Everybody’s Gotta Be from Somewhere: The Plight of the Small Town Hipster

If you’re from New York, raise your hand. No? What about San Francisco. No? London. Still no? Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, Detroit, Philadelphia, Rome? WHAT?? No?! Are the census bureaus to be believed? Do people actually dwell in cities and towns other than The Coolest Places on Earth? But…how can this be? Sitcoms, novels, movies, records – have they been leading me astray all this time? Am I to understand there’s life outside of the tourist destinations I’ve read about in those travelogues I hoard for use during those mythically future days When I Have Money?

It’s a shock, I know.

Still, the truth of the matter is people live in places other than major cities. I did. I spent the majority of my life in a small city called Florence in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. I realize for those of you who don’t live in South Carolina that means jack. But for us South Carolinians, regional alliance is a matter of pride. Not only do accents vary from region to region, but so do college football fans and the taste of barbeque and whether or not you’ll get snow. You know, the important things. Because I’m from the Pee Dee, and particularly Florence, I grew up close enough to the coast to get to the beach in an hour and near enough to North Carolina to get the fuck out of dodge if the need ever arose. (It didn’t. But the option was always available).

Anyway, I clearly didn’t grow up in a big city, surrounded by noisy Italian neighbors and corner stores. My life has never been threatened by wayward street ruffians, I have been going to the same hairdresser my whole life, and my apartment is big enough for two people to live in comfortably without having to accidentally see one another naked. When I was growing up, I lived on a quiet street with a ridiculous number of trees and a veritable plethora of azalea bushes. My parents own a two-story brick house with a green roof and matching green shutters. Their yard is appropriately sized for a small suburban neighborhood, and their grass is perpetually dying because even in the winter, it’s hotter than a half-acre of hell in South Carolina. Even though it’s a decent neighborhood, a drainage ditch runs parallel to the back yard; when I was a kid, my parents never allowed me to hop the fence to go explore the depths of ditch because along with the number of unusual smells wafting from the water pooling at the bottom, there’s invariably always a wayward used needle or two down there. (I told you I wasn’t kidding). This ain’t an episode of Cheers, y’all.

In reality, Florence is probably more Duck Dynasty than True Blood. However, I try to lend the motherland at least a smidge of credit. Think Paula Deen when she was still chubby. That’s Florence.

It’s a strange little town, honestly. Florence forbearers drafted a blueprint for the hamlet in the early 1700s, but nothing truly got kicking until the advent of the railroads a hundred years later. And then, suddenly, it was a hotspot. Well, as much as any place can be a hot spot in South Carolina. To this day, Florence remains the halfway point between New York and Miami. As such, it’s been termed The Magic City. Not because it has any actual affiliation with the original Italian city, mind you, but because you can stop there and get anything your heart desires – sex, drugs, food, money, or Jesus. Jesus in any religious connotation you can possibly imagine. We’ve got him.

What don’t we have, you ask? Restaurants that stay open past 10. Stores that open before 12 on Sundays. Anything remotely attractive to tourists except cheap hotels and an interstate leading to Myrtle Beach. Yep. That’s my town. It’s basically the street-smart, clinically-depressed younger sister of Stars Hallow.

It’s the kind of place that used to be teeny but isn’t anymore. It’s not a metropolis by any means, but it’s hardly the Mayberry of yesteryear. (We have a Super Target now. You can’t deny it. That shit’s legit.) No longer is it acceptable to slow down in the middle of a main thoroughfare to speak to people you recognize, although that’s not stopping some of the Florence blue hairs from doing it anyway. And these days, more than two cars can and do drive on the road at the same time without catastrophe. Unless it’s raining, in which case Florentines suddenly fear for their very lives. Because clearly the liquid falling from the sky is some sort of cosmic molten lava, not water. But I digress.

Florence is a town of divides – rich and poor, black and white, golfers and people who have lives. I grew up in a middle-class white household, although my rearing was decidedly more soulful than other white kids I know. We drank a lot of grape Kool-Aid, and I’ll be damned if I still don’t get down to any Jackson 5 song playing within my earshot. Still, neither of my parents of is from Florence, so as a family, we were constantly outsiders. Until he was twenty four, my dad lived in Johnsonville, a bean hill of a town about an hour away, on a road called Possum Fork. (Yes, you read that right. POSSUM FORK.) Here’s the truly humorous bit, though: my mom was born and raised in Philadelphia. She is basically the human equivalent of an episode of It’s Always Sunny. She’s loud and Irish and at any given moment, her inner monologue is swearing so violently, she’d make an NFL linebacker want to run his ass straight to the nearest confessional. Basically, I was raised in the middle of a geographically-dislocated hot mess amid a chorus of Southern idioms and “JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH!”s. It was a situation, guys.

But it’s silly to say I hate Florence. I don’t. I’ve always loved that little town the way you love that cousin who makes awkward jokes about the size of his penis. It’s hard to ignore, it’s a little bit grungy, it’s simultaneously a thorn in the side and the thing I long for the most. Florence, not the metaphorical cousin dick. Growing up in the South, particularly in a smaller town, is its own weird reward. I know everybody, and everybody knows me – even when we don’t want to. And, contrary to popular belief, I’m not busting my ass to leave. I kind of like the weird swamp smell the nearly chokes me out in the summer and the way everyone FREAKS THE FUCK OUT over the mere mention of snow and how people wave to me even if they’ve never seen me before in their entire lives. I’ve never felt deprived.

Florence is in dire need of young blood and some culture; there’s no denying that. But not every small town mirrors of an episode of Buckwild. I can actually read – full length books with developed ideas and multi-syllabic words. And, on top of that, I like to read. I majored in English in college, and I’m about to finish up an MA in Literature. Sometimes, even us country girls get bored with the small town script. Maybe it’s because my dad handed me a John Lennon album when I was a kid and told me it was going to blow my mind – and then showed me how to use a record player. Maybe it’s because my mom made sure I traveled when I was younger or because during the summer she made my siblings and me t-shirts with jazzy fabric glitter and iron-on patches. Maybe it’s because my parents raised me to be a complete nerd. Who knows. All I do know for certain is I have spent the majority of my life and all of my twenties trying hard to look like I shouldn’t be featured in a People of Wal-Mart meme.

One of the most frustrating parts of pop culture, though, is that most of it seems to be happening in some exotic locale where I am not to be found. Every painfully awkward scene of Girls is filmed somewhere on the streets of New York – or at least on a sound stage made to look like the streets of New York. But believe me: girls are being awkward in small towns all across America. I’ve been doing it since 1988. I’m living proof that you don’t need to live in a postage-stamp apartment in Brooklyn to own ill-fitting dresses or have weird sex with a guy who can’t actually remember your last name. And yet, every one of my favorite sitcoms seems to be occurring elsewhere. How I Met Your Mother, Friends, Sex and the City – all set in New York. Hell, even The Big Bang Theory is set in Pasadena, a city made eternally infamous for being the home of Mrs. Robinson and her stockings. And they’re supposed to be nerds, for fuck’s sake.

Think of how many movies take place in New York. Pretty much every Woody Allen film. Except for Midnight in Paris – which doesn’t count because it’s ABOUT PARIS. Nearly all of Nora Ephron’s entire body of cinematic work is comprised of a series of 120-minute love letters to New York, including the best romantic of all time When Harry Met Sally. (There is no room for argument here, by the way. When Harry Met Sally is the epitome of humor, romance, Jewishness, and truly awful hair.) She lived there, made movies there, wrote books there, died there.  

And all of the best music is recorded in Detroit and Portland and London and other places where incredibly cool people gather and form intimidating throngs of talent and irony. Otis Redding wasn’t hanging out on the streets of small town South Carolina, I can assure you of that. Ah ha, you say! Eartha Kitt was born in North, SC! To which I say, even she left to go find herself in France. (Although, as an aside, Florence can claim Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. They come back every year to sing at the Pecan Festival – because, yes, we have festivals honoring our most popular hickory nuts.)

Now I ask you: how am I ever supposed to become a cool straw hat-wearing hipster bumping my MGMT mixes in my Prius when no one is there to witness all of that awesome in action? And, you know, since I drive an Ion. But that’s just details. The point is popular culture has all but forgotten the twenty-somethings trying to make lives for themselves in places like Florence. Not all of us want to get married and spawn right away. Some of us are well-informed, well-educated culture vultures. Where’s the love Hollywood??

Because, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from pop culture, cool things aren’t happening in any town near me. Or you. Unless you do happen to be one of those ironically talented intimidating people living in one of the aforementioned cool places.

 In which case, let’s hang out? 

All original content copyright Kimberly Turner, 2013-2013.