I lived in a small town for most of my life (a town of about 800 people) and I hated it... so did my mom and sister, but my dad loved it since it was where he grew up. EVERYONE knew EVERYTHING about you. We're not the type of family to stick our noses in other people's business so the only way we knew about others is if the town gossip babbled to us (and the town gossip was usually my grandma). For example: when I was in sixth grade I was at school and I broke my ankle. Not more than 1-2 hours later the entire town knew what had happened. Rumors started flying how I fell down a flight of stairs or some other lame explanation... none of which were true. It's just the simple things like that that annoy me. And believe me when I say from experience (not saying that all small towns are like this) but the people are definitely NOT nicer in small towns. In fact they are much ruder and stuck up.

Later on we moved to a suburb of a city and I found it to be much more convenient. We knew some people and only some knew us. Everything we needed was nearby; large bookstores, grocery stores, everything. We recently moved back to a small town (because of a job transfer) and we're beginning to miss the conveniences of a larger area.