I hate being a vegan in small town. No restaurants have vegan options. I have to go an hour out of my way to find Whole Foods. It's so not fun.

I'm moving to San Diego soon, and they have so many vegan/vegetarian choices. I love it whenever I go there for trips!

I live in a city of 20,000 and it's nearly impossible to eat veg*n here, it's slightly easier to eat vegetarian, but there still aren't alot of options.  I also have to drive an hour to the nearest Whole Foods.  I miss eating out - as an omni I took it for granted. 

However, I have gotten much better at baking and cooking - lol!  ;D

I haven't had a problem being vegan anywhere I've lived, though you have to figure out which type of vegan you want to lean according to different areas.  A lot of small towns don't even have tofu in their supermarkets, but always have the essentials.  I've lived in Syracuse, Brockport, and Albany New York, and Dublin, Ireland.  Brockport was the smallest, but they still had tofu and other assorted vegan staples in their markets, and this was 7 years ago.

To be honest I think a lot actually has to do with how liberal a city is and accepting of "alternative" lifestyles. I live out in the country now and it certainly is not a very "vegan friendly" environment...it is very very conservative.

Amen to that. We don't live in the country like Dave, but we live in the same (big) neighborhood (about an hour from him).  For us, as I'm sure for many VegWebbers, living in a conservative community is hard. It seems that whatever we believe about anything is different from what everyone else believes. It gets tiring. I'm not a confrontational sort of person so I keep my mouth shut a lot--especially at work where I don't believe political, religious, lifestyle, etc. discussions belong. A hell of a lot of food discussions do go on, but I keep my mouth shut there, too. Most everyone knows I'm vegan and no one is asking me my opinion about anything or for any advice. One woman (actually a liberal one) brought up eating meat one time but then backtracked and said,"Don't tell me, I don't want to know"  when she made a comment about food animals being mistreated. So I didn't say anything, but just nodded my head. She rushed on to change the subject.

The only other vegetarians I am around are my family and the children don't live at home anymore. Two don't even live nearby. Bookpapa knows a few veg*ans that go to church with him, however. There's one sad, sad little health food store here, but the Kroger (which takes us 30 mnutes to get to) has a few more emergency options for us than Publix which is closer. We have chosen to bite the bullet and drive weekly to the Whole Foods which is 45 minutes from us. Even there, I daresay, we are in the vast minority in our food choices and politics. It's a very yuppy-ish area.

Even taking all that into consideration, I like where we live, in terms of type of community. It's suburban (growing, unfortunately). We have cultural opportunities either here or within an hour's drive, we can see trees (although they are quickly going away for "progress"), and the pace of life is not too fast for us. I guess in terms of city, town, or country, we'd be considerered "town."

I grew up in the suburb of a city, its so easy to find fake meats, cheese, yogurt... anything.  its expensive.  but easy.  i also really liked the huge farmers market every saturday with all of the amish farms from the other suburbs.  then when i moved to a small town, i still had really great, smaller, farmers markets, but i also had more amish stores and farms to actually go to.  living in a small town helped me to keep a budget on my food, because there werent any expensive 'fake' things to buy!

right now i live in one of the most conservative, meat hungry college towns in the country (College Station, home of Texas A&M), but there are still tons of chinese, pho, and indian restaurants along with one of the biggest health food stores ive ever seen (and a sweet asian market!).  i agree that living in a liberal area is easier, people dont give you a weird face when you tell them youre vegan, but its not so bad in a conservative area.  you just have more explaining and searching to do.

on another note about conservative areas.  i met a vegetarian here that had never heard of vegan cheese or seitan!  i told him i had a vegan california cheesesteak for dinner and he was so confused.

I've lived in all three. Country; small farm about 120 acres outside of a very small town,  City; Chicago,  Town; Ottawa, IL pop 20,000.

Town has so far been the hardest for me. I don't have enough space to grow all my own food and people just look at you like you have a third eye when you say you are vegan and there are no restaurant options. The city was good for restaurant selection but I still live close enough to get to chicago when I have a free day. The country was probably the happiest for me. I can grow all my own fresh organic food and can/freeze enough to get me through the winter. I do almost all my own cooking anyway so the simple life suites me just fine. And with the web being what it is today I can order any specialty items I need such as nutritional yeast.

I can't help it I'll always be a country bumpkin  ::)

I've lived in all three. Country; small farm about 120 acres outside of a very small town,  City; Chicago,  Town; Ottawa, IL pop 20,000.

Aw, I'm in Batavia, used to be in St. Charles.  Hey neighbor.

I have only been veg*n in my town (pop. about 25000); TJ's is 5 mins away, two other grocery stores about 5 mins away, Woodmans (with a vegetarian section of two aisles) is about 10 mins away, a Fresh Market about 10 mins away, and Whole Foods about 25 mins away.

I love that, in order for me to not get bored with what I eat, I have to cook.  This new lifestyle has me literally at the grocery store daily.  I only buy what I know I'll use and I'm throwing away so much less.  As a meat-eater, I was buying a ton of groceries one day a week and throwing so much more out.  I'm grateful that I have so many options around me.  I wish I lived in the city at times because of the vegan options as far as restaurants go.  However, I was at a small restaurant in Geneva called Nosh and the chef came out and customized a lunch for me- it was wonderful.

I used to live in an extremely small town (approx pop. 1800).  I didn't have any problems being vegan.  With 125 acres I had plenty of room to grow veggies to my heart's content.  If I wanted anything "special" I just drove about 20 miles to a bigger grocery store and 45 miles to the HFS.  All in all, I have to say that I'd prefer to be in the country.  But that's more because I don't like having neighbors too close.  Like right now I can see in my neighbor's bathroom from my kitchen.  Yuck!  Can't wait until I graduate and can move back to the "country".