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?

I've been to Celebration a few times, odd.

I've also been to a couple of small towns. Mystic in Connecticut and Rochester in MA.

Dh and I had a road trip into Wisconsin from Chicago for a few days and stayed within Door County. It was lovely.

I live in a gorgeous little Village (it’s actually part of a City though) in the UK.

Loads of independent little coffee shops/sandwich bars, restaurants. A real sense of community, very pretty and green.

I have been to the States and I remember visiting Cold Spring in Upstate New York. It was beautiful, and very much a Hallmark type town.

I’ve also been to a couple or little towns in Northern California that were the same, but can’t think for the life of me what they were called.

@KickAssAngel

I live in one. Small town America is actually really charming if a bit dull. It is very safe but also pretty smug and very white.

There is also likely to be another area close by where people with a lot less money love in cheaper housing in an out of town housing development or even a trailer park. My town has an old mill to get animal feed and garden supplies, a cider mill, a hardware store and various coffee shops and arty places as well as a couple of pubs. There's a river and parks etc. Then there a more modern section of housing with a grocery store and pizza places etc, then around the edge are modern housing developments.

We're also about five miles from a nice university city and only 40 minutes from Detroit so have a big airport and big events like concerts.

People are genuinely kind, the schools are great and there's a strong sense of community spirit. There's also been opposition to a new block of affordable housing, and some people are not welcoming of us as we British so we're immigrants.

Dexter? Chelsea?

My family cottage, built by my grandpa in the 1930s, is near there.

I just drove through Chelsea and Manchester last weekend. Utterly charming but I'm all too cognizant of the racism, trumpism, religious cultism and drug use that pervade those areas behind the scenes.

@BrummyMum1

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.

I live in a tiny, sleepy UK village and there's plenty of people with licensed shotguns locked away until pheasant shooting comes around each year.

I went to University in one of those small Hallmark towns on the East Coast. I was on a six month exchange and I came back just before Christmas, so was there for the Holiday season. It was beautiful and the University campus was the heart of the town. We had lush, thick snow and everything

@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

Lol.

A poorly educated Trump MAGA, deer hunter, avid NASCAR fan and overweight T2 diabetic with assorted out of wedlock kids, a fondness for Pepsi, burger king and BBQ is the likelihood in those small towns, contrary to the Hallmark narrative.

Finding a fit, handsome, single, well-educated, affluent and socially conscious man in small American towns is about as likely as finding a winning million-dollar lottery ticket on your doorstep.

@CheltenhamLady

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.

I live in a quaint Hallmark-esque town, though it's a suburb rather than a rural village.

The town park & gazebo, old movie theater, 1890s storefronts, shoppes and eateries, the whole Bedford Falls bit. It's incredibly boring but safe -- i never lock my doors unless I'm going out of town and even then probably needn't bother. In 30 years I've never heard of so much as a car break-in.

@Cruddles

There's a you tube channel called it's a southern thing, and I sort of want to live there, sweet old fashioned people, gentile manners.

As long as your not brown and/or atheist

Yep. Couldn't pay me to live in the south. And I'm white.

I walked out of a "comedy" club some fellow travelers in Charleston insisted on attending, over the crass, blatantly racist "jokes" about Obama. The local yokels were squealing and slapping their thighs with hilarity. Ugh.

@IamTomHanks

Also...there’s quite a dirth of decent eligible men despite the Hallmark narrative. The best ones settle down very young.

Oh god yes. There are definitely no attractive eligible young men. The "good ones" from mine left and never looked back, same as me. The one's that are left are not good, not smart, and not attractive (unless mulleted gas station attendant is your type).

Lol. Too true!

I always thought Celebration sounded too Stepford. And not all is as it seems ..

@NameChange84
I wondered if it was winter park
Another of our favourites.
Used to love the three tier carrot cake in the shop whose name I can’t remember.
The squirrel park opposite and the huge trains that call every so often.
The Tiffany lamp museum was amazing.
I think Far East had a branch there and in celebration and I used to get my Vera Bradley bags there

Oh how I miss it

Mum took bad in celebration and someone called an ambulance
She was taken to the hospital that was like a 5 star hotel
For one night only
The $14000 bill was a shocker

Winter park in Colorado for all it was a ski town still seemed to retain some of its quaintness.

I love America and am sad I will not be back

Has anyone stayed in a similar tiny town in Vermont? DH and I are looking to buy a holiday home in either Vermont or outskirts of NY

@NameChange84
Oh my god..cannot imagine anything like that happening in mt Dora
Although when the tea rooms closed and the Christmas shop ..plus one or two other places
It did start to feel like a change on its way..and maybe not necessarily for good.

The place my dd got married only had 9 rooms and each one was decorated beautifully in the same fabric, bedspread, curtains, any sort furnishing..all the same
It was gorgeous even if slightly OTT

@MrsMariaReynolds

What would happen if you didn't comply? These things fascinate me. What was living in Texas like?

This was where my dd got married
I think it was a bit more blue than that and the trees a tad shorter
It was 18 years ago

We went to visit friends when they lived in Darien. It was very pretty but in a way that implied we were at the beginning of a horror film, just a bit too perfect. It also had the oddest demographic, it was all families, mostly people who had moved out of New York when their DC reached school age and they commuted into their jobs from Darien instead. There were apparently excellent schools there. But hardly any older people or young, childless people and DH was the only non-white person that we saw while we were there, which freaked him out a little.

I wondered if it was winter park ... Used to love the three tier carrot cake in the shop whose name I can’t remember

Scotchie's by any chance?

Here's a couple of outliers - Neahkahnie and it's neighbour Manzanita, on the Oregon coast. Being on the edge of nowehere there's practically nothing in them, but oh the views of the Milky Way

@BlackAmericanoNoSugar

We went to visit friends when they lived in Darien. It was very pretty but in a way that implied we were at the beginning of a horror film, just a bit too perfect. It also had the oddest demographic, it was all families, mostly people who had moved out of New York when their DC reached school age and they commuted into their jobs from Darien instead. There were apparently excellent schools there. But hardly any older people or young, childless people and DH was the only non-white person that we saw while we were there, which freaked him out a little.

That's what I don't like about my little town. Very oriented toward nuclear families - few singles, older, LGBTQ, etc.

As a live-alone middle age woman I'm an anomaly. I stay because the location is convenient & safe and the house has been a good investment, but the community vibe is less than optimal.

@Barmyfarmy

Has anyone stayed in a similar tiny town in Vermont? DH and I are looking to buy a holiday home in either Vermont or outskirts of NY

Ellicotville in upstate NY has a lot going for it. It’s beautiful in the fall too as it’s surrounded by forested hills. There is a nice mix of locals and city escapees.

After writing that, I felt a bit nostalgic and googled Ellicottville.
It’s town website has a big banner across the page - It’s like living in a Hallmark Movie!

I watched this comedian earlier, was doing a serious bit in his act about Indiana (where he was) and it being the once home of the KKK, some people in audience actually cheered.

Having said this stuff I of course realise americans arnt all like that, a lot- especially in the north are really appealling, a lot more canadian in culture and actually a hell of a lot voted for Biden (something of the true silent majority). That culture going back to Capote and Steinbeck further out has produced some truly great and important culture, and then the black culture there which massively punches above its weight, especially with music. But they do have something of a culture and political problem as is mirrored in the UK. It might be that a split becomes inevitable in some form.

You know Vermont shares a border with Canada, Barmy.

From what Ive been told if you dont go along with the threats from the homeowners association some of them can take steps to get you out (is that true) but mostly consist of fines. A guy I talked to moved in with his latino family and had letters about 'ethnic culture' and how it musnt show up in decorations and stuff. It really is the madness and excess of late stage capitalism. It would make some bloody brilliant threads on here.