How many Ethiopian restaurants, improv theaters, and dueling piano bars did you pass? A lot of niche interests can't sustain themselves at all with only a small fraction of a small population.
Well you got me on the piano bars but as far as Ethiopian food goes there are dozens in my relatively walkable city and I just spot-checked the first car-choked blasted expanse that came to mind (Phoenix) and there are only five in a much larger metro area.
If I was an Ethiopian restaurant owner would I prefer a restaurant in a dense neighborhood with five families living in apartments right on top of me, or would I prefer to be in a strip mall at the corner of an American suburb with nobody in walking distance and only a few hundred families within a mile? I know which one I'd want.
Odd, are you in a destination for Ethiopian immigrants? I would have expected something more like the single restaurant serving the entire Napa valley. Most people don't even know Ethiopia has a cuisine, much less seek it out.
All of those things are most likely to be found in dense cities like New York and Chicago, not the far less walkable exurban sprawls (although those places do need parking because people come from afar)
Unscripted Theatre Company > Johnny Foley's > Tadu Ethiopian Kitchen
In five years time, this will probably not be the case.