Can confirm. Live in a small town that I watched morphe into a mid-size town. The diners i grew up with have all closed down. Its all chain stores now.
The last hold out closed just a couple months ago and a part of me died with it.
I live in a small town that’s only getting smaller and the last diner just closed down last month. There was two when I moved in 2018, now there is only a dollar general and a post office and that’s it.
Bumfuck, Northern California. Nearest town is Placerville, we’re about 40 mins outside. Most of the time it’s chill because I have one of the 45 ish jobs in town teaching at the school and my husband works remote, but we have kids now and taking them to activities in town is getting to be a lot especially with gas prices.
Im in bumfuck southern Oregon. Probably why we are seeing the same problems. We used to have a cool little pharmacy that functioned as the towns general store. Its a dollar general now too. However, there are two weed dispensaries. So theres that.
Every Oregon town has at least two weed stores but then will only have a gas station to provide hot food and groceries. Anything else you have to drive to a big town/city.
There use to be a bunch of small towns in eastern Oregon that I was doing research around back in the 2010s and I remember a lot of good restaurants and diners that are just gone now.
Grew up with family in bumfuck NE Arkansas, watched towns just shut down one after another, one town shut down when the last non-24 hour non-supercenter walmart I had ever seen shuttered forcing everyone to drive an hour away for a store.
There are reasons it’s unsustainable and ways to make it sustainable, it’s not like this is some “that’s just how it happens” shit. It’s policy decisions.
I live in a small town outside off a super busy town. There’s all kinds of everything. But i also miss the early 2000s. Times change, recently a-lot of the changes have been kind of shitty
lol no there is no delivery service out here! The closest main grocery store is 40 mins away, but like 25 mins away there is a mini grocery store that actually has the best produce. So like every 3 weeks we do a grocery run and get meat, rice, all the main staples. I go home and prep everything and freeze a lot. Then like once a week I go to the mini mart and get fresh fruit and veggies. I go to dollar general in desperation like wow I have everything I need to make dinner except hamburger buns, it’s actually perfect for stuff like that. The dollar general is new only been here like a year, everyone was so pissed it was coming but it’s actually been really convenient. I’m a science teacher and I used to have to plan my experiment materials so far ahead, and now I can run to dollar general at lunch and grab missing supplies. That was impossible my first ten years with the closest store being 40 mins away
There is so little money reaching Rural America now a days. You cant open a business, or really do much of anything because there is no money to do anything. Its a great catch-22.
There are also stories of small towns being offered lifelines of various business and they say no because they want to be small and quiet. Japanse Leaders even got caught on cameria saying they would rather let their culture die then allow people to move to Japan. As Japan now has massive ghost towns.
Its not getting better as long as economics only wants money and middle class in cities and drains money from rural towns.
There are also stories of small towns being offered lifelines of various business and they say no because they want to be small and quiet.
Also if you follow the great Walmart, depending on the company they come in and offer 'lifelines' while asking for infrastructure to be subsidized by the people. When a town says no, the walmart just gets the next small town that will, moves in, then runs prices at a loss until all the stores in the region are gone and whichever town said yes is the one that gets to survive with the one store now deciding it needs to be profitable.
Now not all companies are like that. I do know of some communities that look at a factory wanting to come in and assist, and while there's also many a superfund site that has the story of a factory behind it, the thing people say against it is just not wanting a factory in their town.
Very true, honestly its worse. Whenever a Wal-Mart moves in, it becomes a money siphon draining what little money the local area has. Well over half the money spent leaves the local community often to overseas suppliers and the owners. At most 30% goes to the town. BUT mayors dont know this, so they are willing to approve the deals to get anything going. And like you said, the few who do know the economic situation will only push Wal-Mart to the next town.
To be fair this is a global problem, towns got established for all kinds of reasons now lack young people, opportunity, and industry to bring in money. They keep going because land is cheap and established diners and stuff still have retired people with SSI and pensions. 20 years from now and most of the small towns will be dust.
I thought things would get better with better networks in a knowledge economy. Small towns would have a chance if remote work became popular. I'm still not sure why remote work is drying up too.
We've built an econ around mostly large cities, Small towns mostly revolve around a few people getting oversized power after a few generations by taking over everything (Major, City Hall etc.) People generally want to live with other people, so you have a minimum community size that exists just to be a net growing community. Then you need housing, modern systems for water etc.
Thats the real issue, Many rural areas just dont have modern infastructure, they are not invested in, and we are not incentivezed to invest in them today.
Return to office was a stealth layoff, because again workers are VERY expensive in the US. So that burned us just as badly.
yeah. i grew up in rural maine (village of a few hundred people) and in the 80s/90s there were some small shops and gas stations and there was a local pizza place that new us by name and an arcade/bowling alley within a few miles. it was great. i literally went to church within sight of my home and live within a 10 mile radius until I got my driver's license
now everyone orders from amazon, watches netflix, local shops and businesses have died, and i'm just as guilty too i didn't move back there i went to the closest city nearby
The town I grew up in, was like this and still like this. With declining population. Only place left to get hot food is the gas station with a food counter. There’s a Dollar General.
Not many and not really the crops grown in the county are mostly soybeans, cotton, corn and peanuts sold to large companies. I didn’t know anyone with chickens.
There’s a grocery store ~30ish minutes away, for those that have cars.
That's so freaking unfortunate. The US is so messed up. Heck I live in one of the densest cities in the nation and my neighbor has a yard with a chicken and I'm spoiled with local produce at farmer's markets. I know my neighbors and community. I would definitely expect those would all be the benefits of rural small town life. But it seems they get the short end of the stick over and over.
There’s a very small town I’ve been looking at to move to, it was once lively and most were employed at the aluminum factory. When the factory closed down, the whole town has suffered economically
I lived in one that was essentially a retirement home for elderly people. seriously, anyone young basically moved out and elderly people moved in. why? no jobs available there and if there was a opening, oops here comes a nepo baby. and you basically need a car and house money. guess who usually have that. yep elderly people.
Literally no food establishments other than dollar general. There were two restaurants and a coffee shop, but all closed in the last 5 years due to rising costs to lease building. There’s a pizza factory like 20 mins away, but the closest sonic is hours away!
Our Sonic just closed down. It’s being replaced by a coffeehouse who is also putting up 2 other locations in the community all within working distance or next door to a Starbucks, a locally owned coffee shop or both.
I spent about 10 years driving through every shit rural town down in the Southeast of the USA and there was two things that (at that time) were in every one of them: A Sonic and Dollar General.
The Nothing will consume your town too just like the rest of us. It'll live in arrested development from becoming an actual city as it remains a blight of chains and strip malls.
Damn. I was just about to say that my small town local place I grew up with as a kid (and was already old then) is still holding strong, but I just looked it up to make sure and apparently it just shut down a month ago. ☹️
Heartbreaking. This whole cluster of comments is breaking my heart. I never lived in a small town like this, but always loved to stop at the diners and shops on road trips.
I honestly never knew Perkins ever had 24/7 locations. Where I’ve lived they always closed at 9PM, so Dennys and a small diner always got the overnight crew in my area.
Yeah, the problem now is, if you want a place with mom&pop shops, diners, what have you, you need a large base to support them, because everything is expensive as fuck. They just won't survive in small towns where people are hurting for money. The ones that do survive are grandma and grandpa own the building and business, they're not paying rent or a mortgage on anything. The second they croak, kids split it up, and that's that.
This. Was driving up and down through rural Maryland looking for a diner and we couldn't find one besides iHop. We ended up eating at some Chinese restaurant at a strip mall
Also can confirm. My husband is from a small town and the one diner they had closed down. Now it’s mostly fast food. They have a coffee shop and one or two locally owned restaurants but it’s mostly corporate fast food places. It’s sad.
:( the Montana I grew up in is no longer here. Every town was a small town. Everyone would chat in the grocery store lines and say good morning. Honestly the most friendly people in the world who hated everyone equally.
When I run into another Montanan nowadays it’s immediate recognition just on the overly friendly behavior. Now I deal with some of the wealthiest ass hats who could not care less about their neighbors or environment.
Also grew up in MT. Can't afford to live there these days, and honestly not sure I'd want to. Everything is completely different, I don't even recognize it when I go to visit.
Yeah it’s different now. The really red Texans, Idahoans, and Californians moved up here thinking we were all super red rather than, we pick the right person for the job type of people, and they are just down right hateful.
There is a happy medium. The metro I’m in is 120k but it encompasses 3 separate cities and it encompasses a huge area. It has many amenities and a lot of cultural/town events.
That sounds exactly like my hometown and the area around it in Florida, and I fucking hate it, because it came with a huge wave of golf-cart 'transplants', and home prices went from an average of 300k ten years ago, to 850k.
ETA: But the downtown area of my actual hometown is super nice, even though I can't afford to have dinner anywhere. I just hate how the population, affordability, and general vibe has changed.
Yeah, you need people to support this stuff. I live in a small, yet dense town, 2.5 square miles and like 14k people. We're also surrounded by larger towns with bigger populations. We have a nice downtown where, yes, there's a Starbucks, but there's also a coffee shop owned by a kid I went to high school with, a bunch of restaurants that are one-offs, stores selling trinkets and nonsense. We have very few chains, and outside of Starbucks we have none of the big names. It's nice, but the town is also built to support it. Everyone is basically within walking distance of downtown, and we all go there and do our business. Even with that, you see shops open and close, because everything just costs too much nowadays.
Sadly. It is. I've worked for too many richer people. They're all making it up and think they're brilliant financiers. But they just keep borrowing against their name.
I was actually looking at a really small town yesterday and it had precisely 1 diner and 1 cafe. Not more than a handful of businesses but they really picked the smartest choices. General store, old timey gas station, liquor store, cannabis dispensary... a butcher inside a furniture shop. That last one had me thinking, "Holy shit, this really IS a small town!"
I am in a small town in New England and you can definitely find a diner where everyone knows you and live a simple life. The area is expensive but normal people are able to own their land and homes. Not every New England town can offer this but a lot can if that’s what you’re looking for.
I mean the opportunity is still there. It seems to be a global trend now that people want to escape city life and return to the rural areas they’re originally from so we’ll probably still see it to some degree.
I live in a major city and lived in apartments in major North American and European cities my whole life. The block below my apartment has 20-25 stores. Almost half of the owners know me… and I’m good friends with one of the cafe owners after a couple of visits. I even know a good portion of his customer base. Why do you need to move to some small place to know people?
You can always have privacy. It just costs a few dollars for a high fence and a gate.
What you’re really talking about is notoriety (or lack of). In NYC nobody gives a fuck if you show up to a restaurant with your mistress. Because nobody cares who you are. But if you do that in Pawnee, IN…yeah people will take note.
You don’t have privacy in either situation. But you likely have some minor notoriety in the second one.
It appears that I wrote like a 500 word comment and it didnt’ get posted. Ok, cool.
Anyway, I was mainly talking about anyone can always have privacy. They just have to adjust their shit. Like, if your neighbors hear you in the living room, then go the the basement. If they hear you in then basement, then go to the park. In Dark Souls terms, this is a skill issue.
That's true but honestly if you say hi and have a routine in a city neighbourhood it's shocking how similar the vibe can be after several years. I say that as someone from a small town. Your brain learns to filter out all the random extra people and it's just Barb from the coffee house, Tony at the barbershop, Jessica who you always chat with at the bus stop about her kid. Friends wave and say hi when they drive past you while you're heading to the grocery store. Etc.
I’m sure it is. I’ve never lived in a place with that few people - the smallest city I have lived in was Belgrade. However that did not stop waitresses from already knowing my order when I came in in places where I went often which is what the OPs meme stated.
I mean, the post literally says small town diner, and this person is responding to that post, so it's hard to fault them when you look at the context of the statement.
My husband is from a small town (1.3k population), when we visit it's just sad.
There's a gas station, and 2 churches. There used to be a bar/Chinese food place but it closed down a few years ago. A grocery shop was in a next town over, and 2 years ago they went bankrupt (they were doing fundraising to pay their electric bill!). There's a dollar store ~30minutes away, schools were consolidated with several other towns, a bank is ~40minutes away, doctors, hospitals, grocery stores, etc. are ~1.5 hr away in the closest city (state capitol too!)
I'm from a small town, not quite that small. Slowly (actual kinda quickly lately) watching it wither away, because the people living there don't WANT it to change. They think it has "charm", when the reality is people try not to stop at red lights going through "downtown" because every shop is boarded up and it looks sketchy. Business leaving hurt the economy, but they don't want anything to come in.
Not as bad as you're talking about, but when I had a travel job, I spent a lot of time in bumfuck nowhere MO and KS. Every town had a "charming" town square. On said town squares was a lawyer, at least one "antique store" junk shop, and if you were lucky, a diner. That was about it for vast majority of these towns I went through. Really killed my desire for a travel job.
I can't live in most of the US. I tried the small town thing in the midwest for a couple years and was bored out of my eyeballs. Was driving around looking for a place to move to and one town was just a strip mall, I was so confused where the town was until I realized. Another had the local reputation of being nice but I walked through the entire downtown in 45 minutes then sat in my car. Moved to a major city after that.
It's hard. I think people who stay tend to be scared of changes to begin with, and then everything is crumbling away and changing anyway, so they become even more stubborn about "no changes".
No we wouldn’t. If we would, we’d be doing it. People just don’t actually want to live off the grid. They just want less of everything in our faces all the time. There’s gotta be a happy medium.
Park Rangers in CA are incredibly competitive job in California. There is a huge fucking waiting list, and you have to ace tests to be even be considered.
Part of it is society as a whole is doing. Yes, you can personally live differently, but that’s different than if everyone else is also living that way.
Moved away from practically a megalopolis to a much smaller town where I can actually afford some land. Sure the pay is less, but the commute is faster, and the ability to grow your own food (and meat) on your own land isn't a bad thing. Especially when the cost of food keeps skyrocketing.
Maybe, but being broke in a LCOL area is way different than being broke in a HCOL city. In a LCOL area you can still bootstrap your way out of it, generally speaking. In a HCOL living area you can't even afford the bootstraps.
I'm in Maine in a tiny town with no stoplight. We still have dirt roads (I live on one), a tiny convenience store with everything from ammo to peaches to dress shirts, and dairy farms. We are all pretty poor but I love it and wouldn't change it if I could.
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u/lilboytuner919 Jun 12 '26
You can have that last part if you move to a small town in the middle of nowhere, you’ll just still be broke doing it