Infrastructure funds are stretched mighty thin. It seems that governments wait as long as possible before repairing things. For example, it’s been known for a couple of decades that our bridges need work. But as long as they’re not falling down, the repairs or replacements wait for money to be available – which it never is. When one falls down, everyone moans about the poor state of our bridges; but no one wants to pay for new ones. So lack of money is a valid a reason why many roads are not maintained well.
That said, many places to a lot of road work. I mentioned L.A. When I lived there (until 2003) you couldn’t go anywhere without lane closures, resurfacing, widening, etc. It seems the roads were undergoing constant repair. The upside is that when the section is repaired, it’s a nice smooth road. The downside is that for months you may as well be driving on a ‘washboard’ dirt track. I mentioned the 5 through downtown. Traffic is already horrible, and shutting down a couple of lanes would make it worse. I said my hypothesis for the ruts is the large number of trucks that use the right two lanes. Lots and lots of trucks run through there. Lots and lots of vehicles use all of the roads in the L.A. area. All of those vehicles wear out the roads very quickly. Between the roads becoming worn quickly, and the maintenance on them when their turns come, it’s not surprising that the roads are ‘bad’. There’s not that big a window after they’ve been repaired that they remain in great condition.
She did not visit America. She visited LA, Las Vegas, New York, Washington (DC?) and Hawaii. There is a big difference.
I lived 10 years in Australia (I’m even a dual citizen). I could have made the same comparisons if I had only visited Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, but I traveled all over the country during my stay. I found marked differences between Big Smoke places and the rest of Australia. Bear in mind, our cultures are not as similar as the media (Aussie and American) will lead you to believe. Many things in Australian culture just do not translate well, or at all. I’m betting the reverse is also true.
She sounds like she had several preconceived negative views about America before she visited. It’s a fair opinion. But it also sounds like she did little to challenge those preconceived views. Pity. FWIW, all of the negatives she found during her short visit to America exist in Australia as well. It’s just a matter of opening your eyes in your own backyard as well as your neighbors across the pond.
Next time she considers another American visit, get her to explore online first, preferably with folks who can offer some real advice about America. Maybe the SDMB would help.
Of the five areas visited by stui magpie’s friend, I’ve barely visited DC and LA, never been to Vegas or Hawaii, been to NY several times (I’ve been to 18 States if I’m not miscounting). LA had the worst roads I saw in the US; I mean, in other locations I saw potholes as big or bigger… but not as many, nor on the highways. Most of what I saw wasn’t in particularly bad shape once you took into account things such as frequency of problem spots, soil or road importance; I don’t expect a little road in the middle of nowhere to get the same amount of maintenance as a beltway.
So in that regard and based on admitedly partial experience, part of the impression may come from having been to a place with particularly bad roads.
I realise that. But it applies everywhere, not just the USA. And I don’t believe that there is much connection with the USA’s geography (fewer roads per square mile than Europe, more than Canada or Australia).
Therein lies her problem. The places she visited are not at all “typical America”. Those locations are unique urban areas, but hardly representative of the rest of the country. Had she visited smaller towns in rural areas, her experience would have been very different.
I spent six weeks in Sydney 29 years ago and my impression then was that it was a slightly down-market version of an American city. A lot can happen in 29 years. For one thing, I was constantly cold. I was there for the month of July bookended between a few days of June and August. There was no central heating and, with an average daily temperature spread of 5-15 (and one day, the high was 8), it was cold. I don’t have much impression of restaurants, although it was where I discovered sushi, but that wasn’t cheap. Probably the cheapest restaurants around here are Indian. But the best cheap food here is a Lebanese cafeteria where you can get an enormous platter, including loads of veggies (sorry, no fish) for under $10.
As for the roads, the homeless, and the rest, well eventually Americans will discover that if you don’t like it, you will have to pay more taxes. I guess Americans pay the lowest taxes in the developed world and firmly believe they pay the highest.
If I were homeless, I would certainly try to get to Hawaii. If I spoke Spanish, I might try Puerto Rico, but I would escape the frozen north.
NY apartment dwellers have no place to store trash cans usually. And trash is collected in most places in the middle of the night to disrupt traffic as little as possible. But in daughter’s neighborhood, at least, you don’t usually see the trash out except on Tuesday nights.
Yes, but in the words of my brother “they don’t show you this on TV”. From what** stui **says it isn’t that the tourist had bad expectations, it’s that her expectations were too high.
Yep, common these days in U.S. fast-food restaurants.
What strikes me most about our dissatisfied Aussie tourist is that she spent so much of her time in big cities (while complaining that the food was expensive). :dubious:
It is puzzling why, with so much natural beauty available (i.e. in state and national parks), a foreign tourist would choose to visit Las Vegas. On the other hand, it is not surprising that someone considers that a whirlwind vacation to a foreign country makes one knowledgeable about living conditions in that country (Americans are guilty of this as well).
Just to include my two cents, the US is HUGE, and varies a great deal from place to place. None of the comments in the OP apply at all to where I live, for instance.
My visits to rural/central Pennsylvania leads me to believe that there are homeless/transients around (though usually the town drunk/screwup/druggie sitting out with a bottle in a paper bag), plenty of trash where it shouldn’t be (dumped or parked illegally in the forest in big piles), and plenty of pitted roads. And a lot less good meal options. I spent some time in a Montana town where there was only one restaurant, one bar, one lodge, one gas station, one motel, and one grocer on a pitted road within a 20 mile radius. I didn’t see many homeless there but I hardly saw any people either. Food was obviously limited. Not sure why anyone would want to go there as a tourist. Some nicely shaped and colored rocks. I’m sure you can enjoy nature in your own country though. No reason to pay thousands of dollars on a plane ticket to see some nature unless maybe it’s the Grand Canyon or something.
So there’s lots of America that fits within all or part of the no good food - trash places - homeless - pitted road perception, and they don’t even have to be remotely urban.
I’m not sure how visiting a redneck town would endear somebody to America unless they liked redneck sensibilities.
There are some very nice clean suburban areas with all the amenities and the like with some tourist attractions but how is someone from Australia going to know about Chadds Ford/Kennet Square, PA for instance?
And don’t worry, I hate the yellow cheese too. Yellow processed cheese is more like edible plastic than cheese. I don’t buy it.
If your friend couldn’t find anything but fast food or expensive food, it’s because she didn’t know where to look. In addition to almost-fast- food places like Panera and Au Bon Pain , diners ,coffee shops,pizzerias and restaurants like Applebee’s there are loads of places like Teleon cafe that serve salads made-to-order (you choose the size, greens, and mix-ins) in addition to pasta and sandwiches. There is no sit down service- you order , pay and pick up at the counter and then find a table.
About the garbage- residential buildings get twice weekly pick ups. Some buildings have plastic cans ( usually smaller , owner occupied buildings) while others just use garbage bags. Recycling is almost always kept in bags rather than cans. It’s suppose d to be put out after dusk the night before pick up . It’s only on the street for days in the event of a blizzard ( since sanitation also clears snow from the streets) or in the not-all-that frequent case of a gabage strike. However, every day (except I think Sunday ) is garbage day *somewhere *so you might easily see it everyday.
LA resident who has visited Las Vegas and New York.
There is a lot of fast food. But there is just as much locally-owned restaurants with heathy food options. This is especially true in the cities she visited. They just don’t have signs as big and electric and obnoxious as fast food chains. She saw what she wanted to see. Also, if she has a problem with orange dye in cheddar cheese, she could have branched out to Swiss, Provolone, Jack or any one of the every-other-cheese that doesn’t have dye in it.
She was surprised that there were homeless people in the big metropolitan areas? This problem is hardly specific to the US. Has your friend not noticed any homeless in Sydney or Melbourne?
The quality of roads vary from state to state, county to county, city to city and street to street. This is kind of a dumb complaint.
Everything she mentioned exists to varying degrees, no doubt.
However, it’s a wild exaggeration to suggest those criticisms are the primary descriptors of the nation as a whole. It seems like she had naive assumptions based on popular media — never a strong barometer, eh Crocodile Dundee? The US is a big, wildly diverse place and what you experience on a visit is going to be a reflection of how much a person wants to reach beyond the lowest-hanging fruit.
As a resdent of DC, I do have to cop that she’s partly right about the food. DC has come a long way when it comes to dining options, but the one thing it lacks is good cheap food. You can eat very well here, but not without spending some money (or at least not easily).
There are certainly places in the US where there are many homeless people. But this is not a problem unique to America. Has she ever been to Paris? And I love Paris.
I’m sorry your friend came all the way to the US and didn’t see any of the country ;). Seems like a waste of jet fuel.
In all seriousness, all of the things she described do exist at varying levels all over the US, as do sinfully wonderful food, long stretches of smooth, roomy asphalt, homes for most of the permanent populace of a given area, and trash neatly contained in bins where it belongs. I know it’s impossible to visit a place without forming a general impression, but I think your friend needs to visit again and experience some other parts of the country before she gives up on the USA. After all, I used to think Australia consisted of one city made up of convicts, located on the edge of a large desert with a big rock in the middle of it, surrounded by some pools of stagnant water.
I used to wonder this myself when seeing TV footage of NYC. Then I remembered back in my youth when individual apartment buildings had incinerators. The residents would throw their bags of trash down a chute to the basement, where the building super would place it in an incineration chamber. A lot of the existing apartment buildings in NYC were built during those times.
Of course, anti-pollution measures require that we don’t use incineration to deal with garbage any more (except on a controlled industrial scale). Because of the congestion in the City, the trash that once was burned is now stacked up on the sidewalk for collection. I assume they don’t put it in bins because they can’t collect it with an automatic truck like we use in roomier cities; the trucks they use have workers who pick up the individual bags and toss them in the back.
We have county roads, township roads, city roads, state roads, and federal highways. All of the funding entities have been greatly stressed during the recession. In my state of Minnesota, aid to local governments was slashed during the reign of the former governor, and property taxes shot up to compensate for that. We’ve reached the limit on property tax increases, so where does the money come from to fix the roads? While some towns are actually returning paved roads to gravel to cut costs, the blacktop and concrete roads are being allowed to deteriorate more before they are repaired. They eventually get fixed, but it does take longer.
There’s a hell of a lot of space between the cities the OP’s friend visited and what you refer to as a “redneck town.” What about Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis, Seattle, New Orleans, Phoenix, the Twin Cities? There are beautiful cities all over this country, wonderful small towns, amazing open spaces, astonishing wilderness.
stui magpie, your friend needs to come back and see the rest of the US. Maybe you could recruit some Dopers to show her where to find the good stuff.
