I haven't done one of these for a while. I'm going to pick a random place on Google Maps and creepily focus in on it in as many details as I can be bothered with, if it happens to be interesting.
I did my own hometown recently, and before that I did a deep forest in Eastern US.
I'm pretty curious about the lifestyle of people in the USA so I decided I'd stick with that, but otherwise keep it fairly random.
I spotted a luscious chunk of green far from my last exploration, this time in the Northwest. A quick zoom in and I landed on a place called Wallace in Idaho:
You need to zoom in pretty far to find it, it's tiny. A population of just over 1,000 people:
Almost entirely white, according to their statistics website:
Going into streetview, I hit the end of the line, presumably where the car started its photographic trip. And right off the bat it's just beautiful. I could tell this was gonna be one of those super cliche, stereotypical 1980's suburban towns. Just look at this forest road:
That kind of greenery is something special to me. Well, it wasn't long until I hit this tiny town:
Interestingly, some of the houses look grandiose and majestic, or at least brand new, brick-walled and wealthy. Others look like quite tired, delapidated, wooden shacks. But throughout, it still looks quaintly stunning. Some of the trees, as you can see here, look mighty old:
Every house, I also noted early on, were unique. Mostly, they were the same in their uniqueness. They were all separated - something hard to come by in the UK with most houses joined side to side (something I mortally hate in principle).
They all had a lawn, a porch, some steps elevating the floor presumably for basements maybe?. And a lot of them had their own little gardening plots.
This one had some pretty vintage looking cars. I have no idea if that's simply because they never managed to save up for one in abotu 60 years, or if they're treasured possesstions. But cool, either way. Really giving me that 1980's suburban vibes.
A bit further down and I couldn't help but notice how this street was completely surrounded by a wall of evergreen trees... again, just beautiful, a single street in a valley. I can't help but be curious why this town even existed... which I found out pretty soon.
I came across this pretty confusing trailer, which as far as I can understand it says 'Biden our Angel of Light' - followed by TrumP 2020?? Make your mind up!
The poster on the wall helped clarify things.
Based on how political the whole town appeared, with flags on 1 out of 3 houses and trump scattered everywhere, I figure the street view was around this time of year 2019. Also corroborating this would be the autumn leaves making the place seem magical.
This house is pretty cool, some kind of gothic hermit living here with a quadbike for some reason. The sign reads: Hate does not make America Great. So anti-trump in this house, perhaps?
Below is pretty much the only person I saw up to this point, watching his dog from his porch on possibly a rocking chair with maybe a shotgun nearby somewhere.
Jesus our Lord and saviour:
Well, I had enough of this street so I had a look around for any evidence of a downtown. On my way to the centre I found that a massive-ass highway was being carved into the landscape through the town! It looks insanely out of place. Reminds me of China.
Then I found the Wallace Junior/Senior High school. Looks surprisingly small given my stereotypes of America, but then the town is only 1,000 people. Even so, it looks clean, shiny, new. Quite nice.
That is until I decided to sneak peek their website which looks terrible. The school schedule is even worse:
What kind of school has 1st period 56 minutes long?? And then the second period is... what, 51 minutes? then a seven minute break?? What on earth is going on. Usually when a school has a bit unusual time it's to squeeze things in before the end of the day. But the day ends at precisely 2:54pm. Why? And why so early? I don't get outta my school until 4:50pm, students 4:15.
And why is the schedule just so aesthetically terrible, as if written in a word doc, then screen grabbed and put on the website?
Bizarre. I've half the mind to email them and offer to fix their mess for free.
That being said, their food looks amazing (Found this on a Facebook page te website links you to):
Sloppy joes, turkey deli and gravy, meatball subs, mac & cheese, chicken nuggest... I'm started to see the source of that obesity crisis. Still, jealous.
As you can see I finally hit 'downtown' which again, looks super stereotypical US town style. But looks fairly well maintained. It even has the centre of the Universe.
This alleyway is just a blatant caricature, come on. I'm pretty sure this exact alley is where the kid from The Neverending Story ran away from the bullies and jumped into the trash can to hide.
Some more interesting stuff, seems this place is pretty old. The Wallace Painting Company I can just make out says established in 1906 (I think).
And I finally got some clues to this towns existence on this brewing company's sign:
So it was a mining town. Further investigation showed it was actually the 'silver capital of the world' at one point, mining over 20% of the world's silver or something.
Nice that the pizza shop is a no bully zone. Not exactly sure why that sign was needed. Maybe to prevent another Neverending Story movie happening.
Some quick final statistics: Median household income here is $46,250. That's significantly below US average of about $75,000, but higher than the UK's, at a pathetic $43,000. But that isn't a fullproof measure of wealth, I suppose. Based on the houses, and the fact that most people if not all own their homes in this town, I'd say they're doing pretty well.
Despite this, poverty here was about 20% in 2021, which is I think double the US average. Property value is a stunningly low $120,000 average, a fraction of the price of any shitty little 2-bedroom terraced house in any UK village of comparable size.
Damn, Americans got it so good.
Anyway. As fascinating as this very white, republican town was, I'm done with it for now.
Still confused by that trailer lul
Haha yeah... maybe the angel of light is also in fact the angel of death?
Who knows. Maybe they're just crazy too :)