Sebastopol, California, near where I grew up. It’s very cute. And hippie-tastic!
My own hometown, Petaluma, CA has some ugly stretches of fast food restaurants and whatnot, but the actual old downtown area is very nice and full of unique (ie, not chain) establishments. Well, there is one Starbucks - but no WalMart. Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign commercial was filmed there, in fact.
I live in a very small town near Orlando. Downtown is a flashing yellow light. We have a convenience store, a pizza/sub place (very good) and a private school, along with a few small businesses (hair salon, realtor.)
I can walk to the park, the post office, or to get my haircut. But it’s close enough to a larger town that I can do my grocery shopping or eat at a chain restaurant (Outback’s and Ruby Tuesday’s so far, with a Chili’s to open soon) or hit Target.
We don’t tell people where it is.
Seaside, FL (where the Truman Show was filmed) was designed for just this reason.
Henniker, N.H. They’ve got a wonderful, quaint drug store downtown that successfully resisted an invasion by Rite-Aid a couple of years ago. There are interesting stores downtown, including a great puizza and ice cream joint with a balcony overlooking the Pemigewasset River. The College of New England is nearby, supporting all this.
Pat’s Peak ski area is also nearby, and there’s a pick-it-yourself apple orchard there, too. (The New Hampshire Winery, which used to be nearby and offered tours and tasting, is sadly gone.)
So whose town listed here is the largest in terms of population? (sorry, no time to Google for all the populations for all of them). Are there any isolated communities (as opposed to a suburb) in excess of 10,000 or so people without a single national chain restaurant or store?
There are several towns of <1000 people in Idaho with no big-box stores or fast food franchises, but they’re getting harder to find. Even some of the towns way off from the Interstate have at least one or two nationally recognized stores or restaurants in them.
My biggest problem with strip malls is that the name is horribly misleading and very disappointing. “Strip” malls, indeed. Harumph.
My town of Holliston, MA of may be considered a very distant suburb of Boston (37 miles) but it is a town in it’s own right and predates the Revolutionary War (my house was built in 1760). It has a population of 13,000 and has no national chains and only one local chain and looks much like it was laid out over 200 years ago. Most of the original buildings are still standing and the town looks just like a post-card.
I went to grad school at ASU in Boone, NC and it has a nice little downtown that is all touristy and still owned by the traditional local bigwig families. Fortunately, the downtown has historic district status so it’s harder to introduce a big box store. The down side is that the big boxes just moved to the edge of town and now suck business away from the older area. The student population helps mitigate this by being right there in and around the downtown.
My internship was in Rutherfordton, NC which is microscopic and has no school or tourism to keep it going. Therefore, they have a nice, old-style downtown with almost no business. People go to the walmart outside of town for their retail needs.
Holliston, MA doesn’t need to be strip-malled or anything because every freakin’ town around it already is. It is pretty to drive through. (Franklin native here so I’m quite familiar with Holliston.)
I’m living in a town that’s about to get a strip mall, a Whataburger, and a Sonic. But for now all we have is a Dairy Queen that’s been there for years and a Subway that went in a few years ago, with a 24 hour gas station. That’s big for this one stoplight town in Texas.
Fort Kent, ME is a tiny, northern Maine border town that has a great little downtown, which is easily walkable. Used to easily walk across the border bridge to Canada but I don’t know how easy that would be now. The only big chain place there that I know of, is a McDonalds. And they even have the University of Maine there. People have to drive quite a bit for a Wal-Mart or even a mall.
Right here in Missouri, just get off the main highways a few miles and you’ll find literally hundreds of small towns with no Wal-Mart, No McDonalds and no cellular phone stores.
We call them “dying.”
Keep in mind that most of these small towns have:
a) a post office
b) a fire house
c) a gas station/convenience store
d) a church
and that’s about it. No doctors, no entertainment, no supermarket, no place to get your car worked on, no retail at all.
The local school was closed years ago and if (and it’s a big IF) there are any children, a school bus picks them up and takes them down 15 miles of two lane roads to get to the consolidated school in the county seat. “The plant” that was the county’s biggest employer was shut down years, maybe a couple of decades, ago. Except for the farmers (and they aren’t doing so well) everyone who could leave has already left.
Is that what you’re nostalgic for?
It’s about as hippieish as rural Wisconsin gets, really. It’s a “historic” town, meaning most of the industry is dedicated to tourism, people looking for quaint places. There are a ton of art studios and galleries. Golf course outside of town. More bed and breakfasts than you can shake a rag at. Two doctors’ offices. An optometrist’s. Two assisted car facilities. Two vets and a taxidermist. (From life to afterlife!) The police station is a white house on the edge of the residential area.
For chains, there’s a Subway* and a Comfort Inn, but the Comfort Inn is way out of town. The closest Wal-Mart is either in Platteville or Dodgeville – probably about 20 miles away. Population was 2,617 in 2000. And it’s only 3 miles from the Iowa County Airport, too!
*I’ve no idea where the Subway is, as I’ve never seen it in all the many times I’ve been in Mineral Point. I’m guessing it’s tacked onto a gas station near the highway. It’s not downtown.
Interestingly, that describes most villages in Ireland and the UK, yet they endure.
Lynchburg, TN. Despite being near the JD distillery, and having a few independent stores that cash in on the tourism, it’s a fantastic little place with a beautiful town square. I was sitting there and these two old dudes in dungarees sat next to me. One of them held out a cedar stick:
“Hi, know what that is?”
“No.”
“It’s a whittlin’ stick. Know what I do with it?”
“No.”
“I whittle it until it ain’t nothin’ at all. Or until it’s the size of a toothpick. Know what I do then?”
“No.”
“I get another one and start all over again.”
Winchester, Indiana, population 5500 has one fast food restaurant–a Burger King, I think. No Wal-Mart and no McDonald’s. Everywhere in town is completely walkable from everywhere else and there is a classic small-town “downtown” area, which is unfortunately pretty dead. Lots of Indiana towns have these downtown areas, where the streets are lined with buildings that have stores with glass showcases on the ground level, and a couple floors of living space above. The stores are usually filled with “antique” markets and photography studios; an occasional gem like the “Sanitary Lunch” still hangs on.
The very smallest towns in Indiana will have a church and a very dodgy-looking auto repair place with one, maybe two bays. Most have a nice courthouse, too. By the time they are up to courthouse standard, they generally have the gamut of fast-food restaurants; Wal-Mart comes soon after.
Winchester has a courthouse, a jail, a post office, several nice churches, and a grocery store. The bad news is that Winchester’s idea of fine dining is a buffet (the food is darned good, actually), and culture is the high school’s Christmas concert.
Lake Ariel, Hamlin, and Hawley PA are the tiowns that time forgot. Nearby Honesdale is very similar, but it has an actual Wal*Mart (late 90s or ~2000) and a strip mall that’s been around since at least the 80s.
Sure, go move to a town like that. You’ll figure out pretty damn quick that “quaint” isn’t nearly as nice as you think it is.
I live in a town which is about half and half. Population of ~20K. On one side, we have a smattering of the basic box stores. The other side of town is the older, quaint district. I’d call it historic, but it’s not quite there yet - it’s still enough of a working downtown (as opposed to ALL gift shops and fudgeries) that “historic” doesn’t quite fit.
I’m in the largest town within about 150 miles (Green Bay, WI is the next largest, a little over 3 hours away), and am surrounded by many, many small towns that perfectly fit your criteria. They’re cute, there’s no McDonald’s or Wal-Marts, and they’re fun to visit. Live there? Hell no.
Let me tell you about life in the town I live in. We have a Wal-Mart, a Target, and a small mall, complete with a couple department stores. Before living here, I lived in and around Boulder, CO, so I have a good amount of experience living in a large metropolitan area as well (Boulder is 40 miles from Denver).
Shopping wise, I’m very limited. Sure, I can get the basics, but what if I want more than the basics? I recently took a business trip. I had a hell of a time finding stylish clothes, even with two department stores to pick from. Much of the clothing is geared toward senior citizens or very casual. Not many people 'round here need the kinds of clothes I’d like to wear to a conference. I managed to piece a couple outfits together, but it was difficult.
Books? There’s a decent used bookstore in town, but if you’re looking for selection, it doesn’t exist. Want to go browse for, say, travel guides? There might be 10 guides at one store in town. Want a specific book that’s not on the current bestseller list? Chances are you’ll order it.
Groceries? I can get the basics, but I’m a fairly decent cook (have to be, there’s not too many good restaurants here) and there are many ingredients I can’t get. The selection of fresh seafood (other than the lake trout and whitefish caught locally) was nil - I mean, NOTHING, other than a few tired frozen things - until the Wal-Mart expanded into a Super Wal-Mart and put in a fish counter. Asian food? I got what’s in the “Oriental” section of the local supermarket. Beer/Wine? There’s some decent small liquor stores, but nowhere near the selection that even a mid-size store in a larger area carries. When I’m tired of the 5-6 brands of “premium” beer the local store carries, I’m out of luck. Mr. Athena and I drink a good amount of champagne. There’s 5 brands in town. We get tired of them, quickly.
Misc items: Mr. Athena recently wanted a headset for his new cell phone. Can’t buy it in town, we’ve tried every phone store there is. When the battery in my car died (a BMW, no dealer within 150 miles) I had to order one. Mr. Athena needed a leather jacket to wear while motorcycling. Other than the incredibly overpriced, logo-emblazoned ones sold at the Harley store, there were none. Furniture? Anything other than the lowend crap, you order it and wait 12 weeks.
Restaurants: Good luck. There’s one decent place in town that serves basic, but well-prepared food. We have a few Chinese restaurants (there were none here when I was growing up), but they’re nothing special. No Mexican food at all, unless you count Taco Bell. No decent Italian, not even an Olive Garden. Japanese? Yeah right. A good high end place to go for special occasions? Nothing. Price-wise, the most expensive place in town is Red Lobster. Unfortunately, it’s got some of the most interesting food as well. Yes, that’s right - Red Lobster serves the most innovative meal in the town, unless you count the food I cook at home.
Despite all that, I do love living here. It’s a beautiful area, and my family is here. Could I have lived here pre-Internet? I highly doubt it. We rely heavily on the Internet for news, culture, and shopping. I would truly feel isolated here without being able to browse at Amazon, read news online, and access the SDMB. We take trips at least a couple times a year to larger cities to shop for the stuff we want to buy in person.
If the town were any smaller - ie, like the ones the OP describes - they’d be highly unlivable. Bitch all you want about Wal-Mart, it brings stuff to small towns that is simply unavailable anywhere else, including the cute lil’ general stores people think are so great. My local used bookstore is nifty, but I’d kill for a Barnes & Noble or Borders to move in. An Olive Garden would be a step above the local restaurants - really, most of them survive only because people here don’t know any better. Trust me, they aren’t gems of great homestyle cooking. They serve cheap food badly prepared. The chains and box stores are popular for a reason.