I live in Tucson AZ. I hate it.
I wish I could move but the job my husband has is very specific and it would be very hard for him to find something as good elsewhere.
So I’m stuck here.
Tucson is hot. I mean really, really, really hot. We hit the mid 90s in early March. It often is above 110 for many weeks on end in the summer. Nothing is green here. The only thing that grows well are weeds with thorns on them.
Bah. I wanna move.
Before I lived in Atlanta, I lived in New Orleans. I hate it there.
New Orleans has 2 seasons: Hot and Swimming Through Hot Peanut Butter Hot And Humid. Except in winter. In winter, it’ll be freezing in the morning, then it’ll be hot. I was so unused to having seasons that the first time it started getting cold here in October, I was wondering what was up. My girlfriend informed me it was called Fall. Fall? 
What is this “Fall”?
The continual hotness, especially around the Quarter, combined with the city’s love of inebriation, means that the Quarter usually smells like pee, vomit, and old beer. I hated living in a city that smelled like pee.
New Orleans also shuts down around 5pm. Or 4:30 on Fridays. If you want to get anything done, you’ll have to wait until you have some time then. Except the bars, the bars are open at all hours.
And the people. They may be friendly, but there’s this strain of people that tend to live around N.O. their whole lives, never go more than 30 miles outside of town, and swear they live in the Greatest Place on Earth.
It’s got all the hassles of the big city and all the provincialism of a small Southern town.
Harrisburg: Armpit of Pennsylvania.
Trash (garbage) is all over the city. People have absolutely no pride whatsoever in the appearance of their property (unless it’s their jacked up vehicles).
Like mentioned elsewhere, there are people who were born, raised and will die here–all without ever leaving the city. These same people think a 20 minute drive outside the city is a “distance”.
Quality of public education is worse than “sucks”. The mayor took over the schools, so the quality is slowly increasing, however, the schools had to be in such bad condition, that the mayor “had” to take them over. The police in Harrisburg? They don’t call them Keystone Cops for nothin’. The City Counsel find themselves on the opposite end of the Mayor in too many different situations, and the feeling is not that it’s constructive, but simply vendictive.
Unless you’re a family with small children, entertainment is limited. It’s a great place for Easter egg hunts, and day trips to Kiddie Land, but if your kid is over the age of 12, or worse yet,you’re single, forget about entertainment. Unless, of course, your idea of entertainment is to get drunk and hang out downtown (as the local brand of yuppies tend to do).
Country mentality with big city hopes.
Two good aspects are the weather (on a comparitive basis–not too hot or humid in the summer, and snow, but not overwhelmingly so in the winter) and the historical architecture. Harrisburg does have some cool old buildings, but too many are in a damaging state of disrepair, and no one seems to give a damn.
Montgomery, Alabama----can’t stand it, very oppressive and closed minded. Aside from that it has an annoying habit of naming all of the roads in an area the same thing, VIRGINIA LOOP, VIRGINIA WAY, VIRGINIA PARK —just like that. So when you are driving in a neighborhood, the distinquishing name of the street is almost unreadable.
I hate Memphis so damn much, and once I have the means to move…I’m gone.
Nobody here knows how to drive, everybody is/acts stupid.
Oh yeah but there is one good thing:
The #2 crime rate in the country! Yay! (oh Autz…ya’ll are #1, right?)
So, when I hear about this on the news last night, I don’t hear about how city leaders are planning on improving things…I hear about how the study was not fair…and blah blah.
That’s the general fucking attitude here.
Oh and the summers are gross. and too humid.
Los F’ing Angeles.
Sure there’s some good parts, and SoCal can be beautiful, but it really gets tiring looking around and only seeing plants in variations of brown, yellow, and tan along with that nasty rust-colored streak always covering the mountains. Besides that we’ve also got horrible heat, horrible drivers, no seasons, lots of crime, and probably more asshats than the entire rest of the US combined.
/me can’t wait to get out of this pit and back to the northwest where the air didn’t stink of trash and it actually snowed once and a while. 
Well, I don’t hate Hooterville exactly (Hooterville is an unnamed Midwestern town where I am currently exiled), but I feel basically nothing about it.
I miss L.A. and California dearly. I moved to Hooterville because of some family obligations and I’m coping and that’s all fine, but it doesn’t mean I love it here and am so glad I moved. I don’t love it here. I simply don’t care about it here. I used to despise Hooterville, but that’s not a useful emotion when you’re stuck somewhere and besides, it’s not that bad. It’s probably pretty decent if you are from this area and feel some connection to it. But I don’t. So I just don’t frigging care. Blah.
It’s got (shudder) snow in the winter and it gets swelteringly hot in the summer and there aren’t any aromatic trees and plants (not like pine or sage). There aren’t any mountains or oceans nearby. None of these things makes Hooterville a bad place, it’s just that I’m from a place with aromatic plants, mountains and oceans and that’s what I like.
Adelaide, South Australia.
Even though I have some good friends there, it seemed to have more than it fair share of yobbos, and many people have a pessimistic attitude. SA’s best and brightest leave for greener pastures.
I hated the climate, long hot dry summers and cold, wet winters. They have water, power and employment problems. Every square inch of open space has been replaced with some new housing development, the foreshore is changing, Adelaide’s charm is dying.
Thankfully I relocated a year ago.
I don’t hate Portland, ME, but I don’t love it.
On the other hand, I love San Francisco, and I wish I could move back there.
Quit your whining, all of you. I live in Detroit. I would be happy to trade with any of you and probably with anyone else who comes along in this thread. Detroit is just as lovely as you have heard–in other words, not at all. I am from Tennessee and long to be back there, but my field is very specialized and I haven’t found a position there yet.
We must be neighbors. I don’t just hate the town I’m in, I hate the midwest. I hate signs in people’s front yards that say “I support the Ten Commandments.” Who gives a rat’s ass? I hate the preponderence of people who just don’t care for anybody that doesn’t think, look, act all stupid like them and who are frequently treated like second-class citizens as a result. I hate people who vote for stadiums but aren’t willing to pay for their damn schools. I hate people who complain about the humidity all summer long and then the cold all winter long. I hate people who grew up with this weather all their lives and still can’t figure out to slow the f**k down when the roads get icy. I hate not being near the ocean. I hate the idea of having to suffer through a plague of scary-looking, noisy-ass, every-step-crunching, caught-in-my-hair-and-freakin’-me-the-hell-out, bugs of biblical proportion. I hate people around here that are all “my country, right or wrong, and if ya don’t agree, well, then you’re just like them slimy bastard terrorists.” I hate windy, hilly two-lane roads that locals drive down like they own them and either run you off as they pass you on your side of the road or ride your ass because you’re too chickenshit to take a hairpin at 65 mph.
I hate that I’m stuck here because the love of my life thinks this is as close to home as home gets. I don’t get it, either, because he’s not at all like anyone I know around these stinkin’ parts.
That felt good. 
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. And I hate government officials in this area that steal the meager belongings of the homeless, throw them in the trash and refuse to put up a homeless shelter because they don’t want to attract homeless people to their area (ignoring the fact that they already have a homeless population. Duh!)
So you’re saying you wish you were down on Rockytop, down in the Tennessee hills…?
I also live in Tucson, been here 8 years now. At first I questioned why people would want to live in a place where there is no water, you can tan through your clothes in the summer, and even the Plants can hurt you. Now I love Tucson. The diversity is incredible, the rent’s cheap, and the sunsets are the best in the world. As long as you don’t go outside during the summer, you’re good! BTW, this spring has been unseasonably hot- recordbreaking, I believe- and it should be in the 70’s now for a while, which is more normal. I believe you have to accept that you have to live somewhere (if you can’t move) and find the good things about it. Acceptance is the key, people. Find that little eclectic bookstore, that great indie-movie house, that cozy chatty coffee shop… get to know the people, make friends. You’ll have a much better experience of it than staying home and complaining about where you ARE. BE where you ARE.
I went to school in Albany, NY for four years (ok, almost five).
Blegh. The weather is awful. In the summer, it’s just as hot as in New York City (that is, mostly too hot), but in the winter it’s, on average, 15 degrees colder.
There’s nothing to do there except go to the mall and drink.
No one who lives there is happy to be in Albany. Anyone you see on the streets past, say, 8 PM is either drunk or on their way to a bar. The college kids tend to be of the worst sort. It’s just a very depressing place.
On the other hand, the municipal bus service is excellent. Covers every inch of town and the surrounding areas, only costs $1 (though us students rode for free), takes dollar bills instead of just coins, comfortable interiors, and the schedules are remarkably accurate.
Columbus, Ohio. The weather is terrible with cold and grey winters, rainy springs, and hot, humid summers. The model of urban planning is based on Detroit with a rotting deserted city surrounded by a ring of suburbs. The obsession with Ohio State Football by people who couldn’t get into a university if their life depended on it.
Well, there ain’t no smoggy smoke and there ain’t no telephone bills.
Trade ya! Nothing I’d rather do than bake in the heat. (What’s that, you say? That I’ve got no idea of how hot it is there? Lemme tell ya, I work in a foundry, playing with metal at 3000F and I love it.)
Oh, and Brynda, what is it you do? I’m here on the ground and might be able to pick up on something that you wouldn’t hear about.
I see your Detroit, and raise you a Kalamazoo. See, you at least have the option to go to Royal Oak or Birmingham to hang out. I have to drive to Grand-Frickin-Rapids or Chicago to find anything really good to do.
The city is in denial over the fact that it is a college town, and is doing everything it can to stay that way. Every time we, the students, have a meeting with city officials, it ends with them and local business owners saying, “But we like the character of our town!”
And, politically, Detroit is much more liberal than this side of the state. I can’t stand all of this conservative crap.
UncleBill and I hated Miami when we lived there–we’ve just moved to the Atlanta area and are loving it so far. There are lots of things to like about Miami: the climate is wonderful, there are many, many beutiful buildings and other sights, lots of fun things to do. The Keys are just a short drive away. The bad things outweighed the good for us, though.
The traffic SUCKS–and I know everybody likes to think the drivers where they live are the worst, but we’ve both lived in a bunch of different places, and never seen anything like what we saw in Miami, and this has been backed up by others. The problem is, you’ve got people there from a number of Latin American and Caribbean countries, all with different bad driving habits. It’s anarchy out there.
People are self-centered and selfish in the extreme, utterly oblivious to the existence of other people. I was amazed at how polite people are here in Georgia; they say “Please” and “Thank you”, “Excuse me” and “No, you first”. I rarely, if ever, heard those in Miami. There, I had to make my way around the people who’d parked their carts smack in the middle of the grocery store aisle or stopped immediately inside a door to ponder the mysteries of the universe or rummage around in their bag for something or have a conversation.
Corruption is rampant in local government; anyone making a bid at the Miami airport, which is run by the county council, has to build in to their bid a 15-20% “lobbyist fee” that pays the lobbyists to present their bid to the council. As a result of this, pretty much everything at the airport sucks.
The people who assume everyone speaks Spanish–not all, but it happened at least once a day that someone would come up to me and begin speaking to me in Spanish without asking “Habla Español?” As a matter of fact, I don’t–and that made it very difficult for me to find a job there. I understand the businesses who deal with Latin America need people who are bilingual, but many of the employers who insisted on it didn’t have that kind of need, they simply do it because they can get away with it. A recent survey showed that a large percentage of the immigrant population never bothers to learn English. I actually had an interest in learning Spanish before I moved there but got so resentful at the attitude there I didn’t.