there are more of them, and they're used in different contexts.
[+] [-] throwanem|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rndmio|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyjohnson0|9 years ago|reply
[1] Striking Portraits of Lonely Cars in 1970s New York http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/striking-portraits-of-l...
[+] [-] oftenwrong|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KevinEldon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empath75|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] aclimatt|9 years ago|reply
I'm working on a piece like the OP's actually to show more of these forgotten small towns. I think there's a lot of opportunity still left for some of these historic, beautiful town centers, if only more people (especially from the coasts) knew about them.
[+] [-] throwanem|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] drivingmenuts|9 years ago|reply
Small towns seem like another world after midnight. The lighting is all wrong, there's no sound in your immediate area, there's no life. Unless it has a 24-hour convenience store, it might seem like the place is completely abandoned.
During the day, there's people and life and things happening, but at night, you want to pull your jacket tighter and hunker down a bit, maybe.
[+] [-] Sorry_Rum_Ham|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theandrewbailey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwe3000|9 years ago|reply
What I loved about growing up in a town with less than 300.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|9 years ago|reply
Trying to locate any of those, I settled on one with an unusual street sign - 'Coolbaugh St'. There are 2 in the US, both in Pennsylvania. Neither has that building along it! Strange
[+] [-] digler999|9 years ago|reply
https://goo.gl/maps/b8vnAwEndWz
[+] [-] eddyg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digler999|9 years ago|reply
The garage photo: https://goo.gl/maps/kDAs2buEaaL2
The car sticking out of the earth:
https://goo.gl/maps/JuFdKETPtgw
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/international-car-forest-...
Two more appear to be in Red Oak, Iowa. I googled for "red oak printing" that is visible in one of the photos, which led to coolbaugh lane on the map, which is also visible in another photo.
https://goo.gl/maps/b8vnAwEndWz
[+] [-] thecity2|9 years ago|reply