Whoa! Talk about dirty, dreary and depressing! (sorry)
Worse than MonkeyDung. The airpit of CA.
SF is both good & very very nasty/bad.
ARMpit!!! :smack:
Hey **spoke- ** I appreciate your somewhat kind reply to my statements about Atlanta and educating us on your city. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that Roswell was within the Perimeter (or the circle…tomato/tomato.) I do stand corrected on that point.
I have been to Atlanta more times than I can count and really hope I never have to venture there again. My last visit was in July '04 and I stayed at the Westin Peachtree Downtown…so I am familiar with the city and the burbs. By your description it sounds like you live out Ponce in or towards Decatur.
I read all your stats concerning Atlanta and while I do believe them, that is not the picture I see when I’m in town. I see mainly whites in one place and blacks in another. Yeah I know that happens in a lot of to places, but it happens to a greater extend in Atlanta IMHO. Of all the major cities in America, I do find ATL the worst by far and you get nothing in return for the hassles of living in a big city. By that I mean…in SF and LA you get the ocean, hills and the climate. In NYC you get the culture, and the water features even if they are polluted. In Chicago you get the Lake and such. My point is that in Atlanta all you get is a silly Stone Mountain and a bunch of malls.
This is My Humble Opinion and IMHO Atlanta is a PIT of city. You could not pay all the money in the world to live there, but if you like it and don’t feel that way, that’s cool. Different strokes for different folks.
It does sound like you are a small town Southerner that is in love with the big city and that’s cool. I just wonder how often you’ve visited other big cities in the World?
Bottom line: you love your city and have civic pride…that’s cool. I just happen to hate your city and we’ll never see eye to eye on it.
Best wishes and respectfully,
poonther
Rochester, New York.
Hate it, Hate it, Hate it, Hate it!
I lived there for a few years going to school. I think it’s improved since I left – the Museum and Science Center is bigger, there are more channels and shops and diversions. But still:
1.) The only city I know in the entire world to have a subway system and then close it down because not enough people were riding on it.
2.) The 100 foot tall falls that are so picturesque and were so important to the growth of the city have been kept hidden away, and you have to be told that they even exist. For a long time you had to go out of your way to see them.
3.) Rotten public transportation
4.) Very little near the University. I was told that this was deliberately done to keep the students focused on their work. The U of R is surrounded on three sides by the Genessee river and on the fourth by a cemetary. It used to be that all stores, bars, and restaurants were a pretty good hike away.
5.) Long, cold, snowy winters, combined with an unwillingness to plow and an inordinate love of salt. Locals keep a special “rust rat” for winter driving and keep their good cars in mothballs all winter.
6.) After I left I saw a front-page headline in my new local paper that read “Dull folks honor Dangerfield”. I didn’t even need to look at the dateline. It turns out that the International Society of Dull People – DENSA (as opposed to MENSA) is headquartered in Rochester.
In opposition to others in this thread, I love Boston (I live within 10 miles of it) and Salt Lake City (I never felt the alienation described. And there’s a pretty large Catholic community there. Not to mention Samoans and a few Muslims (!))
I am a humble hillbilly, it’s true, but I am also well-traveled. Here’s a sampler of places I’ve stayed at least overnight:
London, Paris, New York, Madrid, Dublin, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, L.A., Minneapolis, Cleveland, Hartford, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Houston, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Denver, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Barcelona, Tangiers, Phoenix, Dallas, Guatemala City, Washington DC, Portland, Vancouver, Boston, Nashville, Louisville, Calgary…
and smaller cities too numerous to name.
And I still love Atlanta.
(Not to say that it is better than any of those cities listed. Only that I don’t think it belongs on a “worst cities” list by any stretch.)
But hey, if you disagree, 's OK by me.
Well all I can do is point to those stats again and give you my own testimony. I disagree. There is certainly some (self-)segregation in Atlanta, but I don’t think it’s any worse than in other US cities, and better than most. (Certainly seems less self-segregated to me than, say, Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Cleveland, or Boston, or…) And there are plenty of intown neighborhoods where blacks and whites (and others) live side-by-side and encounter one another in a neighborly way on a daily basis. (Those stats I quoted don’t lie.) Moreover, you just don’t get the vibe of racial hostility here that I have often sensed in other cities. Not that racial tensions never arise. They do, of course. But you just don’t get that sense of constant simmering resentment I’ve felt elsewhere. Go have lunch at Thelma’s Kitchen and then get back to me about race in Atlanta.
I can see where, from a traveler’s perspective, you might find Atlanta boring. I agree that it doesn’t offer much to tourists. As the locals sometimes say, “Atlanta is a great place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit here.”
(By the way, if you visit Atlanta again, you have to get out of the downtown area to appreciate it. Get out into those intown neighborhoods I mentioned. Hit the bars, shops and restaurants of Virginia-Highland. Little 5 Points. East Atlanta Village. Decatur. You’ll enjoy your stay much more, I think.)
Atlanta is hell–I hope never to go back there.
Memphis is boredom on wheels–ugh and yuck. I don’t care for Elvis and the ducks are cute, once, kay?
Gainesville FL is also not so great–hot, tired and somehow alien.
I live near Chicago, and for those here who dread the traffic–at least the streets are laid out (for the most part) in a grid–unlike the east coast cities, like Boston, which are more European in layout.
Cities I hope never to see again include the three above and also Fredericksburg, Maryland. The worst expressway traffic, the most horrible hotel stay—never again, never!
I was going to say the same thing except I’m NOT rich but I USED to fly there until Mayor McBribe destroyed Meigs field. Every time I drive through Chicago I’m treated to a freekshow of human debris on the highway. Last time it was a motorcyclist doing wheelies at 50 mph on I90 during rush hour (which is always). Before that it was a van with the front passenger facing backwards, feet out the window staring wildly at every driver that passed. Gary Indiana always adds to the joy of the drive.
Boston is probably the most insane driving experience in the lower 48. A left turn signal from a parked car is not a suggestion. The first blink is an indication the car is pulling out.
Thinking back, there are a lot of cities that I hated traveling through in the 60’s and 70’s. The fragrant smell of Pittsburg Steelmills or Cleveland rivers bring back memories. But every major city I can think of has done a lot to change it’s image so it’s tough to really ding a city today (in comparison). I generally don’t like large cities because of the panhandling mentality. I hate to see once-great neighborhoods filled with graffiti and trash.
I find that a lot of American cities are essentially “dead”, after a certain hour…nobody lives in the downtowns. Dallas and hartford are this way…so are scores of others. In many cases, this is because the central cities have been rendered unliveable (because of crime, high living costss, incompetent city governments, etc.). In many cases, the poor people who inhabit these dead cities have to travel MILES toshop for food, etc.
A major clue that the city is dead…you see shops, businesses that close up as soon as it starts getting dark…and those roll-down steel shutters come down!
Detroit is like this…people are off the streets (and all the businesses are closed) by 5 PM! Kinda tells you that these places arenot safe. Frequently, the only stores open are the “7-11” variety, manned by immigrants who must spend most of the evenings in fear of their lives!
I have to say, as far as cities that suck, Kansas might top the list. Kansas misses the mark so bad, it totally fails as a city and is actually a state.