Usually an extra day on deliveries and mail.

Lack of variety in stores and restaurants.

Both of which we will gladly put up with to live where we do .

I grew up across the river from a town of about 3,000 in eastern VA. I now live in san antonio. Here are some pluses and minuses:
Small town plus:
You know everyone
No traffic
Places to hunt and shoot for cheap or free
People take care of one another
You actually have peace and quiet

Small town minuses:
You know everyone
Everything closes early
No variety (I like my exotic foods)



San antonio pluses:
You can get damn near anything
Stores are open late

San antonio minuses:
Too many people
Traffic
WORST DRIVERS EVAR (I've driven in almost every major city in the US. San Antonio is the worst. By far)
Crime (not too bad for the size of the city though)
Noise

Heck...I thought our city of 100,000 was tiny..course, compare to Phoenix with several million, it is.

You forgot Mexican food and the Alamo as pluses sir

We live outside a town of 700

Dislike:
People who are to stupid to move away and get jobs (townies - barley dodged that bullet myself haha)
Lack of places to eat / shop - we drive two hours at least once a week
No privacy
No gun stores - I don't shop at walmart for anything other than ammo - no other choice in town
Not small enough
No close enough to town - this town 50 miles closer to a city would be perfect.
No craigslist gold

Like
Everything else, the above are minor complaints.

Dislike: No good places to eat. We have three fast food establishments, and one nasty dump owned by arabs that smells like they pour camel piss in the mop water.

Work is an hour away as are any decent sized retailers besides Walmart.


Like: Safe and quite.

No housing projects, ghetto goblins, hood rats or other groups of unwanted people.

It's not the city.

The mexican food is under the "you can get damn near anything".

While important in the realm of American History (and important because many Virginians died there to help free Texas), it's slightly overshadowed by the shear amount of important historical sites that were close to me growing up. But, that does make it stand out that much more in an area where there is a lack historical sites.

What do you hate about living in a small town?

It's fifteen miles to the nearest shopping and that's a Walmart and a Lowe's.

Other than two mom-and-pop's where I wouldn't slop the hogs, the closest places to eat are a couple chain restaurants by Walmart.


What I like:

It's fifteen miles to the closest shopping and restaurants.

It's about six miles to closest traffic light.

The good old boys stop their trucks half way off the road, stand on the centerline and chat.  When you pull up, they step out of the way, smile and wave.  I think that's charming.

It's quiet.


Jane

I just checked on where I used to live.  It was 85 miles to the nearest mall.  There were some days that I would go twice in the same day.  Or head up there just to eat dinner.  You get a different perspective on distance out there...

People probably won't admit it who live in a large metro area but they will live a lot closer to shopping like walmart and Lowes but it takes them much longer than the 15 minutes it takes to cover 15 miles in a rural area.

We have a photocopied newsletter that gets distributed at the post office once a month. Copies are placed on the table below the community flyer board, where people advertise yard work & plumbing and kids advertise $5 dog walking.

See you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.  So your experince was different that mine. That means my observation wrong? I grew-up in small towns.  And perfer to live in rural areas.  But that was a bad area with screwd-up people.

I hate it when I have to go into town (any town).

The age of the internet has actually made living in small towns viable again. Think about it - other than fast food, fresh groceries, and firearms there is nothing you can't get online that we used to have to drive to the big city for.



Granted, I live out in the country and if I wanted to I could step outside on the porch right now and emtpy a mag just for the fun of it. And I do buy local when it works for them.





Edit:  But yeah, the lack of live young women can make a man lonesome somethin' awful.

Very limited choices when it comes to basically anything... food, entertainment, healthcare, etc. I'm from a somewhat small town but I got spoiled on big city living (not big city thinking, though! ).

You would think the trade-off is the peacefulness that comes with living in a small town, but we don't even have that because there's a bunch of welfare/ghetto/tweaker types around here, anyway.

Reference points. This town, with the student population, is 1/3 of the suburb that I grew up in.  I consider the entire metropolitan area my 'home'.  



 

This.

Grew up in a town of 7,500.

There was a real lack of entertainment options for the 18-20 year old crowd.

There was not lack of crime.  I had like three bicycles stolen. The gas station was robbed. The shoe store and jewelry stores were burglarized. The bowling alley was burglarized. The elemtary school and junior high were burglarized. Vanadlisms.  There were domestic violence related murders. Marijuana grows and dealing. Drunk driving was really common. Tresspassing and poaching.  Assaults.

The city of 50K i live in now is actually safer.

I was born and raised in a small town,  I am 33 now and there are over 1,000,000 people in the local area and most are Yankees!



I fucking hate this place!



The good news is that my BOL is located in a small town of less than 950 people and only 1 stop light.  I look forward to the day that I can live there full time!

Shitty internet provider choices.
Decent sized stores are farther away.
Not much to do.
Small choice on restaurants.
etc.

Like:
Nobody bothers me.
I could do a mag dump off my front porch and no SWAT team will show up, but it would spook the horses.
No traffic, no redlights, no public transportation.
No sidewalks.  
I can only see one of my neighbors houses from mine.
I can ride my atv or dirtbike 24/7 and nobody complains.
No real crime to speak of.  We had a murder about 6 years ago.


Dislike:
Its 6 miles to the closest gas station, and 10 miles to one that sells diesel and is open past 8pm.
Nobody will deliver a pizza to my house.
Have to order ammo online.  Walmart (10 miles away) hardly ever has anything I need other than 12 gauge.


I will never live in a big city.  I feel like a fish out of water among so many people.  I deal with it just fine, but it would never be home to me.

My town is just over 500 people

LIKES:
I know everyone and they know me (great when the kidlet is in town)
Everything in town is walking distance
The park and the library are the central hubs for kids
The FIVE churches in town all share in running the youth center
I can run a tab at the grocery and gas station
Neighbors willing to help neighbors

DISLIKES:
there are no secrets
My SO is LEO, even when he's off we'll still have people stop by rather than drive to the county for issues
EMS/Fire/Sheriff response is a LONG time,

LIKE: More laid back pace of life.  People often friendlier.

DISLIKE: People knowing everyone else's business, gossip mongering.

I grew up in Frelsburg, Tx (google it) and where I go home to/visit when I have a weekend off from school/work. EDIT: for population count , I think currently 91 people live in the town now.

Likes:
No street lights.
Only one 4 way stop..
One store for ammo, groceries, and hog traps.
Brenham is about 40 minutes away.
The scenary of just rolling hills (small ones).
I can shoot whenever I please with out paying ''per gun, per person, per target crap''.
No one bothers me
You know EVERYONE in the town and we all help each other.
Ammunitiontogo.com actual warehouse is 40 minutes away .
Waking up to deer and hogs almost every night/morning.

Dislikes:
If you're not productive, it can be boring.
Drive 40 minutes to find a decent woman.
We have a lot of bicyclist and motorcycles that like to race on our long roads. Wakes me up early every sunday...
Being stuck behin a tractor on a 2 lane road.
City people visiting and complaining about my guns
Did I mention city people?
I'll mention it again, city people.

Dislikes:



All the women got married right after graduation, moved away for colleges and never came back, or divorced after having a brood.



Dining out is limited to Bob Evans, Cracker Barrel, bad Mexican and fast food.



Likes:



Heavy traffic means an extra 2 minutes to my commute.



Parking meters are 25 cents for four hours.



Relative solitude.



Shopping via the Internet beats driving to a store full of pushy salesmen and rude customers.
I'm glad that i moved to an actual city, but I'm still saving for forty (or more) acres in the boonies.

I love small towns as long as I am within 30 miles of a bigger town and then another 30 miles from a city.  The older I get the more I like small towns. When I take a vacation I go to the deer lease or hiking, My perfect vacation is not seeing another person for days.

Dislikes:

Fewer shops.



Likes:

Poop wherever I want.

After thinking long and hard, the only thing I don't like about my small town is when the outsiders come in - like the biker gangs or the horse riders. We just want to be left alone.

The town I grew up in has a population of 8K people, and it has a college. It is definitely a small town.

I live outside a town of about 5000 near DFW. I commute to Dallas almost everyday, so if I need something I can get it before I drive home. The only thing I dont like about living out here is the driving and the poor internet choices.

The town I live in is very small. Pop about 275. No real business to speak of. Nearest Food Lion,

WalMart or drug store is about 15 miles away. Everything else is very nice. One bad thing is

that I can't find a range anywhere in the county. Several leads have not panned out.



I don't get caught up in any of the drama that comes from everyone knowing a lot about

everyone else. I mind my own business and don't bother others. I am to the point of just

not caring if others like me or not. If they do that is fine and if not that is fine also. I've

met many fine people and a couple of shady ones.

Like-Peace and quiet
Like-being able to see the stars and the milky way at night
Dislike-everything except our new HEB closes at 9
Dislike-having to drive 47 miles each way to work

Other than Chinese or Mexican the food (which is decent, not great) it absolutely sucks (the local BBQ place?  Everyone always talks about how good it is but it has been terrible the two times I ever ordered anything from there.)





The bar scene is horrible, usually at about 10:30 its a friggin' ghost town.





My post count over the last three years serves as proof: there ain't jack to do here





Also, allot of people commute somewhere else to work so in the evenings the traffic is insane as everyone is trying to jam through the horribly inefficient traffic light system in town.



ETA::If I want to buy something non-firearm or food related (we have a gun shop and a few grocery stores) I have to go to Walmart or drive to the larger city in the next county over.



 

The town I'm living in is <2700 people and shrinking all the time. The nearest Walmart is about 130km away (you convert it to miles, takes about 75min to drive there).

Dislikes:
- Getting hosed on groceries. There are two grocery store in town and they charge an extra 50% on most of their items and over double on some essentials such as peanut butter and bacon. One of the stores is too damn dirty for me to consider shopping at. Produce, as a rule, lasts two days after you get it home from the store. This is the only place I've bananas that are brown and green.
- Town Council. Every person on town council owns a business in town and makes a point of not allowing any sort or larger company to set up shop which allows the Mom & Pop businesses to continue hiking prices, providing shitty service and getting away with it. Most folks will drive the hour or so just for fresh fruit and someone who washes thier hands before making your sandwhich.
- Crime. This town is the 'hub' for an area with several Indian Reservations and the spill over from these places ends up in town. Being isolated, there is not much to do besides drunk and get stoned, especially when you are getting handouts from the Band and welfare. As such, there is a lot of thefts, assaults and damage to property. Not to mention that with the warm weather, the panhandlers are getting bolder.
- Winter. Not the cold, but winter. I don't own a snowmobile, skis or a snowboard so I don't have any winter activities besides fishing. The range was not plowed out this year so I had to snowshoe in. Some days I was shoveling the driveway every couple of hours so that I could get the g/f's car out. Fuck this cold, white, fluffy bullshit.
- Everyone knows me. I don't mind people knowing who I am or what I do but knowing where I live, who I'm dating (before she even moved up here) and everything else is mildly disconcerting. I no longer volunteer information when talking to people, not even my name.
- Only one bar in town where I probably won't get stabbed
- Gas is $.08 a liter more expensive here than anywhere within 200km. The tanker trucks have to pass through here to get to the other places but it just costs more here.
- Rumor mill.

Likes
- The sober people are friendly. When I moved by first batch of stuff up here, my truck started having problems. My landlady's b/f (who I'd never met before) not only 'knew a guy' but made some calls, drove me around to get parts and made the process a lot smoother than it could have been. My neighbor is a little old lady who's driveway i shoveled all winter and always give me and my g/f a smile/wave/hello
- Deer season lasts over two months and has generous tag allotments. Plenty of public land south of town and the new guy we got seems eager to get out (and help me drag the damn thing out of the bush).
- Great fishing 8 months of the year. The lake is freezing/ thawing the other four.
- Rent is cheap. Currently in a house big enough I have a gun room in the basement and the g/f has a scrapbooking room upstairs.
- Annoying relatives are currently a 10 hour drive away from me. I have the perfect excuse for not visiting

Should be enuogh of a bitch session for now...

Community college?

Nothing.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

So, instead of saying your small town sucked you attribute it to all small towns?

If you prefer living in rural areas then why the bullshit you posted before?

I'm fortunate enough to have experienced life in both a small town and a metropolitan area, and there are quite a few things I like about both, but not much to dislike about a small town.












 

Oh yeah, when some dumbfuck lights the mountain on fire on a weekend it takes an hour for the fire department to get there at best.  that was an interesting day

I don't just like in a small town,I'm on an island.

Walmart? Mickey D's? Pfft- we don't even have a stop light.

 I love the peace and quiet as well as knowing my neighbors and that it's as safe as any place in America.


What I don't love is that sometimes I'd like something different to eat or would like to catch a movie that the tiny theater can't afford to show. For the most part,the good outweighs the bad. Something funny is that I often think "man,I couldn't live out in the middle of friggin nowhere like that!" when I see some of the places y'all live...then I realize "oh yeah,they probably could be at Wally World within an hour though"

I grew up and lived in Wells Nevada until I graduated high school. Population was 1,000 if you include surrounding ranches. We had one flashing red light at the 4 way intersection, a burger king, 2 truck stops plus 1-2 other gas stations (depending on when the shell/amoco/tesoro was in business).  We also had two whore houses

50 miles to a competent doctor or walmart, rumors flew like no other, and everyone knew everyone

In a small town you never lose your girlfriend, you just lose your turn.

EZ

I hate that Sam Drucker never has what you want in stock.  I also hate that I have to ride the Cannonball all the way in to the general store to pick up the mail and deliver it on my bike.

Funny what different people consider a small town;  Colleges, bars, post offices, cops, banks, and traffic lights are part of a small town?   I guess it is all perspective.  My town has some weird things in it yet lacks all of those and is unincorporated.  

If your an outsider be wary.  Definitely be prepared for favoritism.  Prepare for your kids to suffer in punishment/sports/school.  Also, my nearest acquaintance lives ~6 miles away.  Also, definitely slim pickings with the girls.

I would say the same as OP......everything pretty much closes up by evening.

Sounds like a new hobby is born...

You have traffic lights and a grocery store?

Gravel roads are the best! Or maybe it's just because I'm young, dumb, and love to slide my truck around.

BAH DAH DAHDAH DADADADA DAH DAH DAH DAAAAH

LOL!



Not seeing many small towns in this thread.



1500 people here, and the nearest Wal-Mart is 110 miles away in Casper.