I gotta agree with Sampiro on Columbus, GA. My Dad and his whole family are from there, and if ever there was a city I did NOT want to live in, it’s there. Granted, there are a few nice areas, but the overall feeling of the city is oogy. Dead strip malls, trailer parks, run down streets, and Sampiro’s description of Victory Dr. was spot on.
Pretty much any place called a city in Georgia sucks, with the exceptions of Atlanta and Savannah. I am in Macon, now, and boy. You’d be hard pressed to find a larger town that’s as dead as it is here. There’s nothing to do here, and industry has been running out like the place was on fire for years.
Eh, I grew up in the Eastern Sprawl of Atlanta. At least there was sentient life within 20 minutes of anywhere you found yourself.
I don’t mean to say that NYC doesn’t have it’s points. However, for me, while I was living there (well, Joisey City, actually) I was seeing a lot of the underside. And, well, all them people! :eek:
I’m well aware mine is a contrarian view. And for all that I may tout the arts available in Rochester, that’s still only a small fraction of the amount available in NYC.
I have to defend Las Vegas, even though I’m not the biggest fan of this town. Even though there are some horrible parts of Vegas and the majority of neighborhoods are composed of pretty run-down apartments, there is The Strip, which is cool, no matter how horrible the rest of the city might be. No other town in this thread has anything close to as appealing as the Las Vegas Strip. If it didn’t exist, I might almost agree with you except… there are a lot of really nice neighborhoods too. Sure, most of the hotel/casino jobs pay like shit and there are a ton of run down crappy apartments from one end of the city to the other, but interspersed and on the outskirts are some really nice neighborhoods, complete with new nice shopping malls and movie theaters and parks and anything else you would want.
It’s more a case of a bunch of scattered bad neighborhoods than a bad city in general.
I’ve long held that it is a tie between Jersey City, NJ and Newport News, VA. I’ve never lived in either, but have been in both places enough to decide that they are the best examples of what living death must be like.
Okay, slight exaggeration. It just seemed like 200 miles (and might as well have been a million miles at certain points during the 6 months of winter.)
Actually, we lived in Meadville, which is quite charming about 4 weeks a year, though not consecutive weeks. It is famous as the place Sharon Stone didn’t let hit her in the ass on her way out.
Actually, Grantsville (just a wee bit further west) wasn’t all that bad – lived there for 5 years.
Funny how that state seems to have rubberband borders … I moved out 6 times before making good my escape …
(See – told ya! Hotel Cal got nuthin’ on UT!)
Wild horses armed with AK-47’s with full air support and a battleship to back 'em up couldn’t get me to move back again. Mrs. Disguise has to hold me at gun point just to get me to take her to SLC to visit the Grandkids … :eek:
Every military town I’ve ever visited can be fairly described as “shitty.” Columbus, GA, Fayetteville, NC, Anniston, AL, San Antonio, TX, Killeen, TX, Hinesville, GA all come to mind.
I don’t think there’s anything about the military that makes them inherently bad. Most likely it’s just small shitty places get a large, unmanaged boost from the military population, so they become big shitty places.
The Killer B’s of California come to mind - Barstow and Bakersfield. Throw in Baker and you’ve got the trifecta of depressing setting, distance from anywhere cool, and nothing much to do but wash your car.
I second the nomination of Salt Lake City. It’s horrible, horrible. My grandmother still lives, and lord knows why. She claims it’s because like loves the mountains, but you can never f*ing see them. It’s either cloudy or there’s a horrible inversion layer choked with smog. YUCK. And nothing is more grimly depressing than a city and state which are de facto theocracies.
Cities I found utterly lacking in appeal of any kind: Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo. I’d put Rochester quite a ways ahead of Buffalo, which should tell you something.
I can’t believe people nominated Elko and Winnemucca, NV. Those aren’t nice places, but they’re damn close to some incredibly beautiful scenery, which counts for a lot, and there isn’t the kind of ruthlessly ugly industrial squalor which characterizes many midwest cities and the kind of slag pit mining you find all around Salt Lake City. My mom grew up in Elko, and it’s really not that bad, though it’s less nice now than it was when she was growing up. Too much mining, basically. But the Ruby Mountains, Ruby Marshes, and Lamoille Canyon, which are all close by, are stunning.
There’s nothing redeeming about Klamath Falls, OR, as far as I can tell. It’s horrible.
I also hate Phoenix, although my sister and her family live there, but I have to admit it doesn’t come close to the horror of a place like Buffalo.
Rochester’s a pretty bad place to live, but i dont really think it holds a candle to Utica, NY. The whole town sits on a huge swamp, it rains/snows every day without fail, there is no commercial/industrial growth even possible, and the whole city is flooded with refugees with no money or motivation. Its a poor dumpy city surrounded by poor dumpy rural areas, Utica exists soley so they could have a 31st exit on the thruway.
Wow, it’s amazing the cities I know well that have appeared here. I live near Niagara Falls, NY now. I used to live in Los Angeles. My parents once lived near Muncie, IN. Just this weekend I drove through (among other places) Flint, Gary, East St. Louis (very briefly, I should add), Cleveland, and Buffalo. I know Rochester, NY well (and it and Buffalo really shouldn’t be included here–not that they’re utopias, but they don’t even make the top ten worst IMHO). I appear to be an expert on urban decline.
My worst ten:
Decatur, IL. I’m sorry, Duck Duck Goose, but your town smells like cat food.
Certain suburbs of Los Angeles (you know who you are).
St. George, UT. Is there anything to do there? I mean, other than polygamy.
South Philadelphia, PA. Its place in this list was cemented when I saw a guy taking a dump on a street corner there. I mean, WTF?
Rockford, IL. My girlfriend was thinking about joining the Illinois police force, but knows if she did, she’d probably be assigned to Rockford. But there are worse places in IL…
Chicago Heights, IL. As another poster said, it’s lock-your-doors scary!
Johnsonburg, PA. A special hellhole only known to a select few in Western PA. The place is set in a valley surrounded by mountains and features a large paper mill. It continually smells like a wet fart. Also, it’s 50 miles from the nearest city, the bustling metropolis of Bradford, PA, itself no prize.
Atlantic City, NJ. How could nobody have mentioned this place yet? Go a block off the Boardwalk and yiiiiiiiie.
Gary, IN. Moved up the rankings several places due to the smell.
…aaaaand your winner is: East St. Louis, IL. Abandon hope, all ye who enter there.
And there were a lot of places I’ve been that could have been here, too–my own residence of Niagara Falls, Washington DC, East Jesus, KS…
Laredo, TX. “The City of Warehouses” as the chamber of commerce called it when I lived there. It’s hot. It’s dirty. It is permeated by the stench off the Rio Grande. There are unbelievable levels of crime. Right across the river is Nuevo Laredo which is bigger, dirtier, stinkier and crime-ier. In fact, now that I think about it, all the Texas border towns and their corresponding Mexican towns are great, steaming heaps of suck.
To all the people who said Washingtion, D.C. is one of the ugliest, most depressing place to live…You are out of your friggin’ mind, bat dung crazy!
Small parts of the city are scary (parts of SE and NE), but the same can be said for every major city. Huge swaths of the city have been revitalized (14th street corridor, etc.). You have the business district, the huge tourist areas, Rock Creek park, Georgetown (hell the entire West side), Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle, The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, the Waterfront, etc. The seat of our National government is the there for cricks sake!
I couldn’t agree more. I live outside the city in the Virginia burbs now, but I look back at my years growing up and am so grateful to have a place like D.C. as my hometown. It was amazing as a child going to different monuments, museums, statues, the Pentagon, art galleries, the zoo, plays at the Kennedy Center, historic neighborhoods, quirky little shops in Georgetown, ethnic restaurants in Adams Morgan, sports events, etc. Sure, the city has its fair share of blight and some areas even a native like me won’t venture into under any circumstances. But I wouldn’t have traded living here for anything.
