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I live in a very rural area and grew up in this rural area. My first town had less than 10,000 population. It had a high school and a grocery market and a downtown. The two nearby towns of 30,000 population each had a bowling alley, movie theater, and skate park. One of the towns has a water park, which i never went to because I think they are lame and it should have been mini golf.
To me, that area was boring.
Fast forward to now, I live 20 minutes from a college town and other than alot of bars (not interesting to me), it's still the same repeat - movies, bowling, and skate park. With the addition of a drive in movie theater to the movies part.
30 minutes from me is a larger town with 100,000 population and it's the same, but with the addition of a family fun center (mini golf, arcade, bumper boats). Which to me, makes it a little bit more fun.
It really isn't to the start of of a metropolitan area I fill the area is more than the same movies, bowling, and skate park.
Once you hit the metro area you have ice skating rinks, mini golf, roller skating rinks, movie theaters with Imax, proximity to cultural centers within a big city, amusement parks, and tons of hidden cool gems. All of these places seem very busy too. The mini golf place near me feels dead and I'm not sure how it manages to stay in business. But the population of the area with alot of stuff is like 150,000 population to 300,000 population.
Compared to small plots of 50,000 population where I live.
Thoughts, feelings? Small town folks who grew up with the same boredom?
I grew up in a small suburban town (pop. about 4,500), directly adjacent to a city of about 130,000 (at the time; now about 100,000).
Of course, I was bored at times, but I was a teenager and to a teenager, everything is boring. And, to paraphrase Betty Draper, only boring people are bored. (she isn't stupid, either; she speaks Italian)
Aside from the aforementioned bowling, skating, movies and miniature golf, some of the stuff my friends and I did in our little city were: rock concerts, dances, swimming at the lake, hiking, biking, museums, theater, dance, minor league hockey and baseball, two amusement parks, and endless hanging out in pizza parlors drinking Diet Pepsi until the owners threw us out.
I live in a very rural area and grew up in this rural area. My first town had less than 10,000 population. It had a high school and a grocery market and a downtown. The two nearby towns of 30,000 population each had a bowling alley, movie theater, and skate park. One of the towns has a water park, which i never went to because I think they are lame and it should have been mini golf.
To me, that area was boring.
Fast forward to now, I live 20 minutes from a college town and other than alot of bars (not interesting to me), it's still the same repeat - movies, bowling, and skate park. With the addition of a drive in movie theater to the movies part.
30 minutes from me is a larger town with 100,000 population and it's the same, but with the addition of a family fun center (mini golf, arcade, bumper boats). Which to me, makes it a little bit more fun.
It really isn't to the start of of a metropolitan area I fill the area is more than the same movies, bowling, and skate park.
Once you hit the metro area you have ice skating rinks, mini golf, roller skating rinks, movie theaters with Imax, proximity to cultural centers within a big city, amusement parks, and tons of hidden cool gems. All of these places seem very busy too. The mini golf place near me feels dead and I'm not sure how it manages to stay in business. But the population of the area with alot of stuff is like 150,000 population to 300,000 population.
Compared to small plots of 50,000 population where I live.
Thoughts, feelings? Small town folks who grew up with the same boredom?
I grew up on a farm outside a real small town (try 2500 people). When I was 18, I left for "the big city" about 40 miles away. At 22, I moved 1200 miles away to attend grad school in the Midwest. A few years later, I returned to "the big city" and lived there for 20 years, then moved to another "big city" (albeit somewhat smaller than the first) to live for another decade or so before finally moving to a small city (30k) in a predominantly rural area with 40 miles of my home town.
Boredom is the lot of the young, especially those who haven't lived anywhere else.
The grass is not always greener somewhere else, but if you feel it is, then go for it. I can tell you that most adults living in large metros tend to live as "boring" lives as they would if they were living in tiny little towns because most adults do a lot of the same "boring" things: we go to work, we come home, we interact with our spouses/SOs/kids/pets, we run errands, we might engage in some recreation (from watching TV to playing sports to gambling at casinos, etc), we might "get together" with family and/or friends. Then we come home, go to bed, and then get up the next day to do it all again. On the weekends, we do a few different things, possibly even get in some different type(s) of recreation, maybe go to church, visit family or museums, catch a baseball or football game or whatever.
The plain truth is that most adults have too many responsibilities and too little time and disposable income to engage in all that many non-boring activities whether they live in rural backwaters or one of the fifty biggest metros in the US.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I grew up in a town with only 18,000, and today there are still only 25,000 with a median home price of $1.2 million. We had a downtown strip with a few restaurants and stores, but no real entertainment. We loved it there anyway, making our own fun with swimming in various friends/neighbors pools, going boating and fishing at the local lake, or just getting into trouble in our half acre back yard.
Now I am in a city of just under 50,000, and the teens are complaining of nothing to do, with not even a theater. There is a YMCA with pool under construction, to be open next year. There are 2 lakes for fishing, boating and swimming, but that's not enough to keep students busy, especially in the winter. Fortunately there are plenty of activities within 5-7 miles in either direction, but without public transportation except at commute times, parents are required for transportation until they get their licenses.
I'm sorry, this is like a weird view into an alternate world. I grew up in the suburbs, but I can't say that I ever did many of the things listed in the OP. I've never played mini-golf. Been bowling like twice in my life, and was absolutely horrible at it. Only been on roller skates once in my life. Etc.
As to what I did as a teenager, there were various things. We hung out at friends houses a fair amount. Liked to go to park and school playgrounds after dark for some reason. Went to late-night diners to talk. Sometimes we went to browse at book stores or video stores. Of course the movies were a pretty frequent occurrence. Sometimes we shot pool. Sometimes we would go to see a local band if it was playing nearby. I grew up near NYC, so we would take the train into New York if someone interesting we knew about was playing. While I liked the outdoors, several of my friends were insect-phobic, so I didn't tend to spend much time back then hiking or doing anything outside unless I was with a smaller, more select group.
I spent my teen years in a tourist area. We got bored too, but in retrospect we had a lot to do if we wanted. But most of what I did as a teen was not location specific: mall, video games at my house or a friend's, arcade, mini golf, badminton, boardwalk, football games, movies. Repeat.
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(she isn't stupid, either; she speaks Italian)
