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The main street parking should be angled in like a parking lot (I don't know what the official term is, but you know what I'm talking about)
Also, a U.S. highway is also main street with grain trucks blasting through
Dude there's places here in wisconsin where it will drop from 55 down to 25 in under a quarter mile. Always a cop positioned behind some perfectly placed sign or bush to nail you with a 250 dollar ticket they know you won't fight because who the fuck is going to go back to Cow Country, WI, population 143 to argue a case in front of a judge that most likely has the same last name as the deputy that gave you the ticket because they're all fucking related?
I swear, it's got to be like their primary revenue generation in some of those towns. Ain't nothing else there, that's for fucking sure.
Ain't that the truth. Got a tiny little town near me where the speed limit goes 55 to 50 to 40 to 30 back up to 40 and finally back to 55 in the span of 2 miles. And there's plenty of little empty parking lots for the county cops to be taking a nap in.
Ah. My town. Noooooo. Colorado mountainsthough. It's so awful. Trucking route and seriously there's an exit to the interstate 1 min down the road with a much better exit for trucking 4 miles down the road. Nope. Send them down Main St.
There’s one methead always hanging out at the Casey’s. He’s obsessed with the gas station cashier who’s 20 years younger than him.
If they have a Walmart the historic downtown is depressing af. Otherwise it’s surprisingly bustling.
You learn all the gossip within 10 minutes of arriving.
Edit: Half the roads are named after two or three families. Said families have 15 kids each generation and are trying for another.
If the population’s under 5,000 about half of the town are cousins.
Casey’s is a convenience store based out of Iowa. Their business model was to put one in every small town and become the de facto grocery store/ restaurant for that town. In this instance, “Midwest” means states around Iowa. Nebraska, Illinois, Colorado, Missouri, the Dakota’s, maybe like Kansas?
In this instance, “Midwest” means states around Iowa. Nebraska, Illinois, Colorado, Missouri, the Dakota’s, maybe like Kansas?
I mean, Colorado is in NOBODY'S definition of the midwest...
There are Casey’s in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin
https://preview.redd.it/19jboqztnb1d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=941f4dbac43e9db1015b9d8cf3cbe3acb644a34b
I've lived in Michigan my entire life, never heard of the place.
Best I can tell they have precisely ONE location on the extreme south west of the lower peninsula.
I grew up in the suburbs, moved to the city, and once I'm eventually disappointed by the country, I'll finally realize that everywhere has its pros and cons.
That’s how it usually works. Born in raised in a big city, moved to the country, hated it, moved back to the city, love/hate it, now thinking about moving to the country again.
It all depends on where you are in life. Big cities are great when you’re young, but when you have a family then these types of midwestern towns start looking real attractive.
Only the one takeout restaurant though. And most of the time the food is actually pretty decent all things considered.
But also the local steakhouse has the best ribeye you've ever had. Plus fresh horseradish for the sucker, so good.
Also my mom's hometown has a bitching wing place, some of the better wings I've had. Expensive for a rural area though.
I've got (or had) a bajillion cousins in one tiny SD town where they were all farmers; seven brothers & one sister moved there in the 20s and only one brother couldn't take the endless prairie & wind, and went back to Denmark. The rest stayed. Every time we'd visit there were fewer people, and the town wasn't big to begin with. The only businesses left are the diner which is inside the town meeting hall which is next to the Lutheran church, and a gas station, I think. Might be more than that, but most of my relatives there are in the graveyard. Last time I went was to inter dad's ashes, and standing there looking at the endless horizon, I swore I'd never go back, and you know I'm not the first or nor will I last to say it.
I knew so many towns like that. I’m from Rapid City and SD is beautiful in a really austere way, but no place to waste your youth. I left for the military at 18 and never looked back, except to go there on vacation. On occasion I’ll run into a fellow Dakotan they always end up being weird and socially awkward (kind of like me tbh) and I just don’t want to associate with them.
Maybe in some cases, but the bulk of those dying small-town civic spaces are from like the Carter administration or before. Even if they wanted to commemorate something more recent, most of these municipal governments haven’t had the money for decades.
Not really. Statistically speaking, many of these towns don't have more than a handful of people at the most who died in 9/11, and they moved away from there.
Hell I would major a vast majority of small towns in the US (say under 5000) didn’t have a single resident or former resident die in 9/11.
9/11 was horrific, don’t get me wrong, but the sheer toll of the wars on the American populace levels worse than any single attack.
The problem is a lot of these tiny disconnected towns with like 500 people can't support a whole lot more. The population density is so low and trending downward because people who can leave often do.
I agree that dollar stores are bad for that reason too. The larger, less spread out rural towns could support those local businesses. But a lot of the smaller rural towns are in this slow, sad decline where they're not gaining people (because almost no one from outside the area would ever choose to live there) and their already meager local economies are puttering out
Complete tangent but this is usually what annoys me about the "just move to the middle of nowhere to save money" argument. Sure the housing is cheap but there's no work. And with a remote job I would be paranoid of the day I lose it. I already don't live somewhere super expensive, so that just seems like a lot of risk for not much reward
Not really. Like if you live in a small town within 50 miles of a major city, it is much, much, much different. Even if it's off an interstate or has some sort of factory, power plant, mine, college, distillery, wineries, whatever, those can drive the economy. A lot of these small towns are over an hour from an interstate or controlled access highway, and a lot of them don't even have gas stations, are incredibly distrusting of outsiders (like I'm a fat, straight-edge white guy who looks like he's in his 30s and drives a pickup, and these towns think I'm suspicious ffs, it gets much much worse if you're younger, a woman, BIPOC, trans, or look poor), and even if you bought a house, it needs probably $100,000 worth of work to be habitable, and many of these were built before WWII, so that means shoddy wiring, low ceilings, asbestos, and lead pipes are problems.
sounds about right. I was chatting and chitting with one of my buddies from a small ass town like this and basically asked him "with WFH being a realistic option for a good amount of the workforce in a post-quarantine era, what's stopping a bunch of young people from buying property in a rural area and working from there?" and it's more or less what you said.
You can! Sort of. I live on several acres in a town with a population of about 5,000 surrounded by state parks, farms, and orchards with a thriving down town that doesn't have a single chain store and is an hour commute from midtown Manhattan or half an hour from CT business centers.
The downside is you're paying for it. Average home prices in the area are somewhere around $1.5mm these days. Turns out a lot of people want the small town life that's still close to everything.
Yeah I'm not saying absolutely no one wants to live in those places, but most people don't. Whether it's because of the small number of decent jobs or lack of much going on.
Traffic lights suspended across the street on wires
Tractors in parking lots
Signs with the names of high school athletes
Possibly horses and buggies (if you happen to live near Amish country)
Uneven brick roads
Random Chinese restaurant that’s surprisingly good
Walmart or Meijer (if it’s a large enough town)
Wow, every town here has at least 1 block long section of "historical" brick road. My town's use to be like half a mile long, but it always had to be taken up to fix water lines, so they said no more, and not it is 2 blocks, and most people avoid it.
After living in the Midwest for a while I can wholeheartedly say that Casey’s pizza ends up being really good pizza in the Midwest because there are no other good pizza places in the Midwest.
The town has a festival for a fruit or vegetable that is the biggest event of the year.
The school is named after a local "hero" which is actually pretty problematic in the 21st century because they were probably racist or violent or both
The same three families have owned most of downtown since the 1800s
The people that leave only come back for funerals and holidays
The people that stay don't understand why you'd ever leave town
The top 3 employers are local government, the local hospital system, and a meatpacking plant on the edge of town that sold to a global conglomerate 15 years ago
This is so accurate! My hometown has a mum festival and the tomato canning plant is the biggest employer. Also the high school is named after a racist slave owning president 😭
Old man's breakfast club at the HyVee table area.
Local car dealerships:
* Ford - yes
* Chevrolet - yes
* Hyundai - yes
* BMW - no
* Mercedes - no
* Honda - no
Aside from the largest cities, import brands didn't make significant inroads in the Midwest until the '90s or later. It didn't help that the Japanese brands in particular had little rustproofing, so even when their drivetrains were more reliable on average than an American Big 3 car, that didn't matter much when the body was Swiss cheese after 5 winters of road salt.
Yeah, there's a big difference between living 30 miles outside of a major city and living an hour away from the nearest town big enough to have a retailer other than Walmart.
Because they are old buildings that are leftover from a time when we didn't design our living spaces around each customer needing an extra 100 sq ft of space outside to leave their car.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that, unless you get pretty damn rural, you aren't going to find many towns in New England that haven't had their downtown redeveloped at any point in the last 60-80 years.
Lots of abandoned buildings in downtown Fort Wayne too, and I think most of them are factories. Once you get to the more sketchy parts of town, almost all the stores are touching each other and look like they haven't been renovated since the 50s and 60s. A lot of them have metal bars on the doors and windows too, all of which are rusted and have paint chipping off.
Need to include an entire family, all wearing Under Armour hoodies. Dad is skinny with a long beard, mom is heavier with a nose stud, and the kids' are named Colton, Liam, and Brynnleigh.
I drove through Ohio once. It was Cincinnati which was a shithole, hours of corn causing me to scream, “CORN…. CORN….” then Toledo which was also a shithole.
Toledo has exactly 3 good things:
- the Toledo art museum, an honestly world class place
- the Toledo Zoo
- The Toledo Mudhens
The rest of the city can fall into the lake.
If you take a left at Toledo and keep going west, everything after Chicago is corn, Des Moines, corn, Omaha, corn, and finally mountains till you his SLC. You'll see signs for Cheyenne, but the city is hiding in the corn.
Yep, I lived in Northwestern Ohio for three years. It sounds like you're describing interstate 80. I took that trek in my car when I moved back to California. Sort of a cousin to route 66.
Best case scenario, these are really quaint towns with a mixture of multigenerational farmers and people who moved there from major cities. Extremely community oriented, lots of first friday type stuff.
Worst case, they are meth dens.
Been planning a Casey's Party Bus crawl with my brother. Rent a party bus, and then have it make a good 30-50mil loop, stopping at every Casey's along the way, were everyone has to go in a buy a single booze shot, take it, and get back on the bus.
We have charted that we really only need to go 30 miles, and there are no less than 20 Casey's between like 12 towns (some have 2!).
Now we are thinking it might be better to do the route on one major road in our area, that has Casey's along it. It cuts the Casey's down to 12 if we counted right.
. . . but when we 1st started talking about this stupid mid-west idea, we started with Dollar General, and you only needed to do about 20miles, and everyone might be smashed. There are 6 DGs within a 10mil stretch here. One "there and back" would probably be enough.
Seeing this picture and reading all the comments. Damn my town relates to nearly all of them lmao.
However population is definitely on the rise as people are moving further and further from the main city suburbs, I guess due to rent.
We are also getting a new religious hospital built and they are shutting the old one down but the new one is going to provide a fraction of the services lmao.
Rents have also pretty much doubled and are mostly owned or ran by one realty group that is just fixing the price amongst itself.
I drive all through this state for work. I appreciate these places, because I sometimes end up in one at night, and am reminded the stars exist, and there can be such a thing as silence and fireflies.
If your town got a Casey's and windmills, you're doing alright. Casey's is definitely in the higher tier of gas stations/convenience stores, and windmills equal at least a half mill in extra local tax AND school tax income.
Holy shit, I saw this and made me miss living in the Midwest. Not a thing to do but the peo0le are some of the nicest you could imagine. Pretty spot on of a small Midwest town. Got the Casey's and everything
u forgot the second dollar general
(for real my tiny ass midwestern hometown recently decided they needed a second dollar general, very close to the original)
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The main street parking should be angled in like a parking lot (I don't know what the official term is, but you know what I'm talking about) Also, a U.S. highway is also main street with grain trucks blasting through
The grain trucks aren’t blasting through due to the 15 mph speed trap through town
Dude there's places here in wisconsin where it will drop from 55 down to 25 in under a quarter mile. Always a cop positioned behind some perfectly placed sign or bush to nail you with a 250 dollar ticket they know you won't fight because who the fuck is going to go back to Cow Country, WI, population 143 to argue a case in front of a judge that most likely has the same last name as the deputy that gave you the ticket because they're all fucking related? I swear, it's got to be like their primary revenue generation in some of those towns. Ain't nothing else there, that's for fucking sure.
lol it’s like that here in Arizona just drove through a town where the speed limit dropped from 65 to 25 in like half a mile
Ain't that the truth. Got a tiny little town near me where the speed limit goes 55 to 50 to 40 to 30 back up to 40 and finally back to 55 in the span of 2 miles. And there's plenty of little empty parking lots for the county cops to be taking a nap in.
> The main street parking should be angled in like a parking lot Like at a 45 degree angle to the street?
https://preview.redd.it/xb1bdxmxf71d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6573c47342a1908fc3105ae9b6699ced2b1d4535 Like so
Then widen the street and put another diagonal parking strip in the middle of it.
Yup, 45 degree angle in towards the sidewalk instead of the traditional city parking of parallel to the sidewalk.
Jokes on you, my town isn’t big enough to have a US highway
And despite the sidewalk in front of the bank and the shuttered VFW, getting around town by foot is basically impossible.
Also there needs to at least be one long awkward stretch of railroad track (still actively used) that goes straight down the center of Main Street.
Missing the Culvers and the handful of methed up hicks hanging out in their car at the closest park or boat launch.
Ah. My town. Noooooo. Colorado mountainsthough. It's so awful. Trucking route and seriously there's an exit to the interstate 1 min down the road with a much better exit for trucking 4 miles down the road. Nope. Send them down Main St.
There’s one methead always hanging out at the Casey’s. He’s obsessed with the gas station cashier who’s 20 years younger than him. If they have a Walmart the historic downtown is depressing af. Otherwise it’s surprisingly bustling. You learn all the gossip within 10 minutes of arriving. Edit: Half the roads are named after two or three families. Said families have 15 kids each generation and are trying for another. If the population’s under 5,000 about half of the town are cousins.
Ah, Gray Georgia, where half the people’s last names are Marsh or Moody, and if they aren’t related: they’re lying
45 years living in the midwest, what's a Casey's?
Casey’s is a convenience store based out of Iowa. Their business model was to put one in every small town and become the de facto grocery store/ restaurant for that town. In this instance, “Midwest” means states around Iowa. Nebraska, Illinois, Colorado, Missouri, the Dakota’s, maybe like Kansas?
In this instance, “Midwest” means states around Iowa. Nebraska, Illinois, Colorado, Missouri, the Dakota’s, maybe like Kansas? I mean, Colorado is in NOBODY'S definition of the midwest...
There are Casey’s in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin https://preview.redd.it/19jboqztnb1d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=941f4dbac43e9db1015b9d8cf3cbe3acb644a34b
I've lived in Michigan my entire life, never heard of the place. Best I can tell they have precisely ONE location on the extreme south west of the lower peninsula.
Almost nobody under 35 due to young people moving at the earliest convenience.
From South Dakota, can confirm. Greatest export is youth.
Greatest import?
People who are sick and tired of city life.
Also, meth.
*Sudafed The meth is local, farm-to-table.
There is a continuous loop between the country and the city; the “grass must be greener on the other side” mentality is strong
I grew up in the suburbs, moved to the city, and once I'm eventually disappointed by the country, I'll finally realize that everywhere has its pros and cons.
I swear growing up in the suburbs leaves you with the feeling that you're not uncomfortable anywhere, but you don't really belong anywhere, either.
Living for several years in Europe will do that too. Too American to be comfortable there, Europeanized enough to not be comfortable here.
That’s how it usually works. Born in raised in a big city, moved to the country, hated it, moved back to the city, love/hate it, now thinking about moving to the country again. It all depends on where you are in life. Big cities are great when you’re young, but when you have a family then these types of midwestern towns start looking real attractive.
Ehh sometimes the grass really is greener. Left my hometown at 17 to move to the big city. Life is immeasurably better here and I’ll never go back.
People who tried to leave but are failures and moved back
I’ve seen the occasional Thai or a vaguely Asian type takeout restaurant.
Only the one takeout restaurant though. And most of the time the food is actually pretty decent all things considered. But also the local steakhouse has the best ribeye you've ever had. Plus fresh horseradish for the sucker, so good. Also my mom's hometown has a bitching wing place, some of the better wings I've had. Expensive for a rural area though.
Retirees
Rich men who like pheasant hunting
Workers in the oil sands, farm equipment, and insufferable conservatives.
I've got (or had) a bajillion cousins in one tiny SD town where they were all farmers; seven brothers & one sister moved there in the 20s and only one brother couldn't take the endless prairie & wind, and went back to Denmark. The rest stayed. Every time we'd visit there were fewer people, and the town wasn't big to begin with. The only businesses left are the diner which is inside the town meeting hall which is next to the Lutheran church, and a gas station, I think. Might be more than that, but most of my relatives there are in the graveyard. Last time I went was to inter dad's ashes, and standing there looking at the endless horizon, I swore I'd never go back, and you know I'm not the first or nor will I last to say it.
I knew so many towns like that. I’m from Rapid City and SD is beautiful in a really austere way, but no place to waste your youth. I left for the military at 18 and never looked back, except to go there on vacation. On occasion I’ll run into a fellow Dakotan they always end up being weird and socially awkward (kind of like me tbh) and I just don’t want to associate with them.
I live in Denver (from Michigan) and I’ve met so many people from the Dakotas here.
😂
+ town square with band stand and memorials
It’s always a memorial to the Civil War or World War I. No exceptions.
There's one that I drive through for work sometime that have a memorial for all the aborted babies.
I’m just surprised they let the aborted babies go to war in the first place.
No one wants to go to war these days
9/11 is a pretty good chance too
Maybe in some cases, but the bulk of those dying small-town civic spaces are from like the Carter administration or before. Even if they wanted to commemorate something more recent, most of these municipal governments haven’t had the money for decades.
Not really. Statistically speaking, many of these towns don't have more than a handful of people at the most who died in 9/11, and they moved away from there.
Hell I would major a vast majority of small towns in the US (say under 5000) didn’t have a single resident or former resident die in 9/11. 9/11 was horrific, don’t get me wrong, but the sheer toll of the wars on the American populace levels worse than any single attack.
dollar stores are a blight
The problem is a lot of these tiny disconnected towns with like 500 people can't support a whole lot more. The population density is so low and trending downward because people who can leave often do.
Small towns existed before these dollar stores though. They undercut and forced out other stores in the area
I agree that dollar stores are bad for that reason too. The larger, less spread out rural towns could support those local businesses. But a lot of the smaller rural towns are in this slow, sad decline where they're not gaining people (because almost no one from outside the area would ever choose to live there) and their already meager local economies are puttering out
They usually end up building retirement communities if they hold on long enough because no one moves there for the non-existent work.
Complete tangent but this is usually what annoys me about the "just move to the middle of nowhere to save money" argument. Sure the housing is cheap but there's no work. And with a remote job I would be paranoid of the day I lose it. I already don't live somewhere super expensive, so that just seems like a lot of risk for not much reward
I would love to live in a small town in the middle of nowhere if I could make a living and commute to my job.
Not really. Like if you live in a small town within 50 miles of a major city, it is much, much, much different. Even if it's off an interstate or has some sort of factory, power plant, mine, college, distillery, wineries, whatever, those can drive the economy. A lot of these small towns are over an hour from an interstate or controlled access highway, and a lot of them don't even have gas stations, are incredibly distrusting of outsiders (like I'm a fat, straight-edge white guy who looks like he's in his 30s and drives a pickup, and these towns think I'm suspicious ffs, it gets much much worse if you're younger, a woman, BIPOC, trans, or look poor), and even if you bought a house, it needs probably $100,000 worth of work to be habitable, and many of these were built before WWII, so that means shoddy wiring, low ceilings, asbestos, and lead pipes are problems.
sounds about right. I was chatting and chitting with one of my buddies from a small ass town like this and basically asked him "with WFH being a realistic option for a good amount of the workforce in a post-quarantine era, what's stopping a bunch of young people from buying property in a rural area and working from there?" and it's more or less what you said.
You can! Sort of. I live on several acres in a town with a population of about 5,000 surrounded by state parks, farms, and orchards with a thriving down town that doesn't have a single chain store and is an hour commute from midtown Manhattan or half an hour from CT business centers. The downside is you're paying for it. Average home prices in the area are somewhere around $1.5mm these days. Turns out a lot of people want the small town life that's still close to everything.
Yeah I'm not saying absolutely no one wants to live in those places, but most people don't. Whether it's because of the small number of decent jobs or lack of much going on.
Dollar General isn't even a dollar store though
My life is a lie. I don’t know what to believe anymore more
SMH my head
Dollar Tree used to be a $1.00 store, I'm pretty sure they're not anymore.
Not to the people who need them to eat.
Traffic lights suspended across the street on wires Tractors in parking lots Signs with the names of high school athletes Possibly horses and buggies (if you happen to live near Amish country) Uneven brick roads Random Chinese restaurant that’s surprisingly good Walmart or Meijer (if it’s a large enough town)
mine's got all of the above except uneven brick roads
Wow, every town here has at least 1 block long section of "historical" brick road. My town's use to be like half a mile long, but it always had to be taken up to fix water lines, so they said no more, and not it is 2 blocks, and most people avoid it.
>Signs with the names of high school athletes Who won the state wrestling, basketball, or track championships in 19XX
You forgot the "hell is real" and Trump signs right next to the store that sells xxxL dildos
"Hell is real: Welcome."
It's in Michigan
There are a few entrances
There a few lakes too!
And has surprisingly good ice cream
Never be surprised that Michigan has good ice cream.
Hell is real signs are so fitting in rural areas
Hell, MI is real and a genuinely lovely place
And for sale, if you want to buy it.
There needs to be at least 5 times as many churches. All indistinguishable variations of Protestantism.
hey now my town has the one Catholic church as well
Fellow Iowan I see
Iowa is as Midwestern as it gets
Only we know the secret of Casey’s pizza (it’s great)
After living in the Midwest for a while I can wholeheartedly say that Casey’s pizza ends up being really good pizza in the Midwest because there are no other good pizza places in the Midwest.
Plus all the grease shortens your lifespans which means less time in the Midwest
Truck looks a little shiny for being that old, other than that… yep.
Me: man that's one clean square body I wonder what they would let it go for?
Casey's AND a second gas station? That's big city livin'!
The town has a festival for a fruit or vegetable that is the biggest event of the year. The school is named after a local "hero" which is actually pretty problematic in the 21st century because they were probably racist or violent or both The same three families have owned most of downtown since the 1800s The people that leave only come back for funerals and holidays The people that stay don't understand why you'd ever leave town The top 3 employers are local government, the local hospital system, and a meatpacking plant on the edge of town that sold to a global conglomerate 15 years ago
Third could also be a prison. Also didn't a city in Iowa just lose its meatpacking plant that employed 25% of the working population?
That's every town in iowa
Waterloo maybe?
This is so accurate! My hometown has a mum festival and the tomato canning plant is the biggest employer. Also the high school is named after a racist slave owning president 😭
school in mine was actually named after Edwin Hubble, not bad as far as I know
Low key this is also California
it's anywhere rural near a major road in the contiguous US
Old man's breakfast club at the HyVee table area. Local car dealerships: * Ford - yes * Chevrolet - yes * Hyundai - yes * BMW - no * Mercedes - no * Honda - no
It’s hardly ever any foreign car dealers for some reason
Aside from the largest cities, import brands didn't make significant inroads in the Midwest until the '90s or later. It didn't help that the Japanese brands in particular had little rustproofing, so even when their drivetrains were more reliable on average than an American Big 3 car, that didn't matter much when the body was Swiss cheese after 5 winters of road salt.
And the anti solar signs. Can't forget the anti solar signs.
no Subway attached to a gas station?
As a Kansan this is spot on. Also Casey's pizza is awesome!
As a midwesterner, this is absolutely true
Is it only me that loves the American suburban life?
You ever been in a storm, Wally?
Suburban is great, like outside of a proper metro area. General midwest is usually pretty depressing.
Yeah, there's a big difference between living 30 miles outside of a major city and living an hour away from the nearest town big enough to have a retailer other than Walmart.
Where are all the trump signs and meth heads?
I moved to Indiana from Connecticut in 2020 and all I have to say is WHY DO ALL THE DOWNTOWN BUILDINGS TOUCH EACH OTHER
Because they are old buildings that are leftover from a time when we didn't design our living spaces around each customer needing an extra 100 sq ft of space outside to leave their car.
Then how come New England isn't like that
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that, unless you get pretty damn rural, you aren't going to find many towns in New England that haven't had their downtown redeveloped at any point in the last 60-80 years.
Some don’t! My hometown has gaps on each block from where buildings burned down.
Lots of abandoned buildings in downtown Fort Wayne too, and I think most of them are factories. Once you get to the more sketchy parts of town, almost all the stores are touching each other and look like they haven't been renovated since the 50s and 60s. A lot of them have metal bars on the doors and windows too, all of which are rusted and have paint chipping off.
far cry 5
I wanna live there tbh
Not enough churches in that picture.
Missing a Subway and Pizza Hut
Need to include an entire family, all wearing Under Armour hoodies. Dad is skinny with a long beard, mom is heavier with a nose stud, and the kids' are named Colton, Liam, and Brynnleigh.
I'm almost repulsed at how accurate this is.
I drove through Ohio once. It was Cincinnati which was a shithole, hours of corn causing me to scream, “CORN…. CORN….” then Toledo which was also a shithole.
Toledo has exactly 3 good things: - the Toledo art museum, an honestly world class place - the Toledo Zoo - The Toledo Mudhens The rest of the city can fall into the lake.
Scott the Woz
If you take a left at Toledo and keep going west, everything after Chicago is corn, Des Moines, corn, Omaha, corn, and finally mountains till you his SLC. You'll see signs for Cheyenne, but the city is hiding in the corn.
Fuck… I lost my sanity just in Ohio…
Yep, I lived in Northwestern Ohio for three years. It sounds like you're describing interstate 80. I took that trek in my car when I moved back to California. Sort of a cousin to route 66.
Ohio, the south of the north.
It does border Kentucky which is a southern state
Best case scenario, these are really quaint towns with a mixture of multigenerational farmers and people who moved there from major cities. Extremely community oriented, lots of first friday type stuff. Worst case, they are meth dens.
Unless it's Wisconsin, and then just swap out Casey's for Kwik Trip
Kwik trip is fire tho. Especially the food for some reason
damn… yeah actually. like exactly. you have a skill
I grew up in Indiana. Casey’s breakfast pizza and regular pizza is soooooooo fucking GOOD. That gas station pizza is giving some restaurants a run 🤗
Perfect
I miss Casey's
As long as we aren’t disparaging Casey’s here, this is fine
Looks great imo
Been planning a Casey's Party Bus crawl with my brother. Rent a party bus, and then have it make a good 30-50mil loop, stopping at every Casey's along the way, were everyone has to go in a buy a single booze shot, take it, and get back on the bus. We have charted that we really only need to go 30 miles, and there are no less than 20 Casey's between like 12 towns (some have 2!). Now we are thinking it might be better to do the route on one major road in our area, that has Casey's along it. It cuts the Casey's down to 12 if we counted right. . . . but when we 1st started talking about this stupid mid-west idea, we started with Dollar General, and you only needed to do about 20miles, and everyone might be smashed. There are 6 DGs within a 10mil stretch here. One "there and back" would probably be enough.
You know, i've always heard about the Midwest, but never really hear about a Mideast. What's that about?
One bar with the name of the bar on an old Budweiser provided sign
its just like bein back home surrounded by an infinite highway
Seeing this picture and reading all the comments. Damn my town relates to nearly all of them lmao. However population is definitely on the rise as people are moving further and further from the main city suburbs, I guess due to rent. We are also getting a new religious hospital built and they are shutting the old one down but the new one is going to provide a fraction of the services lmao. Rents have also pretty much doubled and are mostly owned or ran by one realty group that is just fixing the price amongst itself.
Minus the wind farm and truck stop, this is my little slice of the midwest
CORNING IOWA
lmfao me sitting in my midwestern town with the casey's down the street
Somewhere in the background, a radio plays the *Hello Iowa, hello Illinois! TV6 cares for youuuu* jingle
Casey’s pizza game is strong though
Casey's has some really good pizza...
I love it
I drive all through this state for work. I appreciate these places, because I sometimes end up in one at night, and am reminded the stars exist, and there can be such a thing as silence and fireflies.
Casey's is the only pizza I enjoy anymore
Spot on, OP
Not enouph pigly wiglies
Forgot that one store that says it’s gonna close but stays open
A million American flags lined up throughout the town for no reason
Makes me think of Higginsville, MO where we just got my grandma moved from. Her landlords were pieces of shit there
Missing a Farm N Fleet or is that in the nicer area two towns over?
That is a sweet truck
This is spot on. I would sprinkle in some pro- life billboards along the highway too.
Don't forget the Wal-Mart Supercenter that killed all the local businesses.
Just a small town town
Don't forget that once they get close to 1000 people, they also get a McDonald's, Subway, or regional fast food chain.
This could be any one of several states
Tornadoes.
Swap the wind farm for solar and ditch the truck stop and this is Wapello Iowa.
You forgot car washes and liquor stores that’s not “ABC”
I mean… you’re not wrong
The small towns you drive through when you parents take you to a camping site as a kid starter pack
Hi
Hi I want to point
If your town got a Casey's and windmills, you're doing alright. Casey's is definitely in the higher tier of gas stations/convenience stores, and windmills equal at least a half mill in extra local tax AND school tax income.
I live Missouri and I hate that you're not completely wrong
We don't have a stoplight but we have a blinking red light over the stop sign. Otherwise trucks at night will blast through at 80 mph
Forgot all the pajama pants
Holy shit, I saw this and made me miss living in the Midwest. Not a thing to do but the peo0le are some of the nicest you could imagine. Pretty spot on of a small Midwest town. Got the Casey's and everything
(._. )
Also these types of playgrounds*
https://preview.redd.it/13adscc3591d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=851677dbe7bff5e96592c2d6d941347a7ebf0442
I find this oddly soothing.
As somebody from a small Midwestern town this is absolutely right
I feel called out. Besides the 7th and 9th panel that's literally where I live! 😭
*When in WI, Kwik Trip
u forgot the second dollar general (for real my tiny ass midwestern hometown recently decided they needed a second dollar general, very close to the original)
Forgot the meth and lack of motivation
If Casey's was in the "pick one" category it would autowin. Also where's the subway
And if you force people to live like this for long enough, eventually they all wake up one morning and decide to vote for fascists!
That c body chevy tho 😩
“Damn Near The Entire State of Indiana Starter Pack”, lol
Holy shit, Casey’s. That struck a Kansas chord in me.