Bookstores
You can tell a lot about a community by its used bookstores. Its general views on religion, politics, and a thousand other issues are immediately available. Some stores are just romance novels and cheap pulp; others are full of pseudointellectual tomes that imagine unrealistic societies incompatible with human nature. College towns are long on theory and short on life. But I do wonder, sometimes, if people don’t trade in or sell back the good books?