What do you like in books set in a real time/place?

The YA solo book I’m working on is set in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in 2008 (when and where I spent my teenage years). Now, I know not a lot of people will have ever heard of it let alone been there, but I want to make sure it feels like a real town for the reader and give a few winks for the people who do know the place.

Some info: Tahlequah is a small regional college town and the head of the Cherokee Nation, as well as having an Indian hospital and other pan-tribal points of interest; a lot of people have Native ancestry. It’s located in the western edge of the Ozarks, so lots of steep forested hills and karst geology with rivers/creeks everywhere. Outsiders (many from Tulsa, our closest big city around 70 miles away) come to float the Illinois river during the summer, and for some reason there were a lot of Japanese students at the college.

I have a real house I’m basing the main character’s on, and know the part of town and roughly how to get places from it, and I’ll have other concrete locations for “made up” places and not fixed features of the town like government buildings or longterm businesses. The MC is going to be home schooled (like I was) so I’m avoiding getting too particular with schools.

And as to when it’s set, there’s all things emo, of course, and Sidekick phones. Hoping Obama will win and the MC being mad that she can’t vote, and people’s favorite American Idol winner…

But like…how much do YOU want to know about all that?