I’ll give some examples in hopes it’ll be a bit more explanatory about strangely out place:
When I used to drive from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery AL- about 80 miles of which is an abandoned stretch of nothing- there was a little oasis called Billingsley- my mother’s home “town”- that I call an oasis because it was the first and last filling station and place to buy food for 20 miles or more in either direction. For a while there was a little cinder block restaurant about the size of your average apartment complex landromat called CHICAGO DAWGZ.
You walk in and the owner/operator was this big burly super friendly dude with a physique and voice that was right out of the “DAH BEARS!” skits on SNL and the little dive sold Chicago style hot dogs and Polish sausage dishes. I’ll admit this was the first place I ever tried one- I like them, and miss them because there’s no other Chicago Dogs place in any of the places I’ve lived, but it was the strangest non-sequitur to come across a thick Chicago accent and Chicago-Polish food out in the middle of Souther Gothic no-man’s land.
I had a weeks long stay with my cousin in a tiny town in New Hampshire for a while (which I think means “anywhere in New Hampshire that’s not Concord or Nashua”). There were only two businesses in the town- a convenience store/diner and a video rental shop. The owner of the latter was ‘Frank’, who was a character straight out of any Deniro/Pesci/Scorcese collaboration- looked and talked like the most stereotypical mobster you can imagine. Like Chicago Dawgz guy he was super nice, but he wore clothes that as little as I know about fashion I knew were expensive and wore a garish ring that you could tell was the real thing. He was the first person I ever heard actually say “Fuggedaboutit!” and loved to talk movies- had seen absolutely everything and loved to tell you anecdotes “I know from a friend” about every actor and actress. (“Travolta- queer as a goddam frog I tell ya! Eve’body knows it!”) Small towns being small towns of course there were lots of rumors that he was Witness Protection, especially since he didn’t have a wife or family or anything with him and had just sort of shown up there a couple of years before, and while sometimes small town gossip can be as funny as “she’s a Hungarian princess” with this guy- you had to wonder.
Near Kowaliga, Alabama, a lake community best known (if at all known) for inspiring the Hank Williams song Kaw-Liga, is a business that specializes in really upscale granite and other types of stone counters (marble, onyx, quartz, etc.). While there are some $1 million+ lake homes in the area I’m pretty sure they don’t change out counters and kitchen fixtures every year and the nearest city is Montgomery some 40 miles away- just seems an odd place.
Of course all big cities have niche stores, but one that really struck me on a visit to New Orleans c. 1998 was a store that sold nothing but traditional Russian artwork (mainly triptychs, icons and nesting eggs) of the Romanovs. Even assuming there’s a mail order/internet business (and at the time the internet wasn’t yet the huge marketplace it now is) I wondered just how many people bought $750 nesting dolls of the last Tsar’s family for them to stay in business. (Anyone who lived or visited in NOLA know this place? I’m curious if it’s still around.)