So I've done my fair bit of traveling and I feel like one of the most common things people say is "I'm from a small town called ______". Now, from my experience, anything that isn't a famous city known across the world seems to fit into this "small town" qualifier.
What's odd here is that movies and TV shows seem to do this, too. And I feel like it makes it hard to get a good understanding of the size of the town when I'm told it's small, but then they have fancy restaurants and malls.
For instance, I graduated from a legit small town (Population 1000). I had 29 people in my graduating class. Our town had 1 grocery stores, 1 video rental store, 1 gas station, and 1 restaurant simply called (The Restaurant). Everybody legit knew everybody. I've also lived in a town that had a population of 30,000, and people still insisted it was small and that everyone knew everybody. I currently live in a city with a population of 115,000, and someone I still meet people here that tell me this is such a small town and that everybody knows everybody. I legit don't understand this.
I noticed this in the most recent season of Stranger things as well. No spoilers if you're worried. Hawkins came off as small to me before, since the sheriff seems to have maybe 6 people under his employment. I believe they even call Hawkins a small town in the show somewhere. But with the addition of the Mall to Hawkins, I feel like that city has to be much much larger than I originally believed.
I remember thinking the same of Twin Peaks when I watched it for the first time a couple years ago. I remember noticing how much they focus on that population sign in the first episode of 51,201 people. And then I happened to read that the producers wanted that number to be higher than the original 1,201 because they were afraid to would scare people away being a town that small. So the idea is the show was written with the idea that the town only had a population of 1,201 people. Except this town seems huge and has a police force with roughly a dozen employees. I've lived in a town with approx 1000 people, we had 1 cop. Just 1.
Does anyone else get bothered by this? Or is this a situation of most of the population lives in crazy populated areas so everything seems smaller to them by comparison?
What's odd here is that movies and TV shows seem to do this, too. And I feel like it makes it hard to get a good understanding of the size of the town when I'm told it's small, but then they have fancy restaurants and malls.
For instance, I graduated from a legit small town (Population 1000). I had 29 people in my graduating class. Our town had 1 grocery stores, 1 video rental store, 1 gas station, and 1 restaurant simply called (The Restaurant). Everybody legit knew everybody. I've also lived in a town that had a population of 30,000, and people still insisted it was small and that everyone knew everybody. I currently live in a city with a population of 115,000, and someone I still meet people here that tell me this is such a small town and that everybody knows everybody. I legit don't understand this.
I noticed this in the most recent season of Stranger things as well. No spoilers if you're worried. Hawkins came off as small to me before, since the sheriff seems to have maybe 6 people under his employment. I believe they even call Hawkins a small town in the show somewhere. But with the addition of the Mall to Hawkins, I feel like that city has to be much much larger than I originally believed.
I remember thinking the same of Twin Peaks when I watched it for the first time a couple years ago. I remember noticing how much they focus on that population sign in the first episode of 51,201 people. And then I happened to read that the producers wanted that number to be higher than the original 1,201 because they were afraid to would scare people away being a town that small. So the idea is the show was written with the idea that the town only had a population of 1,201 people. Except this town seems huge and has a police force with roughly a dozen employees. I've lived in a town with approx 1000 people, we had 1 cop. Just 1.
Does anyone else get bothered by this? Or is this a situation of most of the population lives in crazy populated areas so everything seems smaller to them by comparison?
