Oh great and powerful Interwubz I beseech thee for help,

I’m working on a thing that centres on small-town America, specifically in the Pacific Northwest. My experience of America is limited to films and a handful of American cities. While I want to retain a filmic feel I want to modernise and update a bit at the same time and make things a bit more genuinely relatable.

Can you help?

• What sort of businesses and services would you find?
• How does local medical care work? Clinics? Individual doctors?
• What sort of crime and local legends are there?
• Climate?
• Street names?
• What kind of work do people do? Are there still ‘one business towns’?
• What pieces of old Americana remain? Ice cream/soda parlours?
• Local mechanics?
• Small shops or just a 7/11 or a gas station store?
• Do kids still go out ‘exploring’ and riding bikes?

Anything and everything you can come up with that you might think would be useful to me would be great.