Poowong. Don’t be fooled by the name, it’s nowhere near as attractive as it sounds. I had the misfortune to spend an afternoon in the bustling township of Poowong several years ago, and the only thing that stinks more than the cattle trucks that pass through the centre of town seeminging endlessly is the rudeness of the citizenry. My total experience of Poowong: rude people, smelly cattle trucks, boredom.
Chiming in to back up Poonther on South Carolina, only I’ll be specific and name the city I lived in for two years.
I hold the same opinion for both Ft. Wayne, IN as well as [b/]Greenville, SC**: proof that hell is full and the dead are walking the earth. And, only Bob Jones University could make Brigham Young look like a party school.
Egad.
I hate Austin, TX, but for intensely personal reasons. 
Growing up in Utah as a non-Mormon (why is it wrong to say the religion? Just asking), I can see where you’re coming from. However, I never realized how weird the “people of a certain secular belief” were until I moved away. I came back to visit and it was literally like walking into the twilight zone. Weird is the only way to put it. When they know you’re not “one of them,” they’re not really rude or assholes, but they recoil and act as if you’re…alien. It’s creepy.
I’ll stick up for SLC because of its beauty. Most areas of the city are very nice (especially along the Wasatch fault). Other cities in this country can only dream of being so clean. Temple Square is beautiful. However, after learning what goes on in that place, I’ll never look at that building the same way again.
The mountains! I can never live in a place that doesn’t have mountains…that is one postive thing about northern Utah that you can’t take away. Now, there are some that look like they’re growing mold, but most of them are fantastically stunning.
The reason why SLC, and Utah in general, sucks so bad has to do with the people. They’re smug, elitist, brainwashed, prudish, and can sniff out an outsider within seconds of meeting one. Like I said, creepy.
Oh, and lets not forget the rotting, stagnant, putrid hell-puddle that is The Great Salt Lake. God help you if you’re down wind.
It depends on where you go. Some parts of suburbia are OK, but for the most part I agree with you (I was born and raised there; moved when I was fourteen). It also seems like nobody cares about their lawn, because a lot of the lawns are completely dead.
Sometimes it’s hard to see the beautiful mountains that circle the city because of all the smog.
When you get to the newer houses (say, houses built in the late 80’s and early 90s up until today) they ALL LOOK THE SAME. I couldn’t stand that when I lived there. The older houses have character, which is nice, but the lawns are dead.
Even saying all that, I still love LV because it’s my hometown and I have memories there. But if I were a newcomer, I’d hate it with a passion.
Oh, if we’re talking about Greenville, that’s okay then. 
Dover, Delaware. Was stuck there for a week for work. The guy hosting me said "i’ll take you to the best nightspot in Dover. There were about 12 heavy metal locals with missing teeth or clad in spandex doing karaoke metal tunes. Nothing even remotely interesting to see. I forgot to mention my stay coincided with September 11 2001. After i found out I’d have to stay there for god knows how long until the airports opened up, I used my rental car and drove home. To Seattle. All 3000 miles of it.
Buffalo comes a close second. One week I spent a year in Buffalo.
I forgot Bowling Green, OH. (Probably repressed memory syndrome.)
I almost went to grad school there until I actually visited the place. Once you get in past the plastic chain stores and restaurants the entire town is a rental-house ghetto. Night life seemed limited to the kind of trashed-out bars where spilling beer on the floor actually improves the atmosphere. In a college town, that’s a very bad sign indeed. (As are the BG school colors: orange and…wait for it…brown. Helloooo? Anybody ever stop to consider using the color in the name of your freaking school?)
One thing in BG’s favor: an unusually high percentage of dynamite looking young women.
I have to second the person who said Dallas. I have to go to Dallas every now and then for my job and I always hate it. The traffic is horrible (not as bas as in Houston, though) and everyone I’ve ever talked to who lived/worked in Dallas was almost always in a really bad mood. I’m convinced the bad mood is caused by just being in Dallas.
Cleveland. Wichita. Dallas. Omaha.
I like Chicago, but find the people from the burbs to be so annoying as to make me want to slap them.
I think Maywood, Illinois is my least favorite place.
In the 1960’s, when I was a little boy, our neighbors firebombed our house.
Dad was a tough man, an ex-prizefighter, & feared nobody, but he was a traveling salesman, & couldn’t be there to protect us all the time.
We moved.
Houston easily tops my (short) list. I went to college there, and the only downside to my educational experience was the city - almost entirely because of the climate. Horrid humidity and high temperatures in the summer, and a really rainy winter season - it just struck me as very dreary.
I loved growing up in Dallas/Fort Worth, and would move back there in a second. I actually liked the really hot summers, and liked the cold snaps (“Blue northers”) in winter. It’s humid compared to, say, Los Angeles, but doesn’t hold a candle to Houston. Actually, I’m much more partial to the central suburbs (Hurst-Euless-Bedford, Grapevine, Arlington, etc.) than to the cities themselves.
I actually like living in Long Beach a lot, but would hate to live in, say, West LA. I see the levels of congestion as quite different.
Why do I suspect that my suburban upbringing is showing through clearly? 
Kansas.
My drum corps went there last summer, and it was HORRIBLE.
There was a vulture circling overhead waiting for one of us to drop.
The water was brown and tasted bad.
The grass was crunchy to march on.
…and I like hills.
Hey, Saskatoon’s alright. Sure, it’s landlocked - but what about the river? It’s beautiful, especially in the summertime, with miles upon miles of foot and bike trails. There’s a thriving arts community, with one of the best independent cinemas I’ve ever seen in a town of 200,000, and plenty of great live music and pubs. And all that nothingness outside the city limits is something I like to call nature.
Sure, you can kiss your epidermis goodbye in the winter, but Saskatoon’s okay. Save your vitriol for some skanky ass-backwards hellhole like Regina.
What the hell? No offense, but have you actually been to Atlanta? Because your post doesn’t read that way.
In the name of fighting ignorance (again, no offense), and at the risk of being guilty of stereotypical Atlanta “boosterism,” I must protest! Where to begin?
First of all, it’s the Perimeter, not “the loop.” (Roswell is outside the Perimeter, by the way.)
The communities inside the Perimeter are a mixed bag. I live just east of the downtown area, in a nice neighborhood of renovated craftsman homes. And for the record, I moved here from one of those “hick towns” you mention. 
Within a 5-mile radius of my neighborhood, the population is 51.2% white, 41.4% black, 4.2% hispanic, plus assorted others. Cite (PDF file – be warned). Those stats just don’t jive with your description. Nor are Atlanta’s suburbs lily-white. Clayton County to the south, and the Stone Mountain area to the east (both outside the Perimeter) have large black communities, and Cobb County to the northwest has added a lot of black residents in recent years.
The folks who live “intown” or “ITP” (Inside the Perimeter) tend to be young and open-minded. (71.6% of those in the radius I described above are 44 or younger.) The sense of youthfulness is enhanced by the presence of several intown Universities: Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State, Agnes Scott, Oglethorpe University and the schools of the Atlanta University Center. There is a fairly even distribution of incomes. Intown has several hip, fun and/or interesting neighborhoods, with nice bars and restaurants.
No redeeming geographic features? I dunno. Stone Mountain is sort of interesting, and the Chattahoochee, though not a big river, is quite pretty if you know how and where to look. And we have a couple of big lakes north of the city, and the ancient Etowah mounds northwest of the city along the Coosa River. But no, we don’t have natural features that are wildly dramatic, I suppose.
I’m guessing maybe that if you’ve been here you only visited a suburb. That might explain the misconceptions. In some of Atlanta’s more conservative suburbs, I will grant that you can find small-minded people who never venture inside the Perimeter and who have their own misconceptions about intown Atlanta (not that all suburbanites are that way, mind you).
The worst things about Atlanta are the suburban sprawl and the ungodly rush hour traffic. But hey, if you live and work intown as I do, you need not worry about those things.
spoke- I know you didn’t call me out, and I don’t direct this at you, but hey, IMHO, Atlanta is awful.
And boy, howdy, that laser light show I saw at Stone Mountain a few years ago was a real dandy. And by real dandy, I mean I couldn’t stop laughing at how horrible it was.
Again, no offense to you personally.
Indianapolis. I’ve only been there once, but it was enough to last me the rest of my life…
Oh, no offense taken. I agree that the laser show is an abomination, f’rinstance. I can only say that it reaches a level of cheesiness that allows me to appreciate it ironically.
And it doesn’t bother me at all if someone hates Atlanta. Just so long as they don’t base their hatred on false information. So as long as you have your facts straight, hate away!
All of them. I prefer little towns that have less than 1000 people. Less than 500 is even better.
But, to be specific - Boston is horrid, NYC is almost as bad. Springfield MA is just dreary, dirty, depressing…
If I had to live in a city, I’d choose Worcester MA only because I grew up there and I’m used to it.
I can’t say I hate Winnipeg, where I grew up, but I don’t have a great desire to spend more than 48 hours in it any time in the future.
Let’s see: it’s unfathomably cold in the winter (last two winters, when Montreal got colder than it’s gotten in the last 40 years, I was like, this is just like every year in Winnipeg!). In the summer the mosquitos are the size of rats and have the delicacy and tact of sumo wrestlers.
Last time I was there, I went out walking on Sunday morning at Portage and Main, the heart of downtown, and there was not a soul anywhere. The night before, I had gone to the gay bar – a city of 700 000 people, there’s the gay bar, and the lawns behind the Lt. Governor’s mansion, and that’s it. (Though they did have an openly gay mayor for a while.) There was this enormous bouncer who insisted you had to be a “member” to get in, which is not something this little Montreal homo is used to dealing with, and at the end of the night a lady friend informed me in no uncertain terms that it would be a good idea if we took a cab instead of walking through the neighbourhood.
Then there’s the fact that the north end is a great big no-go area, rates of poverty and drug abuse are astonishing, and it’s the Arson Capital of Canada.
The neighbourhood where we lived, of course, was a fairly good, albeit somewhat dull, place to raise your children, and I miss the Assiniboine Park Zoo, Sargent Sundae, the art gallery, and the Museum of Man and Nature. I’m just very glad we moved out when we did.