It amuses me to see Indiana mentioned so much. I lived there twice, and that’s all the chances it is getting. Richmond (on the eastern border, near Dayton, OH) is boring, but ok. Terre Haute, on the other hand, is boring and very, very smelly.
I can’t not post about Detroit, as I have bashed it here often enough. The traffic, the crime, the decay, the lovely attitude of the inhabitants–really, what is not to love?
Yeah. There was a reason that Robo Cop was set in Detroit.
Farmville, Virginia. Never in my life have I lived in a place so willfully backwards and ignorant, and I’ve lived in places what would give this place some steep competition. This is a place where every time someone tries to open a bookstore, it goes out of business. A Walmart moved in a few years ago and killed off what few independent shops managed to survive – it’s really known now for selling new furniture, and one major furniture store has been buying up the empty shops on the main drag for years, so that every other store is actually just another showroom for that furniture store.
Farmville is best known as being the town that closed its schools for 7 years when forced to integrate; the effects of that are still felt.
As beautiful and green as the place can be in the summer, I am so glad to be away from there, and the thought of going back actually gives me anxiety attacks.
There are no quality goods and services – when I lived there, I would drive the 180 mile round trip to Charlottesville to go shopping, to the dentist, get my glasses seen to, medical care, buy books, clothes, &c. Many people go to Richmond for the same reason – and I knew people who commuted daily to the college in Farmville from Richmond and Charlottesville just to avoid living there. I just had someone visit me where I’m living now (near Philadelphia), and he wanted to go shopping for lightbulbs, autoparts, all sorts of ordinary things one takes for granted, but 1/2 the time can’t find on the shelves in the stores there. I used to try to do all my grocery shopping in bulk in C’ville, because there are 3 supermarkets in Farmville that I know of, and all three of them reek of rotten food when you walk in. Gah!
(This is not to say, as with any place, I did know some genuinely kind, generous people there, but it’s such a sad place. Many of the most dynamic people whom I did know there, if they could, escaped as soon as possible.)
I enjoy reading these threads and am always amazed that I’m the only one who mentions…
Odessa-Midland, Texas
Home of the annual Texas Hot Dirt Festival, the Permian Basin is economically depressed, flat, ugly, treeless, broiling and tornado-afflicted in the summer, icy and windy in the winter. The earth’s damned truly walk its’ malls and pawn shops, waving their confederate flags and grasping desperately to the one thing that gives their lives meaning: high school football.
North Jersey is blindingly ugly. Even the nicest Bergen County towns are no more than 10 minutes from some of the worst suburban landscape in the country.
Can anyone confirm my opinion of Independence Missouri? My wife and I were on a car trip where we had to overnight somewhere in that general region, we found a motel there that would accept pets (we had two dogs with us), and she wanted to see the Truman presidential museum. Granted we didn’t exactly tour the town, but what I saw of it looked like - well, it was too rural to call it a slum and too populated to call it a trailer park.
Speaking only of places where I’ve either lived or spent significant periods of time, I would say:
Albany, Georgia: the climate and terrain are roughly swamp. The people are unfriendly, not at all the Southern norm. There are no recreational facilities to speak of (a zoo and a nice gym, that’s about it). Aside from the local megaplex, there’s not much to do at night if you don’t drink (and I don’t). It’s the only place I’ve ever known where the gay bar and a Ryan’s Family steakhouse shared a parking lot (which must have made for some confused and irate senior citizens who went looking for catfish nuggets and found some overfriendly drag queens).
Salinas, KS- though I must admit the fact that I was there during a dust storm flavored my opinion somewhat.
Victory Dr. area of Columbus, GA- imagine that the Divine Urban Architect of Georgia did a CTRL + C of the following arrangement: tattoo parlor, titty bar, cheap motel, run-down fast food place and then hit CTRL + V for about five straight miles. (The fact that thousands and thousands of 17-20 year olds come there for basic training every year is reflected for miles and miles.) I must quickly add there are other areas of the city that are nicer, but there’s enough truly awful to stay away from.
Sparta, GA- there is nothing flattering that can be said of this shithole. It’s big enough to have some city problems but too small to have any urban advantages.
Foley, AL- it used to be a sleepy little town near the Gulf Coast of Alabama. Since then it has woken up: the building of an E-FRICKING-NORMOUS outlet mall did tons for the local economy, but it also multiplied the city’s traffic and congestion by about 20 and it simply wasn’t set up to handle it. It’s close enough to the beach to have the gulf’s heat and sand but not it’s breezes and scenery. It’s flatter than Twiggy when she was 12, the trees are either sickly pines or transplanted palms that didn’t want to come, it’s hotter than hell in summer with 300% humidity if that’s possible and catches every hurricane that feels like blowing through.
Panama City Beach, FL- I have to add that I am not a beach person- I loathe the feeling of sand between my toes, to quote Woody Allen “I don’t get suntans, I get heat strokes”, and some encounters with mating jellyfish many years ago leave me a bit terrified of the water, but even if that weren’t the case I think I’d still put this place on the list. It was once a family friendly resort but now it’s simply the Mullet capitol of the southeast (and that’s saying something) with once beautiful views of the beach now completely occluded by never ending cinder block motels (the sort that would be lucky to get $24 per night from a cross-eyed past her prime hooker and her serial killing final john in most Interstate areas but that receives $140 per night because of its proximity to the water) and ridiculously expensive high-rise time share condos (2 BR, 7th floor, 900 square feet- $500,000). The water is about half suntan-oil, the beach itself has never fully recovered from the last two (pre-Ivan) hurricanes and everything fades the moment its built, and the people who go there… let’s just say that the horny teenagers who perform pilgrimage by the millions during Holy Week each spring and the napkin-sugar dispenser-silverware stealing senior citizens from Canada and the frozen midWest who point their walkers and migrate each winter are the best of the lot.
Waterford, MI- imagine that the Lord so loved Roseanne Barr that he made of her an entire town.
Selma, AL- today MLK would have run across the bridge to get out of that illiterate shithole.
Olive Branch is quite lovley and expensive…ever been there?
It’s not that bad, but it’s not that good, either. There’s a nice mall there, and a quaint little downtown that seems like it was intended for a village of 5,000 instead of a city of 100,000.
Independence is mostly white, working- to middle-class, and blue-collar, but more in the Southern sense of the phrase (think truckers, construction workers, auto mechanics and the like). On KC television news, whenever a the discovery of a meth lab was reported, you could count on the location being in Independence. There are some nice neighborhoods in Independence, but about half of the city takes on an appearance as if its glory days were in the 1970s, with shopworn strip plazas and ranch houses in need of some paint and proper lawn care.
For sheer self-induced fugly – cities that deliberately chose to be ugly in the name of commerce – my votes go to El Paso and Amarillo. Those cities have the nation’s worst visual pollution, IMHO. Billboards outnumber trees, and they’re usually Texas-sixed; a hundred feet tall or more, with a display area the size of a starter home.
Runner-up goes to any number of small cities that are dominated by the military; Jacksonville, North Carolina; Alamogordo and Clovis, New Mexico; Havelock, North Carolina, and a ton of others.
There’s Winter Garden, Florida, where almost every business has something to do with the internal combustion engine; used car lots, bobcat rental, heavy truck sales, tire stores, quick lube joints, moving van rental, truck cap sales, auto parts stores, auto body shops, and so on, ad nauseaum.
Generally, visual pollution if far worse in cities in the Southern US and Texas. Sure, those in the Northeast have their dormant factories, but they’re not self-induced like the monstrous double-decker billboards and high-rise business signs that dot the South.
Camden, New Jersey.
The first time I saw it, I wondered if it was a test site for the neutron bomb.
The Tri-cities area (Bristol, Kingsport and Johnson City) is a damn haven compared to the Southwest corner of Virginia. The industry is … not exactly thriving. If that area doesn’t start some serious marketing (mountains, the fall, windy two-lane highways, something) before long, there isn’t going to be much of anything to dry up and blow away.
Bogalusa, LA.
Every time I had to go there, I would miss the town - end up circling it on the state highways before I made it in.
Monroe, LA was pretty bad to have to visit.
Bear in mind that I live in Youngstown, OH. Not exactly a happening place a lot of the time.
I must admit the Tri-City area does score higher, but thanks only to Johnson City & Kingsport.
You forgot to mention that if you’re foolish enough to go there during spring break season, you will average 10-15 mph on the coastal highway that’s the only route to take east or west.
Surprised nobody’s mentioned Chicago Heights, IL. At least the part of it traversed by US 30 is lock-your-doors awful.
Surprised nobody’s mentioned Chicago Heights, IL. At least the part of it traversed by US 30 is lock-your-doors awful.
Then there’s Winnemac and environs, IN. (Right off 30 again, or maybe it’s 24.) Stopped there for a BK a few years ago due to a detour, and the by-product behind the counter couldn’t tell me the way out of town. Wonder if he’d ever been…
Darn it, that was my nominee!
A runner-up: Some of the South LA suburbs (Lynwood, Compton, South Gate, etc.)
Poor public services, bad corruption problems, and a definate economic decline from 50 years ago.
While I would never pretend that Indiana is Valhalla, there are number of places that are very nice. Bloomington/Lake Monroe, Brown County/Nashville, Clifty Falls/Hanover/Madison, and Orange County/French Lick come to mind.
I dislike “The Region” (Gary/Hammond/Michigan City/etc) as much as anyone though, and much of the rest of the state is pretty drab and uninteresting, though hardly evil. (Actually, that’s true of most of my Indiana in-laws too… :eek: 
)
My vote as always in these threads is Detroit.
? I am from the area… it has the usual stuff - malls, places to eat ranging from hot dog stands to gourmet restaraunts, movie theaters, the Rochester Philharmonic, a couple of venues for concerts, parks, museums, a science museum/planetarium…same as most other cities I have lived near. Only difference from Norfolk VA is no salt water beach [but it does have several freshwater beaches] and almost no military [my husband as a leading first petty officer has been in charge of more personnel that the entire coast guard station…and had more time in rate then the whole station combined=]
Baltimore and Buffalo. Blech.
Newark is my choice for third runner-up. I live in the same county as the city and do my best to avoid going near it.