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What's the worst US city you've been to?

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Parallax said:
los angeles isn't THAT fucked up.
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Oh i used to live in LA, im cool with the place, im just caught off guard by the Miami descriptions. LA has some wtf areas..actually a large portion of it is WTF but its still a lively city / county/ region if you add in parts of upper orange county etc. I guess i thought Miami would be similar, im hearing shithole, horrible etc and im like...no way.
 
Every big city has their sketchy parts. As a lifelong resident of St. Louis, yes... East St. Louis is a shit hole. The only reason to go over there is for a concert, Gateway Raceway, or a strip club.

That being said, every city has their sketchy neighborhoods. It's just a matter of avoiding them!
 
DonasaurusRex said:
ive never been to florida...but why am i finding this hard to accept ..seriously Miami is THAT fucked up? it cannot be.
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Once you leave the intensely overrated narrow strip that is the immediate vicinity of the beach area, you're plunged into areas of varying degrees of Third World misery.

Hell, I've been to areas of Third World misery that were FAR more pleasant than those parts of Miami.
 
stldave2 said:
Every big city has their sketchy parts. As a lifelong resident of St. Louis, yes... East St. Louis is a shit hole. The only reason to go over there is for a concert, Gateway Raceway, or a strip club.

That being said, every city has their sketchy neighborhoods. It's just a matter of avoiding them!
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You can't avoid Miami's. That's kind of the point. The part of Miami that's heralded is a small island surrounded by a sea of disaster.
 
The culture/people make Seattle a pretty miserable place to be. The city itself looks nice, though.

I didn't particularly enjoy Los Angeles, either... as seems to be a current theme on the thread.
 
pax217 said:
The culture/people make Seattle a pretty miserable place to be. The city itself looks nice, though.

I didn't particularly enjoy Los Angeles, either... as seems to be a current theme on the thread.
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People have given some weird reasons for not liking la. I mean pros in compton? I have never seen that.
 
I flew out of Kahului at night with the shutter down, about 10 minutes into my flight. Opened the shutter hours later to look out at Phoenix. Maybe it was just the contrast, but what a bleak, desolate, flat, ugly, dusty piece of earth.

Phoenix.
 
Parallax said:
People have given some weird reasons for not liking la. I mean pros in compton? I have never seen that.
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For me, it was just that there was too much of it. Too much traffic, too much noise, and it seemed like there was nowhere to escape it. I know a lot of people are into that, so I won't hold it against LA or it's patrons personally; it just wasn't for me. I've never been to NYC, but I'll assume I won't like Manhattan for those same reasons.


bjork said:
I flew out of Kahului at night with the shutter down, about 10 minutes into my flight. Opened the shutter hours later to look out at Phoenix. Maybe it was just the contrast, but what a bleak, desolate, flat, ugly, dusty piece of earth.

Phoenix.
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I hear great things about the adjacent Scottsdale, though.
 
East St. Louis

/thread

I live about 15 minutes away from it and drive through it everyday going to work. My stepmom used to be an administrator at their highschool and the stories she tells me (as well as all of the news stories that come out of it) are horrendous. Nuke it from orbit.
 
pax217 said:
For me, it was just that there was too much of it. Too much traffic, too much noise, and it seemed like there was nowhere to escape it. I know a lot of people are into that, so I won't hold it against LA or it's patrons personally; it just wasn't for me. I've never been to NYC, but I'll assume I won't like Manhattan for those same reasons.
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That understandable. The first time I went to oregon after living here, I couldn't sleep for the first night. It was too quiet.
 
bjork said:
Phoenix may well be a beautiful place if that's your thing, it's just the exact opposite of what I want. And I'd been up like 36 hours so I was cranky, etc etc.
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Phoenix is a nice place, just has no soul. The suburbs are really really nice as well.
 
elwes said:
East St. Louis
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Yeah, on second-thought, St. Louis was pretty bad. (I was only there for about 10 hrs, a night's sleep)

bjork said:
Phoenix may well be a beautiful place if that's your thing, it's just the exact opposite of what I want. And I'd been up like 36 hours so I was cranky, etc etc.
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cashman said:
Phoenix is a nice place, just has no soul. The suburbs are really really nice as well.
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I've never actually been, just hear good things about the structure, culture, people, etc. No one seems to complain about their Government/powers-that-be down there either, which is always a good sign.
 
CrazyDogg77 said:
Lancaster,SC my hometown. Combines urban decay with religious fanaticism,intolerance,rampant social conservatism and 19.2 percent unemployment rate.
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I've been through there, the last place a witch trial was held in the USA. I also walked on the 40 acre rock. The rock has a plant found only there and one place in Alabama, no where else in the world.
If timber and farming is down, those country towns get really depressed. Especially with the small factories closing or slowing down.
 
It's not really a major city by most standards, but I'd go with Binghamton, New York.

Probably one of the most depressing places I've ever been.
 
DC was pretty scary. You go from OK, properly lit to ghetto in matter of a street or two. I was walking to my car (two blocks from a bar) and cop asked me if I was okay and told me that this wasn't a good neighborhood. Lord, where the hell did I park anyways? I wish I could remember.
 
pax217 said:
I've never actually been, just hear good things about the structure, culture, people, etc. No one seems to complain about their Government/powers-that-be down there either, which is always a good sign.
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Scottsdale is indeed nice, if you are into upper class suburbia type stuff. The malls over there are beautiful, not a single bad area in that town.
 
I lived in Evansville, IN for a couple of years because my wife's from there and a lot of her family lives there...and I love them but I hated the town. Couldn't imagine living there permanently.

I go to Gary pretty often to take pictures. I always go with at least one other person, and in daylight, but I've never had a bad experience there.
 
chaostrophy said:
I lived in Evansville, IN for a couple of years because my wife's from there and a lot of her family lives there...and I love them but I hated the town. Couldn't imagine living there permanently.

I go to Gary pretty often to take pictures. I always go with at least one other person, and in daylight, but I've never had a bad experience there.
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Yikes. Evansville is a pretty shitty and boring town but its not dilapidated urban wasteland. Evansville and Gary mentioned in same breath. Oh dear.
 
BertramCooper said:
It's not really a major city by most standards, but I'd go with Binghamton, New York.

Probably one of the most depressing places I've ever been.
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I have to agree with this, most likely because I drove in under an arch that said "Home of the Square Deal". The whole area has this aura of faded glory. By extension guess you can include the whole rust belt.

Ah, I found a photo. The arch as it once was...
ui8U2.png


And as it was when I drove under it.
1YgS3.png


It fails to get better from there.
 
Downtown LA has some awful parts (tent city) but I honestly don't think the majority is as bad as most people say. I did live in Studio City, though...

I grew up in Brockton, Massachusetts, which again - some reaaaaaaaaaaal bad places. Where I grew up wasn't bad though.
 
VALIS said:
Newark, Jersey City and Philadelphia are all very scary and dangerous, but I think the "worst" US cities I've seen are those rust belt cities and other dead end places that are half abandoned, there's little to no culture to speak of and the populace seems miserable and constantly drunk/high to wash the pain away. Pittsburgh, Binghamton, Hartford, Trenton, Cleveland, Buffalo, Camden, Lowell and Springfield Mass, etc.

Also, the wards of New Orleans hardest hit by Katrina are crazy depressing.
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This is a good post, I forgot about how I hated being in Springfield for anything.
 
cashman said:
Phoenix is a nice place, just has no soul. The suburbs are really really nice as well.
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Of course experiences vary, but in the two years my old roommate lived in Phoenix, he took a stray bullet to the gas tank two different times, was mugged and stabbed once, and encounter dead homeless people "baking" in the heat a few times. He said that crime-fighting helicopters are so commonplace that he and his friends refer to them as ghetto birds.
 
I've been to downtown Detroit, without exageration I say that outside the casino and ballpark area, and I mean the immediate outside vicinity of those properties, it looks likes something from fallout 3
 
Ken Masters said:
I've been to downtown Detroit, without exageration I say that outside the casino and ballpark area, and I mean the immediate outside vicinity of those properties, it looks likes something from fallout 3
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It's better after some snow has fallen. I liked the various neighborhoods with the corner bars, everyone knew everyone, and they were protective of their area. Detroit just needs some renewal and employment. It will never regain its glory days but it could come back.
 
Either El Paso, Texas or Gallup, New Mexico. I've never been to many of the large cities you guys are listing (Detroit, Newark). LA was dirty, but nothing compared to how shitty these two cities are.
 
St Louis - nothing for me to like there and the food they are so proud of sucks.

Cincinnati - nothing there left an impression on me.


I see Memphis listed several times, but I love Memphis. Crime is bad, but the food is good, weather is good, music is good, history is good, downtown used to be good, and it has a good mix of people.
 
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