Having found myself in many of the nominees (Newark, Gary, Detroit, Flint) at one time or another, East St. Louis is the worst hellhole I’ve ever seen.
For small towns, Cairo, IL doesn’t necessarily look terrible, but the town flag is made out of crime scene tape.
And when it comes to rural areas, I’ve been in areas of southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas where, if you don’t want to cry, you aren’t human.
I’ll second the East St. Louis and Cairo nominations. They are pretty depressing to drive through and you really don’t want to get out of the car.
I also nominate:Phoenix AZ. I think when the devil wants to punish his minions he sends them to Phoenix. That heat is oppressive. I don’t buy that “dry heat” stuff, I thought it was oppressive. And on the way to the BOB, we passed some pretty grim urban areas.
As a Michigander, I don’t mind Detroit at all. Downtown is quite nice, actually. It’s Flint that is the pits.
OtakuLoki, I spent several years living about an hour away from Rochester. Regrettably, I made the decision to move there and spent four long years from 200-2004. If you’ve been there for awhile, then we were basically neighbors for a bit. I’ll amend my statement from boring, to mostly boring.
Mount Hope Cemetary is pretty, and there are some selling points for the area, but the good just doesn’t outweigh the bad for me. The city had more murders per capita than NYC. I’m sure you remember the school nurse fiaso, and the “lets cut the school week down to four days” idea. Sure the city is buying the Ferry, but I have lost all faith in the city officials.
I don’t want to hijack the thread into a discussion on the merits of Rochester, so I’ll leave it at that. I’m glad you enjoy living there. The city has a lot of history, and potential. I hope it can turn itself around.
I’m not recommending NYC as an alternative. My location area doesn’t refer to the state, but to the city.
I think the trashiest city I’ve ever been to is Baltimore. I worked there for 2 months (commuted from upstate MD) and it looks like a trash heap someone decided to build block after block of rickety, dirty, fire-hazard rowhouses upon. I’m from Mississippi, I’ve seen some poverty, but nothing like in the slums of Baltimore. Little kids playing in back alleys filled with rats and broken glass. Everything grey, brown, mouldy, and falling in on itself. In Baltimore, there’s the ghetto, and then there’s the bad part of town.
Another vote for Gary, Indiana. East St. Louis can’t be THAT bad - I have a good friend in St. Louis and when visiting her, the idea of going across the river to some clubs has been floated. It’s never happened, for whatever reason, but the thing is, people voluntarily go there. I can’t imagine any of my friends EVER saying, “Hey, let’s go over to Gary!”
The smell alone is a clincher.
Here’s a couple that I haven’t seen mentioned yet:
Decatur, IL - You can talk all you want about Joliet and Chicago, they can’t come close to Decatur.
Bristol, TN/VA - Another Hell Hole I know all too well. What was once a thriving city (pre-1950) has basically dried up and blown away.
You must be outside of your mind to even mention Rochester and NYC in the same paragraph! But I will second that JC does suck. There’s one little downtown spot of office towers and high rise appartments on an undeveloped waterfront and a crap malls with a Target and a Bertucci (Pavonia/Newport I think) and that’s about it.
But JC can’t hold a candle to Harford, CT. I spent weeks there on business and what a depressing city it is. A crappy Marriott connected to a dilapadated stadium and a mall at 10% occupancy make up the Hartford Civic Center. When I stayed there we used to buy 40s at the liquor store across the street and watch the locals rob cars from the safety of our corporate conference center. At night, we would go to whatever bar wasn’t on the radio for having someone murdered there the night before.
Schenectady, NY is pretty bad too.
I would say Roy NM, which is DeHusband’s hometown. Small, half the roads aren’t paved, and dusty. And my mother-in-law, who hates me and is never happy, lives there. So there you go.
DeHusband says Minot ND, where he “spent 3 year, 5 months, 21 days, and 7 hours… 1/3 of that time underground in a missile solo.” Not that he’s bitter.
Another vote for the Gary/Hammond area. I mean, egads… and the weather is bad, too. It used to be the Homicide Capitol of the US.
All the strip clubs are in East St. Louis, which makes it a fairly popular place at night on the weekends.
I’ve been to a couple of the clubs with some male friends, and all I’ve got to say is YUCK!
My top three biggest shitholes are as follows (they’re all about equivalent in my mind, so that’s why I’m naming all of them):
P.S. My problem isn’t with the strippers - some of them are quite pretty. My problem is mainly the location of the buildings and the smell in those places. It makes me feel all icky.
Then clearly, in all of two months you never made it to the good parts of town, or experienced anything the city had to offer. Sure, there are parts of town I don’t drive through, but I think the good parts far outweigh the bad. I have no plans to leave any time soon. 
However, I have been to Mississippi, and don’t think there’s nearly that much redeeming about it.
Can I nominate an entire state? Granted, I’ve only passed through it and not actually visited but I can’t remember anything in Indiana looking the least bit pleasant or inviting.
The Eastern Shore does have it’s scrappy parts, but there are some quite nice parts as well, beautiful even.
I dunno. As a citizen of Flint though, I gotta say its not the bowls of the Earth. Its really not as bad as people think; everybody doesn’t carry a gun and gangs don’t own the streets. Sure there’s urban decay, but there’s also lovely green neighborhoods.
It ain’t much, but its home. And while we may make fun of it a lot, and I mean a lot, I feel I have to pipe up and defend the place.
North Mississippi is flat, broke, and hot as an oven in the summer. There’s a reason the blues comes from there.
When I was at USC we used to watch the smog roll in from the east. In a matter of 20 minutes you could go from being able to see the Hollywood sign to having it obscured by smog. Gross.
I had the misfortue to drive from Chicago to Merrillville Indiana. If there is a worse drive, I can’t imagine it. Once you get out of Chicago, Gary is high point of the trip. Dirty, dusty and ugly - and as others have mentioned, the smell. I couldn’t believe that I was in the US.
As someone who grew up in Hammond and spent a considerable amount of time in Detroit, I have to say…you’re probably right.
However, Hammond at least had the virtue of proximity to Chicago. After living Northwest PA for a while, I have to nominate Erie or some small town arownd there. Horrible weather and no decent-sized city within about 200 miles.
On behalf of my mother, I want to nominate Niland, CA. Not urban, but very depressing. 120 on a typical summerday and right near the Salton Sea. A few years back there was a stench drifting over to Phoenix, AZ. They thought it was some company’s fault. It was just the Salton Sea.
Uh, thanks… :rolleyes: Where do you live now if PG is your idea of a hell-hole?