Townies

Where I live, almost all the people I encounter never leave their region of the state. They usually are afraid to wander more than 30 miles outside of their hometown. They know all of the local gossip and they can't go anywhere without bumping into a person they know from the area.

I think the proper term for these people are "townies." People who are involved in their town, know everything thats going on in their town and generally stick to travel in there town, thinking a drive for more than an hour out of the region is a large event.

Are you a townie? Do you like to take a "spin" an explore your area as far as you can? Are you comfortable getting lost and navigating your way out, or would you rather not be in that position - ever?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

In Chicago, it is hard to find townies (exceptions include Chinatown and Cabrini Green before it was torn down) considering the size of the city. The further out you go in the Chicago suburbs, you'll start finding townies (Joliet and Zion are prime examples).

Around my Opera House in Oquawka IL, there is hardly anybody but townies. The town is driven by drugs, prostitution, and gambling. Although all three are illegal, they make up the GDP the local economy. It is kind of the city you go to when you have given up on life.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah, I`m pretty much becoming one. All the people in this town have their noses shoved up everyone else`s affairs and it irritates the shit out of me. I will never become that way.

But I`m tired of citylife, and that`s just about everything this country has to offer in the capital other than other bumfuck towns like the one I`m in. So for now I`ll just live my life here.

How ya doing, buddy?

There are about 25,000 people in my little beach city, so there is no way I even know all of their names, let alone any gossip about them. We know about the people on our street and people that we used to go to church with and such, but we don't know everything about everyone.

I don't think I'm much of a townie. My friends and I will go up in LA if we feel like it (that's anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half from me, depending on traffic) and we'll go to different areas of SoCal if there is a reason to. We don't normally have to leave the imediate area to find something fun to do, though.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

The Town of Fort Frances in the Rainy River District in Northwestern Ontario has that kind of mentality. In fact, many of them do not even move 30 minutes outside of their area......

I was speaking idiomatically.

I grew up in a tiny little town, full of creepy sugar cane farmers married to their tractors and ... fences. I think that was about it. No cinema, no arcade, there was an unbelievable amount of places to get your hair cut though, wow. Everyone pretty much knew eachother. Boring gossip kept the place alive even though it was more than dead. There was a MUCH BETTER, BIGGER TOWN about an hour away with such things, it was always such a retarded rush of excitement organizing with mates to take the bus there on weekends, or get a parent to shove us all in a car. I did do a lot of mini exploring though, we had a huge block of land with bush land friggin' everywhere. I'd often zoom around on my bike and cry at snakes. Snakes on a ground.

Now that I'm in THE BIG CITY of sorts, I don't really do that much exploring. ;_;

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I come from a town of perhaps 5,000, and it seems like my definition of townies differs a bit. Basically I fucking hate them. High school scum that barely graduate and then take up residence less than a mile away only to mix their defective genes with other townies so as to create an unchecked population explosion of more scum who pool their resources together to form a super-entity of substandard expectations and pseudo-popularity because OH DON'T FUCK WITH THIS GROUP BECAUSE THEY'LL WASTE YOUR SHIT and then they graduate and all meet up at their super secret rendezvous to smoke marijuana like tough gangsters while aspiring and intelligent concurrent students have their education blunted because these drones are sucking the system dry.

Another, less vile, definition applies to those that go off to college after graduation but return home every weekend walking around like they own the fucking city and GOD HELP US when their old high school's homecoming takes place because then they're royalty.

I hate townies and avoid my hometown for this reason.

How ya doing, buddy?

I actually went back to visit my townie town town like two years ago, they whacked a McDonalds and three cinemas in. Not one, must have three!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

That concept doesn't really apply here. Tucson is basically just one big metro area, the nearest big town is 50-70 miles away, depending on where you're starting out from in the city. So, really, it is a big event to go anywhere else. Not that you really need to, Tucson has pretty much every thing, so you go up to Phoenix for a concert that isn't coming here or a sporting event, but that's about it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I love new places and new faces, but Im also comfortable in my own town. Its nice to find comfort in a place you call home, but I never feel out of place in strange citys and states.

I take after my dad. He can become best friends with someone hes never met just by talking to them for a few minutes at a gas station. This has alot to do with why I enjoy seeing new places and meeting interesting people.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I do not ever want to be a townie, but I do not ever want to leave Hamilton.
I don't want to be one of the old folks that literally rants in the paper one day in his own special column, but I don't want to lose the familiarity of knowing the locations of everything.
So right now, I am not a townie, and if I take further action, then I will continue not being one. If I never move, I still wouldn't be interested in "quaint community events" or town proposals or anything of the sort. Those kinds of people are too "special" for me.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.