Has anyone ever lived in one of those small, Hallmark style US towns?

[BabyLlamaZen]

I know it's not real, but I do have a guilty pleasure watching them all around Christmas. Think 'My Christmas Inn', 'Christmas made to order', that sort of thing.

The romantic in me loves the idea of swooping into one of these gorgeous towns, (local hunk on hand of course!), set up my own coffee/bookshop, that kind of thing. Live at the local diner.

Has anyone actually stayed in one of these places or know what they're really like?

We just moved back to Scotland after living in The Woodlands near Houston Texas. We had one xmas and halloween while over there and there's rules to obey in some areas that you have to decorate your house with lights etc a certain way. We felt like we lived in the Truman show it was a bit grim tbh! Very step ford wives feeling about the whole place lol!

@user1471565182

Imagine in real life after your christmas wedding in these places though when it gets to around january 20th and you have no money and you find out hes a Republican

😂😂😂

@user1471565182 plus it would be so so cold. And I might be expected to cook a steak daily. I dont even eat steak

I always wanted to live where Jesica Flectcher lived

There are far more Hallmark-type towns in the U.K. than in the US. Quaint AND friendly. The romance of Rural America only exists in Hollywood. The reality of most of rural America is poor health, poverty, very conservative values, bigotry and the opioid crisis.

@Scotmum83

We just moved back to Scotland after living in The Woodlands near Houston Texas. We had one xmas and halloween while over there and there's rules to obey in some areas that you have to decorate your house with lights etc a certain way. We felt like we lived in the Truman show it was a bit grim tbh! Very step ford wives feeling about the whole place lol!

LOL! I spent 8 years living up the road from The Woodlands. Definitely a creepy Truman Show vibe there, as well as in many Houston-area "planned communities". Ah, Texas... NEVER AGAIN!

Our TX homeowners association once issued us a stern warning letter about the thickness of our tree trunks. It was a new-build community so the trees were...new! But apparently they weren't willing to wait for them to grow in order to be fit to "code". Seriously.

I live in Canada but in a suburb of a city, my DP is Canadian, most of his family are in cities or suburbs but his aunt and uncle live in a very 'Hallmark' type town in Ontario. It's really beautiful and the people are lovely - but they mostly are everywhere here. Most movies are filmed in British Columbia, in and around Vancouver - it's called 'Hollywood North', and also the Fraser Valley or along the Sea to Sky highway in towns like Squamish. The Kootenay Rockies or further north around places like Smithers usually double for Alaska or anywhere mountainous/snowy e.g. in The Mountain Between Us and The Grey. We live in Alberta, not far from towns like Canmore and Banff and a bit further to Jasper, which are all beautiful and have the location/aesthetic in spades but are very very touristy so maybe not quite so much the small-town vibe.

I stayed in a tiny town outside NY (near the Adirondacks) for Christmas one year with DH. We stayed in a small house on a suburban street and had cookies and a basket of groceries left on the door step. It was a very upper class area and most people were only there for the holidays but they were very generous and not at all snooty. It had snowed before we got there and the neighbour cleared the driveway, they did it again when it snowed while we were out. The owners left a christmas tree fully decorated and 2 gifts under it- a bottle of wine and 2 wooly jumpers. They had a tiny bakery with a few tables where we went for breakfast most days and the owner would come and sit with us and chat. They gave us recommendations of where to go and even helped us arrange a small christmas dinner. It was lovely, everyone knew each other but there seemed to be no drama, we felt completely welcome. We've booked it again for next Christmas and the owners remembered us and said they'd arrange beds for the kids (we have 4 now). It was so lovely we felt a little like we were in either the Truman Show or they were all robots like the Stepford wives.

I have lived in a couple of towns like this, one in California and one in Vermont. Both were gorgeous, the Vermont town looked like a Christmas card in winter and the autumn leaves were breathtaking. The California town was on the ocean, an area that is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. They had the requisite charming shops and cafes. These areas are quite liberal, though certainly somewhat lacking in diversity (much more diverse than the English villages I know, however). They are also located quite close to vibrant, diverse cities. If I had the opportunity to live in either place again, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I grew up in a New Zealand version of this. It was wonderful....

Ahh it's my dream, would love a big wooden house in the middle of the woods somewhere snowy with a little town near by where everyone knows everyone sounds perfect to me 🎄🎄☃️☃️🙏

@MrsMariaReynolds

There are far more Hallmark-type towns in the U.K. than in the US. Quaint AND friendly. The romance of Rural America only exists in Hollywood. The reality of most of rural America is poor health, poverty, very conservative values, bigotry and the opioid crisis.

Have you lived there?

user1471565182

I live in a v small town in Canada which Hallmark (and others) frequently use for filming as a quintessential small American town. It is lovely and there is a stronger sense of community than I think you get in a city, you see the same faces day in, day out.

But, it has a lot of drug issues, and we’ve been broken into twice, something that never happened living in the U.K. Just a lot of low level crime to support people’s drugs habits. There’s also issues with the First Nations, something which affects the US as well, depending on where you go.

@Sarahandco

I always wanted to live where Jesica Flectcher lived

Whaaat??? Never, ever be even remotely in the vicinity of Jessica Fletcher. I believe she was never convicted

Where I live has a very low crime rate. People really do leave doors unlocked and parcels are left on the front porch.

It's also pretty liberal, although in the US that's still fairly conservative. I'm on the local housing association board and it is so like Stars Hollow that it's hilarious. If we didn't have a city very close I would find it suffocating, but there's just enough urban life to keep me sane.

Slightly off-topic but, we once rented a huge villa with an 'elevator' on the bay in Captiva Island, Florida and the owner said he would leave the keys 'on the kitchen countertop, and the front door open' I queried if that was safe, and he said 'it will be fine, there is zero crime on Captiva'.

All the way there I was thinking we might have been scammed and either the villa wouldn't exist or it would be locked up. However, sure enough, we arrive at this fabulous villa, chock full of high end furniture and it was unlocked and the keys were in plain sight.

My personal experience of mid-west small towns are that they’re like an an English village but the people are a little more racist, less well travelled and have access to guns.

Oh yeah read into the fascism of homeowner associations in the US, its insane.

I detest them and their exclusivity.

I spent a few months in a liberal, small university town in Massachusetts. It felt very safe, being full of women (it was known as a lesbian town). It was nice, all the book shops were also coffee shops, there was microbreweries. The other little towns nearby had perfect diners and barns selling antiques but weren't so open-minded.

My housing association is very laissez-faire. I haven't actually come across one in real life that's anything like those on TV. I'm sure some exist, but mainly they're run by local people who just want to get the bins emptied without paying too much. I'm in the board and I know know far more than I want to about the cost of rubbish collections.

Ive talked to a few people who were in housing associations which were clearly being used as cover for a religious dictatorship. Handing out a list of colours they're allowed to paint, threatening to fine people for not going to church and all that sort of thing.

Is it housing association that I mean? like a neighbourhood watch that you have to sign up to with your house in the US?

Yep, the HA where I lived was so strict.

It’s not a Housing Association like what you have in the UK as a form of social housing, it’s a Homeowners Community Association who dictate the rules of a housing development or community.

We’d get in trouble if our grass grew an inch over the acceptable height for our residential community. Or if we let visitors in the community pool or tennis courts. There was a list of acceptable paint colours for the exteriors of the houses. We were only allowed one style of roof. Someone got fined for having a windmill style decoration in their outdoor planters as it “wasn’t in keeping with the community” (because someone thought it was tacky), you weren’t allowed to park on the kerb. Parking on the grass in front of your own home could lead to eviction, even if it was a roofer’s van or something. It was an utterly insane set up.