I’ve written before about my home town of Welch, WV. In terms of where the town is now I’d say the only thing it has on Battle Mountain is vegetation. It has rural poverty, a non-existent economy, drugs, crime, pollution, isolation, a blighted downtown, blatant racism, and I see from the Wiki page that the city is being sued in federal court because the chief of police prevented a gay man’s friend from giving him CPR because of HIV fears, so add ignorance and homophobia to the list. The last time I was there was for my mother’s funeral, and I expect that will be the last time I will ever go there.
Must be true. I keep meeting people from Flint who have moved to Atlanta.
So does this mean you don’t support the troops?
I would add Wahiawa, Hawaii to this list (Schofield Barracks). I always think about Army brats thinking “Yay, we’re moving to Hawaii!”, only to find themselves in a decaying, dead, ex-pineapple town in Central Oahu. The only industries appear to be dry cleaners and patch-sewing places. And strip bars, where you tip the dancers to leave your field of vision.
Yes, it’s Hawaii, but its Hawaii’s other armpit (along with Hilo).
Nothing is all that bad when the script is on your side.
Let’s add:
*Leesville, Louisiana (Fort Polk)
*Killeen, Texas (Fort Hood)
*Lawton, Oklahoma (Fort Sill)
And I’ll second the nod to Colorado Springs as being rather pleasant.
I think that the people who aren’t voting for E. St. Louis have never been there. Hollywood would use it as a cheap alternative for post-apocalyptic/war-ravaged settings, except their security costs would probably make it cheaper to film in downtown Baghdad, or Mogadishu.
You know, you think there would be some sort of market for adventure tourism in E St Louis. Rollin’ round in some big ole Hummer, checking out the gritty underside of urban America. T-shirts proclaiming survival etc.
mm
Mount Vernon, New York, a tiny historic old city on the border of Westchester County with a few blocks of fine old mansions left but a place that can best be described as ‘tired’.
The railway stations, some dating from the 1860s, still have peeling NEW YORK CENTRAL signs everywhere; the schools suck like black holes; the industrial sector on the shores of the Bronx River employs a lot of people and supports a large mostly-black working and lower middle class, but is zoned in classic Rust Belt Urban Decay style; said folks have to contend with dirty potholed streets, bad fire and police services, and missing streetsigns and traffic lights as the city government in the grandiose Gilded-Age City Hall remains in the grip of what can best be described as a series of African-American Boss Tweeds (without his desire to build big pretty buildings).
My folks’ church is up there, a little country-style place dating from 1897 now surrounded by a shabby if striving neighborhood. My friend Marsha (who was locked in a two-year battle with an absentee landlord about much-needed repairs while an indifferent city government looked on) runs the food pantry there, and it’s flourishing. I helped her out with putting together Thanksgiving packages for people and we gave out over 500 turkeys and trimmings.
Great things are afoot, if you listen to Mayor Davis’ gummint, but all I can say that, even though I love my borough and its many charms, there aren’t a lot of places where you can cross INTO the Bronx and immediately the home values go up, the streets are cleaner, the playgrounds don’t have weeds, the schools are better, and the houses are larger and better maintained. 
I don’t know about it’s crime rate or economy, but perhaps you are thinking of Lilliput?
Is THAT where everybody went? :smack:
Jumping in late here, but I just read this:
Did you ever stop and consider that a lot of black Americans have some very good reasons to have bad memories about the South? And those reasons had nothing to do with their ancestors. The South that black people experienced was very different than the South that white people lived in.
I am a Louisiana resident and went to college in New Orleans. Katrina was almost certainly the worst disaster to hit this nation. Vast swaths of land are still abandoned across a huge area.
However, New Orleans can never truly be terrible because it is literally one of the great historic, cultural, musical, and cuisine centers of the world. The areas that got destroyed were the low-lying, undesirable lands. The French Quarter, Garden District, and Uptown areas had some major hassle on their hands but they came out just fine. Southern Louisiana still has a major fight on its hand but New Orleans is New Orleans. It cannot be replaced anywhere else and the people are fighting hard to keep it alive.
Anyone can visit there now for a genuinely great experience.
Couldn’t help but comment on how truly sad this is and how much it is directly responsible for the current state of the union. This ever-popular tendency in middle-America to embrace the ignorance of their fathers and grandfathers (or mothers) and be proud of it to boot is spreading like herpes in the 80’s and is much more alarming. Mostly because i just don’t see the PSA that can begin to curb the epidemic. Surgeon General’s warning perhaps? The Surgeon General has determined that your uninformed, pompous, small-minded and mean-spirited mental attitude may cause the demise of the world as we know it. Nah- they wouldn’t get it! Scares me in all honesty. Oh and just as a side note - the further inland you get into a country the more rubes you find. Coastal communities, even those on the small side, are much less known for at least this particular aspect of unwanted human behavior. I guess being landlocked limits your ability to THINK!
LOL
This is quite literally true. Along I-5 through Stockton and parts North, you want to be sure to close your windows and turn on the recirculated air, or you’ll be smelling Stockton for days. The stockyards, swampy bay backwater, and tire-tarped manure piles stink to high heaven, providing a tangible, sensible echo of the sickening greed and cronyist zoning insanity in Central CA that has lead to half-million-dollar price tags for the dumpy adjacent tract homes. Asparagus ice cream is just a bonus.
There’s a joke around these parts along the lines of: what’s the best thing about Stockton? Answer: you can’t smell it from here.
Well, don’t sell yourself short, Max. Anyway, from my experience with Lubbock, I WOULD say that it had nowhere to go but up, but then it was never as bad as Plains. But then again, that’s like saying being burned at 500 degrees is better than being burned at 1000 degres.
I’m personally familiar with some of these places. Although I love New Mexico, I wouldn’t disagree with your Las Vegas and Alamagordo choices, and I agree completely with your Clovis and Gallup picks, but I have to say I like El Paso a lot. So does the wife. And I thought Pueblo not too bad, although I was mainly passing through.
And I still get a creepy feeling down my spine at the mere mention of the word “Lubbock.”
The military usually sets up where land is cheap, which leaves out major metropolitan areas. And most coastal areas (the Navy’s a different matter) The Air Force, especially, likes Really Flat Land.
San Antonio has several (still active) bases/forts. But the Presidio of San Antonio de Bexar was built in 1718, so the town has had time to grow far beyond “armpit” status.
My only pre-Texas memories go back to a SAC base near Rapid City, SD. Not one of the great cultural centers.
Agree with Wahiawa. It’s just a place to get through to reach the North shore. But hey, it’s not as bad as the Kalihi section of Honolulu.
However, I always though Hilo a nice town.
Thank you for the link. As a result, I learned THIS:
If it weren’t for the variety of knowledge available on the SDMB, I never would’ve heard of the ISWFACE.
Perhaps the entire state of New Jersey should be nominated. How could such a small state have so many towns mentioned here? I count East Orange, Elizabeth, Camden, and Mountain Lakes, more nominees than any other state.
As for me, I nominate Marion, OH. The local school district was so badly mismanaged the state had to take it over. (Example: the school board voted to cut staff to save money, then voted to buy a piece of property for $1 million-plus that it had no clear use for.)
The largest job category in this place has to be “prison worker.” The county jail, a state prison, and a federal prison are all right next to each other on straight, flat stretch of road just outside town–call it Misery Mile. Marion is where Warren Harding–considered by many historians to be the worst president in U.S. history–is from. They have a beautiful white marble memorial to him that is the only nice thing in town. I worked as an intern for the local paper one summer, and I concluded I had rarely seen a more paranoid and ignorant populus. One time a woman called the police because one of our photographers was taking pictures of a house on fire-from the street. I went back there years later and nothing had changed. I went to a local watering hole to meet a source who turned out to a teenager. The establishment was in a building that appeared to be condemned. This was in the middle of downtown, within sight of City Hall.
Since several people have mentioned military towns, I thought I would nominate Columbia, South Carolina. It’s near Fort Jackson. I found it to be mean, ugly and depressing, in a state that isn’t too hot to start with.
I didn’t mind Wahiawa. Lots of fast-food joints where you could grab a bite to eat before catching the bus to Honolulu. Since I lived on-base, I didn’t have to deal with the overpriced off-base housing.