I'm attempting to start do the whole solopreneur online make your own business passive income thing, and it hit me one day that I was spending a whole lot of money in expensive places to sit in front of my computer and type. So this year I moved back to smalltown Indiana. I have a relatively giant apartment above a storefront in one of these small town main streets. It is mostly quiet and costs a whole $360 a month.<p>There is a coffee shop with 2 tables and a nice owner to talk to, and a couple of my friends work at the one webdev shop in town. I live two blocks away from a tiny little dance studio where I take dance lessons once a week, and am close enough to a city that I can drive there if I have to. Also the internet here is better than many large cities I've been to.<p>My relatively small savings from freelance should last me way longer than it would have in Chicago where I was before. I kind of wonder if there is an opportunity here to start little startup colonies in small towns.<p>Sure, it's no cultural center, but I've been pleasantly surprised at the friendliness of the people I've met here. The towns around this one certainly vary in quality of life, but if you look around you may find some cool places.<p>The main street may not be able to support a grocery store with Walmart down the street, but it is supporting a custom bike shop, a funeral home, and several local insurance companies. Maybe one way to revitalize these small towns is to bring in tech jobs that can be done from anywhere. It's certainly working for me so far.
This was wonderful. I love small town America. I grew up in a town of about 3000 and currently live in one that is population 30k or so. Popular sentiment in a lot of tech circles would have you believe that these places are solely filled with backwards, racist people. That can be true, but often times isn't. Small town life in the US lies on a very big spectrum.
Having grown up in a country where nationalism kind of harks back to nazism, it's always weird for me to see all the flags everywhere. It's just not something I can get used to, even after all these years of seeing US flags everywhere.
Very atmospheric, and reminded me of this [1] from a few months ago.<p>[1] Striking Portraits of Lonely Cars in 1970s New York <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/striking-portraits-of-lonely-cars-in-1970s-new-york" rel="nofollow">http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/striking-portraits-of-l...</a>
Many of those charming small town main streets like the ones in some of the photos, and the independently owned businesses along them, are in decline, if not already dead. Wal-mart and other big, chain businesses, often located down the highway, are getting all the business, so the small businesses in town cannot survive. Recently, I saw an incredible video about a main street in Mississippi that was basically dead, but has been resurrected on a fairly modest budget: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kChc7PVQFwA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kChc7PVQFwA</a>
One thing that sticks out in my mind is how utterly empty small towns feel late at night. I grew up in a rural area but have lived in larger urban areas since going to college.<p>Small towns seem like another world after midnight. The lighting is all wrong, there's no sound in your immediate area, there's no life. Unless it has a 24-hour convenience store, it might seem like the place is completely abandoned.<p>During the day, there's people and life and things happening, but at night, you want to pull your jacket tighter and hunker down a bit, maybe.
I live in a place like those. Its great photography, but the mundane subjects make it hard to get into.<p>Trying to locate any of those, I settled on one with an unusual street sign - 'Coolbaugh St'. There are 2 in the US, both in Pennsylvania. Neither has that building along it! Strange