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More than one stop light in a 5 block area and any fast food qualifies as a big city for me...
And, to me, that's kind of ridiculous. When reporting in a very rural, agriculture-heavy county, I spent a lot of time in the one town in it of over 1,000 people (the county seat, with about 2,000 people). They had one fast food chain, a Dairy Queen, situated on a two-lane state highway going out of town and back out into the cornfields. There were, at any given time, more tractors towing grain wagons on the highway than autos, moving back and forth from field to grain elevator.
Nobody in their right mind would call this a "big city," Dairy Queen presence be damned.
And, to me, that's kind of ridiculous. When reporting in a very rural, agriculture-heavy county, I spent a lot of time in the one town in it of over 1,000 people (the county seat, with about 2,000 people). They had one fast food chain, a Dairy Queen, situated on a two-lane state highway going out of town and back out into the cornfields. There were, at any given time, more tractors towing grain wagons on the highway than autos, moving back and forth from field to grain elevator.
Nobody in their right mind would call this a "big city," Dairy Queen presence be damned.
True. Our county seat has 2,470 people, a McDonald's, a Pizza Hut, a Subway, even a small drive-in; a movie house, a bowling alley, and two grocery stores, as well as a nationally recognized western-wear store, several locally-owned restaurants, a hospital, and a pharmacy. It also has a rodeo/fairgrounds, a huge auction site, and a feedlot that you can smell all over town. It even has 6 stoplights!
It is a big city by no means, and no one considers it so. It is merely a centrally-located (at the intersection of two state highways) convenient place to shop for necessaries.
My wife is from a small town in a rural area, (Appalachia) there are 1500 people they have a Wal-Mart and a hospital. As for fast food a Burger King, Long John Silvers, Subway and a Pizza Hut(no McDonald's), a couple of family owned restaurants. 1 stoplight that I know of, their own police department 10 people and a fire department 10 people. There are also at least 100 people in the place that are worth over $1.million bucs(coal money) and you wouldn't know it by looking at them. We currently live on 1500 acres 20 miles outside a metro area(Sunny Florida) of 1,000,000 people our nearest neighbor in any direction is 1.5 miles. So am I rural or big city? Doesn't matter because if I need big city it's 1/2 hr away and if I need rural solitude its right outside my backdoor. Wouldn't trade or sell it for anything.
Kinda depends on what you call "bored". If you have cows and chickens and a garden and an orchard to care for, or a nice shop where you can lathe wood or weld metal, and create your own life with your own hands, you don't have time to be 'bored'!
After awhile, to some folks, the promise of the neon fades into obscurity, the rush and bustle turns into just obnoxious and never-ending purposeless noise, and you find out that pleasing the people around you is not as important as pleasing the person within you...
Umm, the stuff you listed in your first paragraph is not necessarily everyone's cup of tea.
Also, I don't see the correlation between living in a bustling city and not pleasing the person within yourself......??
True. Our county seat has 2,470 people, a McDonald's, a Pizza Hut, a Subway, even a small drive-in; a movie house, a bowling alley, and two grocery stores, as well as a nationally recognized western-wear store, several locally-owned restaurants, a hospital, and a pharmacy. It also has a rodeo/fairgrounds, a huge auction site, and a feedlot that you can smell all over town. It even has 6 stoplights!
It is a big city by no means, and no one considers it so. It is merely a centrally-located (at the intersection of two state highways) convenient place to shop for necessaries.
Your county of only 2,470 people has a drive in movie theater ? Not even most counties with over 100,000 people have a drive in movie theater.
Your county of only 2,470 people has a drive in movie theater ? Not even most counties with over 100,000 people have a drive in movie theater.
Never know what you will find in a small town, Tiger Blood. Grangeville, ID, pop. 3k (In Idaho County, pop 15k-the most remote county in Idaho-with no other towns over about 1k) also has one. They also have a regular theater.
Grangeville is the retail hub for the area, and people come from MANY miles to see movies there.
The little town I grew up in used to make the largest tractors in the world. They were used for farming, mining, heavy industry... You name it. These things weighed in at over 100000lbs.
And they were made in little Havre, MT.
PS-The prior poster may have been referring to a drive-in restaurant. Not a drive-in theatre.
Sorry, TB - I meant a drive-in restaurant (not Sonic, privately owned), hence the semi-colon of separation... Drive in theaters are expensive to maintain and there are not a lot of them left. Here, of course, the high winds make such a thing practically impossible! As Ron White says, "It's not THAT the wind is blowing - it's WHAT the wind is blowing!" can be pretty detrimental to an outdoor screen.
And City_boi, I did say, "Some" people...
You can live in the city - my kids live in Vegas and love it! - but the point is that you can't find happiness where other people tell you to - only within yourself.
True. Our county seat has 2,470 people, a McDonald's, a Pizza Hut, a Subway, even a small drive-in; a movie house, a bowling alley, and two grocery stores, as well as a nationally recognized western-wear store, several locally-owned restaurants, a hospital, and a pharmacy. It also has a rodeo/fairgrounds, a huge auction site, and a feedlot that you can smell all over town. It even has 6 stoplights!
It is a big city by no means, and no one considers it so. It is merely a centrally-located (at the intersection of two state highways) convenient place to shop for necessaries.
Your town of 2,470 has almost the exact same list of amenities as my former hometown, population 50,000.
Fallbrook California is a town in San Diego County - there are about 50,000 people, but it "feels" like a small town because the downtown area is very small, there are no big chain stores, and only a few chain restaurants, and the citizens would revolt if anyone tried to put in a mall. They like that small town feel, and they work hard to preserve it! But they're also only a half-hour drive away from several cities with populations over 100,000, with every kind of shopping imaginable.
So which is a real small town? We've always considered Fallbrook a small town, but clearly it's not based on population alone - but it does "feel" like a small town, and that's what makes it so appealing as a place to live. But outside of Southern California? Would anyone consider it a small town? Probably not. In fact, some of you might consider it a big city? It's an interesting question!
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