It all seems pretty peaceful here to me. The US is a whirlwind of innovation and progression in comparison. There's still very few places to use it.
As for the OP, ATMs make sense but there are so many different types and so many varying levels of personal info rape that they may not be any better than an exchange.
There have been numerous attempts such as zipzap to be able to buy it over the counter at your local store. That all seems very quiet these days.
Some of the Chinese exchanges got around banking restrictions by operating a voucher system to be able to deposit for a while. That's something that I think would work very well.
At most supermarkets these days you can pick up mobile phone credit, itunes and google play vouchers by the checkout. If you could bring that ease to buying BTC it would be a boon.