I Live in Stars Hollow (and you can too)

 A lot of people want to live in Stars Hollow, but I actually do.

A few years ago I finally watched Gilmore Girls up to Season 3 in preparation for my friend’s birthday party that was gonna be GG themed. I never got into the show because I was right in the middle of the two main characters’ age and their whole thing didn’t appeal to me. Their ‘whole thing’ was a mother daughter story and ugh: my relationship with my mother was/is not great so a story about them was not my idea of a good time. And these two were FRIENDS? Is that even possible?

But my friend Laurie who watches it yearly pitched me a part of the show that I wasn’t aware of. I thought it was about a woman who was stuck in the small town she grew up in and hated it but no. No people, it’s about a woman who chooses to raise her daughter in an adorable small town full of kooky characters and many many civic events and festivals planned and held by the over-eager city council and put on by aforementioned kooks. 

SOLD. Now closer in circumstances than the age of the mother in the show, my life choices revolved around raising a girl in America. It was also appealing because nobody ever wants the thing they grew up with and as a girl who grew up in a big city, I always dreamed of living in a small town.

And now I do. 

But wait, EvY, don’t you live in beautiful Burbank, CA, population: 103,533? Correct. When we were looking for and buying the house, we’d ask Burbankians and former Burbankians what they thought of Burbank. The one thing that everyone would tell us who grew up here was: it’s like a small town in a big town. We thought that was cute but let me tell you… IT IS LIKE A SMALL TOWN IN A BIG TOWN.

Having the kids attend local public schools means you see parents around town. You run into friends at the local coffee shop, movie theatre, mall. We have civic activities and events up the wazoo. Any season, Parks & Rec has something cooking. During the summer, loads of pool activities, the fall has lots of Halloween bits, and for Christmas we shut down our main adorable street Magnolia for Holiday in the Park and have 10 blocks of local vendors and pretty much the whole city hangs out and we run into everybody from all our life: school, church, sports, camp. It’s the most Stars Hollow thing. Minus a gazebo. Plus like 3 movie studios and a Porto's.

One fine fall day as I was walking through downtown Burbank with its cute little shops and such with my headphones on listening to that Yo La Tengo song from the show “My Little Corner of the World” and thinking that Stars Hollow is so cute and everyone wishes they lived there. But I literally do. Because the filming of Stars Hollow occurred on the backlot of my old internship location: Warner Brothers Studios. That gazebo still sits in the backlot where the zip code is 91505: Burbank, CA. Those hills you see behind the little town? I hike those hills. [I actually interned there when the show was being filmed while I was in college and I wish I could tell you I was a fan then but I could easily have wandered Stars Hollow and would see the cast around the backlot. Missed opportunity!]

Is this a flex? Big time. But also this… 

Everyone always seems like they wish for more in their life or better or they want to move to a place that’s perfect. A place that is fair and just and has nature and things to do and action and fun and local shops and plenty of chain stores or local stores or cute bookshops or a barnes and noble or a local adorable coffee place or a bunch of Starbucks and a place that feels like a community and like a small town. 

That perfect place… is where you live right now. That perfect town is the town you make. That community you want, is the one you build and form. It’s in your local church or your local LARP that is held at the park. It’s at the Starbucks that you frequent where you chat with your favorite Barista or at the mom and pop shop where you know the owners and their kids. You don’t think your town does anything… look it up. They have something going on I guarantee it. Meet your neighbors and befriend the local old timer full of wisdom. Bring cookies to the family with the little kid around Christmas. Invite them to your backyard or send them a card when they’re recovering from medical procedures. Throw that weird themed party and invite all your weird friends. You are the carrier of the Stars. You can take that and share it with those nearby and form your own little town. You don’t have to go anywhere to live out your own little gazebo of friendship. 

You get to build it, you get to be Stars Hollow wherever you are.