On Living In Places Nobody Likes

I’ve been wanting to write a post like this for awhile, in part from a desire to constructively critique what I see as an unhelpful attitude in hopes of making it better, but also in part from a desire to, if I’m being honest, just straight-up complain about something that bugs me. Hey, this is the internet, after all.

In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit writes that “When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back.” I haven’t lived in a lot of places in my life, but I’ve moved around more than most people I know well, which is to say that within the context of my friends and family, at least, I see myself as a bit of a vagabond. And Solnit’s is probably the best single-sentence explanation of what I’ve learned through my relocations about the relationship between people and places.

I like it because it captures both the good and the bad. Like any relationship, if you give very little to a place, you’re likely to get little in return. If you give a lot in the form of negativity (distrust, discontent, etc.), you’re likely to get those feelings echoed back to you. On the other hand, the more willing you are to give a place a chance, to assume the best (or at least hope for the best), the more likely that place will be to give you a chance to find a meaningful niche within it.
Why bring this up? Well, the last few places I’ve lived are places that are seen as being...umm...not ideal by many of their residents. So I’ve had a lot of time over the last decade to both a) listen to other locals talk about how much the place where I live sucks, and b) think about why, if said place’s sucking is so apparently obvious, I still enjoy living there.

Lindsey and I have talked about this a lot, especially when we lived in Pullman together. In my eyes, Pullman is a pretty typical college town that commits the Apparently Unforgiveable Sin of not existing within a half-hour’s drive of a thriving metropolitan area. In a country where gentrification, suburban sprawl, and exurban sprawl have made it increasingly difficult to find places with legitimate local character, apparently what a charming city nestled within the geographically-fascinating Palouse and featuring a functional downtown needs is to be closer to a mall. Go figure.

Anyway, what Lindsey said once during one of these conversations has always stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something along the lines of “Pullman is a great place, you just have to make your own fun.” I think that’s been true of most places I’ve lived in my life, and I think that it’s just as much an explanation of how and why I’ve come to appreciate each of those places in their own ways as it is an explanation of why others find it easy to hate them.

Pretty much every time someone complains about small-town life, the complaint ends with “Well, if it was just more like Chicago...” or “I used to live in Portland before I came here, and...”. I’m generalizing, obviously, but there’s typically an implication that if Small Town X was more like Big City Y, it wouldn’t have anything wrong with it. Now I admit to being in the apparent minority of people who enjoy small town life over big city life, so I’m biased, but this implication seems to be built on shaky foundations. Typically, it’s based on “culture”: the small town has no culture, and the big city does. If there was more “culture” in the small town, it would be better. I can appreciate this line of thought, to a degree. I like live music. I like the arts. I like seeing these things, and not having to travel five hours to do so. But more often than not, “having no culture” really seems to boil down to “not having places where I can go to spend lots of money.”

Complaints about there not being a fancy restaurant in town seem to be less about the quality of the food and more about not being able to publicly drop a hundred bucks on a meal every Friday night. Complaints about there not being a cocktail lounge in town are less about the cocktails and more about not being able to be seen at a cocktail lounge. We’re all working within the cultural assumption that to be successful is to be able to have (and be able to spend money on) particular types of experiences, and when our living situation doesn’t allow for those types of experiences, we get nervous. In the absence of the established narrative, it’s hard to demonstrate that we’re successful members of society in the ways that we’ve been taught to.

That probably sounds a little snarky, so I should say that I don’t mean this point as an attack on any particular person or people, but instead as a general observation: complaints about small town life by people who are accustomed (or want to be accustomed) to big city life often revolve around the lack of “culture,” and the shortage of options for an “art scene” or a “nightlife,” both of which are tied pretty inextricably to conspicuous consumption, whether particular individuals recognize that connection consciously or not. Generally speaking, what you’re really asking for when you’re asking for “more culture” is more ways to spend more money, and more ways to be seen spending that money. As much as I love going to concerts and drinking martinis, living in small towns has really helped me appreciate how just as much fun can be had at a much lower price point, with the only real loss being that you might not feel quite as cool posting on Facebook about the night you spent marathonning Full House episodes and eating cheap pizza as you might uploading photos of eating architecturally-unsound hors d’oeuvres at a $50-a-plate Greek restaurant. But who cares?

Well, you probably do, at least a little bit. I do, at least a little bit. There’s the rub.

And this is where it all links back to Lindsey’s point. Cities, and other large urban areas that have the economic infrastructure for it, thrive on letting you trade your money for a sense of identity. They tell you what makes you a successful, happy member of their community, and that usually (though not always) happens to involve spending lots of money on stuff. I’ve spent a few weeks in Portland. I’ve spent a few weeks in Seattle. I’ve spent a few weeks in Chicago. I’ve spent a lot of time in Cleveland. And I could easily tell you how people in those cities behave. I could tell you where you get your donuts in Portland. Where to get a drink in Seattle. Where to get pizza in Chicago. I’d be generalizing, sure, but that’s sort of the point: there’s a template for these places, and if you’ve been there even a few times, you’re familiar with at least some of it. If you asked me what a Chicagoan does, I’d have a ready answer, despite never having lived there. If you asked me what someone from Klamath Falls does, I’d have no idea what to tell you, and I’ve lived here for almost three years. We...go look at the falls, I guess?

Photo from here.

Cities tell you who to be. Do you have to be that person? Of course not, but having a prefabricated sense of place provided for you can sure be nice. And I think that is, in many cases, what people are upset about when they decide that they hate a place like Pullman or Klamath Falls: take that ready-made identity away, and people have to actually work to find their place in a community, they actually have to think about building identity. Hell, they might even have to do something uncomfortable to find meaning, like going to moon rock bowling night with a weird coworker or talking to a Republican. The horror!

Despite what my above italics might imply, I totally understand the allure of having all of these things sorted out for you by a place; however, I strongly believe that it’s actually a very valuable experience to figure these sorts of things out on your own. Like with most things in life, the journey is just as important than the destination, if not more so. Figuring out who you are in the context of a new place seems much more beneficial and self-edifying to me than just plopping down in a new place that’s full of opportunities to do things that you would have done anyway, in the same way you would have done them anyway, like shopping and eating at the same old chains. Two of the things that really helped me grow into Klamath Falls when I first moved here were “shopping around” for a mexican restaurant I liked by trying a bunch of the local places and creating new running routes while learning about the geography of my neighborhood and the nearby parks in the process. There were some duds in both cases (turns out taco trucks generally don’t have vegetarian tacos), but overall it was way more fun and more productive than just having my old patterns reinforced.

This is the cycle that Solnit describes in Wanderlust in action. In a place where I wouldn’t have had to work to find my own fun, so to speak, I would never have bothered. Giving nothing, I would have received little, if anything, in return. The city itself pushed me, in this instance, and I’m glad it did. But it also took some effort on my part, of not just throwing up my hands and sighing and thinking “No taco trucks with veggie options? What a backwards-ass shithole!” which is the equivalent of many people’s reactions to places like Pullman and Klamath Falls.

Anyway, I’m repeating myself at this point. So let’s wrap this up. There is one other thing that seems to frequently factor into people’s complaints about particular places that I think is worth addressing here, even if it’s sort of a minefield: politics. POLITICS!

Politics.

Everywhere I’ve lived since I started grad school (eastern Washington and southern Oregon) has been predominantly conservative politically. And yet, because of what I do for a job and because of my own personality, beliefs, political leanings, etc., most of my friends and acquaintances are pretty liberal-minded. Not all, by far (and that’s part of the point of this...point), but most. So the other predominant complaint I’ve often heard about these small towns is that they’re filled with intolerant, unempathetic conservative shitheads (I’m paraphrasing). A few problems with this:

1. While it’s demographically true that most people in, say, Klamath Falls lean toward the conservative end of the political spectrum, I’ve seen little evidence that the percentage of that majority that are intolerant, unempathetic shitheads significantly exceeds the percentage of people who are shitheads pretty much anywhere else. And in places where I’ve lived where the liberals are the majority, there are just as many intolerant, unempathetic, liberal shitheads grumbling about the conservatives. Which brings me to my second point...
2. Politics in this country these days has become a team sport in the worst way. My personal beliefs would probably be categorized by most as swinging hard to the left, but the truth is, I try to see where everyone is coming from. When I think back to getting together with a bunch of liberal-minded grad students at a bar and griping about how the conservatives are ruining the country (which I’ve done many a time), now I realize two things. First, that complaining about someone else being intolerant and unempathetic based solely on their professed political team, you yourself are being pretty obviously intolerant and unempathetic. Second, that these sorts of judgmental get-togethers absolutely affirm the stereotypes conservatives often hold about “ivory tower” liberals...and reinforcing that particular stereotype is not useful in any way.
3. We all have to live together locally before we can function well globally (or, in this case, nationally or even state-ly). As I hinted at above,  I have a lot of friends and family who lean more toward the conservative side of the spectrum. But they’re nice people, so who cares? There are a lot of people I’ve met who share my political leanings but they aren’t nice people, and so I’m not particularly inclined to associate with them. To expand this out a bit, in terms of on-the-street, day-to-day interaction with the community, Klamath Falls is far and away the friendliest and most welcoming place I’ve ever lived. I’m aware that many of the people I meet and chat with on the street might (gasp!) disagree with me on the legality of abortion, or might (oh no!) be from the other side of the tracks, or might even (my god!) currently be homeless, but they’re all pretty goddamn friendly, and I like to think that that counts for something.

This is all to say that while I certainly understand the desire to live in a community of like-minded individuals (and believe that that’s an imperative if you’re from an oppressed group who is more likely to be treated poorly in a politically unfriendly environment) in my experience, I’ve found living among difference to be challenging and often instructive. Sure, it would be nice to live somewhere with more vegetarian options, or to live in a place where open mic nights and poetry readings were the norm instead of the exception, but there’s also a value to living among people who don’t share your values. Those people aren’t going anywhere, ever. So what do we gain by continually trying to create “communities” that make sure “Us” stays separate from “Them”? Evidence shows overwhelmingly that the best way to understand and accept someone of a different race, orientation, nationality, or political perspective is to spend time getting to know them. And yet being in a community that forces us to do this is seen by so many as undesirable. I certainly understand this knee-jerk reaction, but there’s already so many ways these days to turn our little corners of the world into echo chambers where we’re the scrappy underdog who sees through the bullshit to the truth. This is especially possible online, and I can’t help but suspect that social media has something to do with our increasing distaste for having to live near people who are unlike us in the physical world. Extending this echo-chamber mentality to our real-life neighborhoods, to our towns, to our cities, is disastrous to our sense of community. And yet it seems to be what most people want.

So, I live in a place that is not much like me, but I work at putting myself into it. And the self that I get back is a self that’s a little more willing to accept difference every day. I try to understand, for a small example, that a taco truck not selling vegetarian tacos isn’t a political statement or a personal assault on me, but just an acknowledgment of the local demographic. I try to understand this and just find a different place to eat instead of posting a negative Yelp! review and patting myself on the back for scoring another point against The Conservatives in “the culture war,” whatever that is.

Despite globalization, despite the internet, I believe that we live locally first. And, locally, people are people first, and they are ideologies,  moralities, and politics second. There are some good people here, and I’m trying to learn how to be one of them. That’s all.