What is so horrible about Brockton? I always hear this from Massachusettians.
I’ve never been there, but it was the location featured in the suspense film Crush, and it looked OK to me. Right on the river, old, pretty houses, some of them quite large. It seemed like a fairly upper middle class community, clean and well-kept.
Greeley. Or perhaps Craig.
Pueblo, at least, has a nice little zoo.
Um, that was the mall you were at.
Oklahoma!
Okmulgee.
I predict a Great 8 finish.
Oh I don’t know, I think it’s Lancaster you should be haytin’ on (I live there). We should actually just nominate the whole Palmdale/Lancaster complex.
(Points to location: “You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”)
Gibsonton, Florida.
Shithole if there ever was one. However, what do you expect from a town founded by side show freaks?
On behalf of the (great) state of Michigan, I nominate **Flint **- former home of General Motors.
I nominate Waco. That town’s only two claims to fame are Dr.Pepper and Branch Davidians.
I lived there for about two years. The high point was when I got exposed to rabies.
I came in to nominate Waco also. You left out it’s third claim to fame, Baylor University, which I guess is a nice enough school, but the rest of the town leaves much to be desired.
Palmdale? That’s a perfectly unexceptionable desert town in LA county; not anywhere near the pit that Bakersfield is.
is there a minimum population requirement, or at least a “it’s gotta be generally known” requirement? I know a lot of places in Kentucky to nominate, but they’re mostly really little.
I’d nominate Evanston Wyoming over Rock Springs. Or Rawlins as a tie-breaker.
I’d nominate Aurora, Colorado, or second the nomination for Greeley, over Pueblo. I like Pueblo… great Mexican food, friendly people, and areas of cool Victorian architecture. Just don’t judge it from the interstate.
I’ll second Youngstown, at least partially because I don’t want Cleveland dragged into this. :rolleyes: Of course, as a Cleveland child of the 60’s, I should nominate Parma instead. 
I’ll also nominate Shiprock, New Mexico, unless it’s too small.
True, quite true, but have you ever been to Fontana? That’s my entry.
My Kansan girlfriend nominates Garden City for the great state of Kansas! Unless you like cities with lots of meat-packing plants. Especially in the summer.
It’s not as unexceptional as it used to be.
Although I’ll agree that Fontana is quite bad. I had one occasion to go there and I pray I never do again.
FWIW, the Casino Queen in East St Louis has the loosest slot machines in the country.
What’s wrong with Rock Springs, WY? IIRC, the scenery is nice, if a little rocky.
I second this nomination. Flint’s five times worse than Detroit.
What’s the criteria for “worst?” I worked in Jefferson City, MO for about six months, and pretty much wanted to slit my wrists by the end of it out of boredom and depression, so I’d like to nominate Jefferson City. However, if we’re looking at crime, economic depression and pollution, I imagine there are worse places in Missouri.
However, I’m still gonna toss Jeff Shitty, Misery into the pool of worst cities.
For Texas, my nominee is the town of Plains.
I have never seen the movie but I suspect it was shot off-location. Like most locations in Massachusetts, it can be superficially pretty in a Massachusetts kind of way. However, Brockton is what some might consider to be a distant Boston suburb but it is mainly a small city left to neglect in its own right. There is nothing upper middle class about it although there are probably some decent homes on the fringes. Brockton is a study case in what happens when the traditional population mostly abandons a town and the lower cost of living starts to attract degenerates from all around in a vicious cycle and that starts to feed itself.
Lawrence is basically the same except worse. A traditionally industrial town was crushed when the industries left and the poor, desperate, and criminal canabilized the whole place for themselves with little traditional structure to keep things under control.
Seeing as how I live there…I came into this thread to say Youngstown.
I’d say Aurora or Greeley as well. Pueblo isn’t at all bad for a small city. Colorado is tough, there isn’t a city or town with really bad crime, and the poorest towns are often located in some of the most gorgeous scenery in the country.
There must be some eastern plains town with a feed lot and a bunch of meth addicts, but I’ve never seen it. Those eastern plains folks are some of the nicest I’ve ever met. Some of the gas towns in the northwest don’t seem all that great, but drive five miles and you’re in a Marlboro commercial.
We surrender.
The Southern states are indeed impoverished in places and very rich in others but they have long been that way and that is part of their character and the reason why states like Mississippi have a disproportionate influence world-wide on things like music and culture.
My home state of Louisiana has plenty of poor, racially segregated towns but they tend to live in a quiet homeostatus unlike some of the poor, Northern industrialized cities and blend into interesting if not contrasting cultures.
For Louisiana, I nominate Lake Providence, Louisiana. It is one of, if not the most, poorest towns in the country. The median household income is less than $17,000. Sitting right on the Mississippi River, it is one of the closet places you will find to mimic white overlordship over an extremely poor black population of the days gone by.
