New London isn’t even the suckiest place in Connecticut, let alone the entire northeast. I nominate Willimantic, CT and the north end of Hartford. I’m sure there are some places in Massachussets that are even worse, though.
I interviewed for a job at ECSU in Willimantic! I was so devoid of self-esteem I thought no-one would hire me. I had the offer in hand… was mulling it over… and told the wife, “I think I’ll risk being unemployed than live here for two years.” She agreed.
Thing is, I sort of couched it by saying “what would my wife do?” Shit, even if she had some killer job, I’d want to die out there. The four-screen theatre was the town’s major attraction.
Let’s see… how about:
Brockton, MA
Wilkes-Barre, PA
Scranton, PA
Barstow, CA
I’ve pretty much stopped in these towns for a rest stop and/or a meal, but the vibe of these places made me want to get the hell out, quick. And I imagine hell must be hearing the words, “The new job is in [insert town name here].”
We just got back to Guadalajara after visiting my daughter there. She lives in La Condesa and it is actually a pretty nice neighborhood. never saw any of her next door neighbors nor heard them either. Yes the city is dirty and congested and I wouldn’t want to live there but there are some pluses also. I found the people, merchants and such to be surprisingly friendly and helpful, the complete opposite of the negative reputation of chilangos.
Don’t know why you are having a problem finding Mexican food, either.
I like Bangkok myself, but I’ll admit it’s mostly an acquired taste.
I’ll second Brockton-it is a pretty bad place. It was (until the 1970’s) the shoe capital of the USA. As imports from China took over, the shoe factories shut down, and the downtown dies. You can cruise Main street during the day, and not see a single person on the street-nothing but empty buildings and “For Sale” signs.
The sad thing-on the westside are the mansions of the factory managers-there are beautiful houses and wide lawns. What a shame.
That’s odd. I’ve spent some time there and found it quite pleasant.
Erie, PA, on the other hand…
I’ve not gotten into La Condesa yet, although it’s been highly recommended (Mexican web resources are pretty lacking). Most of my social experience is in Santa Fe (most of the team is housed there), which is a supposedly-nice area, but meets all of the attributes I described above. Santa Fe’s actually in el D.F., but I live in Interlomas, in what the people here call “el estado.” But… it’s mostly indistinguishable, although there are a few single-family houses about.
You’re right about the people. Most of them are decent and nice, I’m discovering. There are just enough of the bad ones that they give everyone a bad name. In the rest of the country, if someone cuts me off in traffic, it’s 99% certain that it’s a D.F. plate.
Oh, Interlomas is a “zona nice.” The only ethnic food permitted is foreign.
I’ll trade Guadalajara for Mexico City any time! Although, you guys have bad traffic, too.
Here is Erie’s miserable excuse for a skyline.
Johannesburg, South Africa. An entire city built on lust for gold, sunk into its own cesspit and choking on its yellow air, surrounded by a ring of parasitic townships, shantytowns, gated rich scum holes and mine dumps. You know the movie District 9? Think of it as a documentary, only without the aliens.
Ewww. Looks like a third-grader drew that.
Perhaps because it’s just so… fake. And composed. (Yes, I feel the same way about most suburbs.)
I don’t see you nominating anything on Neptune.
Come have some Zachary’s Pizza, then head to the Trappist for a Russian River Consecration (or you could get something good). Or you could head to Coach’s and get some awesome sushi with unlimited (and pretty decent) sake for $25. Then get back to us.
…or placing “Yes On 8” signs every quarter-mile along 101. Living in San Francisco, I didn’t know what the Yes On 8 sign looked like, but after taking 101 to Santa Barbara and back, I could draw it from memory.
That’s actually a better-than-average picture of the city. It’s really an abyssmal place.
People often choose my home city (Omaha, NE) as a generic dumping ground for rustically-themed insults. The thing is, people keep moving here. I once read that the lead question of any conversation in Toronto was “Where are you from?” The same could easily be said of Omaha, at least in the white-collar sector. It’s not exactly as cosmopolitan as Amsterdam, but it’s a fine city to live in – aside from one high-crime sector of town, which is rather easily avoided.
When I lived in Erie (eighteen months that I wish to G-d would be blotted from my memory), the concept that I could have grown up anywhere else was utterly alien to the people I spoke with. Erie was simply not a city you emigrated to. The folks who remained in Erie quite literally could not imagine leaving, however. I knew a woman - bookstore manager, over 40 - who could count on her fingers the number of times she’d left the town and its environs. Cleveland (about 100 miles away) was an exotic destination for her. When I went to cancel my phone service, the attendent seemed honestly shocked that I was leaving town–as though no one had ever broached the subject with her. When I got my current job back in Omaha (which is near my family and entailed a rather massive pay raise), my minister earnestly tried to convince me to stay, as though leaving Erie for Omaha was a choice akin to enlisting in a dangerous front-line infantry position. The mentality of the place was truly morbid and cryptic–no one came in, and no one got out.
I hear the same crap about Phoenix, yet we have 4 million people and none of us seem to be natives.
And the DC metro area (the suburbs at least). Practically nobody I know is “from” around here.
Fake Americans!
The people who have named Houston in this thread should really zip on over to Baytown, nearby. While not third-world by any stretch, it’s the one place I’ve been to in my travels for which I could find no redeeming qualities. It has the same horrible heat and humidity as Houston, without the big-city things to do. It does have the largest oil refinery in North America, though, so if you’re into oilpatch towns, it’s definitely your kind of place. Plus (at least when I was there) there were a bunch of boarded-up storefronts in a small, depressing downtown. It was a small town without the quaintness but with extra pollution.
The original Night of the Living Dead was filmed here.
What is that, a guard tower?
(My friends had the same reaction to the clock tower at Mississauga City Hall.)
Or even live there now. I mean, when I visit DC and ask people for directions or whatever (doing that much less now, with the GPS) they always say, “Oh, I’m just visiting, I don’t know.”
Missed the edit window:
ETA: For those people saying Rochester…
Rochester is one of those little cities that you can both intensely love and intensley hate at the exact same time.
I love the ghettos, the reggae scene, the hip hop underground, the food, the art, the festivals in the summer, the lilacs, and most of all the quick 5 hour drive to NYC.
I hate the stark and apparent misery in the ghettos, the fact that the city closes down halfway at 9pm and totally at 2am, the fact that the place is tiny, the fact that Macy’s and Lord and Taylor’s don’t stock the shoes that I want when I want them.