LEAST favorite city in the USA

I doubt there is a worse place than Camden. It would be a challenge to find ONE redeeming feature about that city.

One redeeming feature about Camden - it is near Philly?

LA is shit, anywhere in Nevada is shit. And NYC city sucks just because New Yorkers are so arrogant about how awesome it is.

I love these threads.

All the people from small towns talk about how large cities are "shit" based on a brief period of time they visited and are amazed at the "arrogance" of "all" the people that live there.

Instead of trying to find the same familiar things from your town, have you every considered exploring things other than tourist destinations when you travel? Nobody is asking you to move, just appreciate the differences in other parts of the country.

Ever notice on these threads there is no mention or debate about any museums or other cultural destinations in NY, Philly, Chicago, LA or San Francisco?

There is life outside of Applebees, mudslides at TGI Friday's and having a trampoline in your backyard. Just give it a chance.

I usually like going to new places. I have a good time going to any new place really, even if I'm not necessarily going to hurry back.

That said, I was not pleased with Lincoln, Nebraska.

MI Native wrote:

Flint, Flint, Flint!

I can't believe no one has nominated Flint, Michigan yet! I grew up less than 30 minutes from there and it has been in decline for practically as long as I can remember.

The high point of the year for Flint is the Crim. I mean seriously, a mid-level road race (at best) is this cities big tourist draw.

I won't even go into the gangs, crime, filth, poverty, obesity and utter reliance on old gas guzzling Oldsmobiles & Buicks...

I second this. Flint is a sweaty, nasty armpit of a city.

Buffalo is paradise compared to Syracuse.

The one redeeming aspect of Camden NJ is that Aquarium, which is nice...at least it was when it opened. I haven't been there lately.

Def Lowell, Mass baby. take it to the bank!

dean moriarty wrote:

I doubt there is a worse place than Camden. It would be a challenge to find ONE redeeming feature about that city.

It's very close to Philly, closer than Gary is to Chicago. I've never been to Camden, but Gary is dominated by HUGE, HIDEOUS steel mills and is absolutely dead everywhere. There's nothing to do that I saw other a convention centre and the bus terminal. I was there on a Monday at 6 and thought it was a Sunday because of how few lights I saw.

Flint and Gary are in classes of their own.

However, I do give honorable mention to Charleston, IL and Ogden, UT. I've also never seen the sun in Blacksburg, VA.

Any city or town (usually mid-sized and in the middle of suburbia) that features the same story and the same landscape: overpopulated public schools, poorly planned roads, and construction because we never have enough Wal-Marts and Linens-N-Things.

It's quite disturbing how almost every city in America these days has the same old crap...On The Border and/or Chili's, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Subway, Staples, Barnes & Noble, and Discount Tires. Pretty bland if you ask me.

alsdldfs wrote: Ever notice on these threads there is no mention or debate about any museums or other cultural destinations in NY, Philly, Chicago, LA or San Francisco?

Well it is by design a negative thread, concerning one's LEAST favorite city. As a NYer who loves it here, I also freely admit this city has a very very high concentration of negatives. For some of us that is of course offset by a combination of positives that exists in no other US city (LA and SF are closest, each with a different flavor and balance; maybe DC, haven't been in decades; Philthydelphia is NYC's sixth borough) - but as with any strong flavor, sure, you'd *expect* lots of people to hate it.

It's a lot harder to muster strong loathing for, say, Portland. Though not impossible if you're a slightly ADD east coaster: the uniform sluggish pace - in traffic, in supermarket aisles, in speech - of the almost uniformly stoned populace coupled with unwavering deferential "no alpha males here!" friendliness and that damnable Pacific Northwest self-congratulation for a ban on uniforms like say a suit and tie (nay, we're so egalitarian we all wear pretty much the same uniform)... well, yeah, even Portland can tempt you to slug someone just to wipe the self-satisfied smile off his face. So I take that back, and also idly wonder which American city of any size is the least dislikeable?

I know there will be lots of naysayers, but I LOVE living in Denver.

Harrisburg, PA: I challenge you to find a decent restaurant there that is not a chain. This place just saps the life right out of you in general.

Las Vegas: I can't imagine living there. Pure hell.

Colorado City, CO: no explanation necessary.

Gary Indiana does smell like shit.

roboto wrote:

Harrisburg, PA: I challenge you to find a decent restaurant there that is not a chain. This place just saps the life right out of you in general.

I interviewed for a job in Harrisburg a few weeks ago. It seems like the type of city that I was talking about in a previous post on this thread. A city that is big enough to have the traffic, pollution, and crime of a city, but too small to attract the great restaurants, cultural events, etc that you would expect to find in a major city. When I asked my interviewer how he liked the Harrisburg area, he said that it's come a long way in the last few years and that it's a really nice place to live. I don't know if I believe him. I'm going back for a second interview later this week, but in all honesty, I think I might rather stick around here and wait tables if the Harrisburg job ends up being my only offer.

Of the places I've been, Houston wins hands down. I'm sure there are smaller towns that are worse, but the incredible part about Houston is that a city that big can have absolutely no appeal at all. And don't get me started on the people who live there. Dear God, man. Why don't we give that dump back to Mexico?

roboto wrote:

Harrisburg, PA: I challenge you to find a decent restaurant there that is not a chain. This place just saps the life right out of you in general.

I drove through Harrisburg on the way to Amish country one day. We hit Harrisburg right at rush hour on a Friday night and it was the only urban area we'd seen all day since Buffalo at 7 am. We'd been driving through the fall beauty of Western Pennsylvania all day, and then got lost in Harrisburg's ugliness. I didn't see anything I liked there at all, just a bunch of boring, ugly buildings scattered around.

Sorry to anyone who lives there, I just had a really bad experience.

I had a perfectly adequate Vietnamese lunch there in some family-run joint (thanks to my Garmin navigator's search capability, demonstrating that GPS technology can actually be useful to consumers and not just an excuse to throw $$$ at some gee-whiz gadget that merely distracts from the real task), passing through on the final day of a cross-country drive a few years back. So at least it's not literally 100% chain restaurants.

Otherwise, yeah, nothing else we saw inspired us to stop the car and put down roots there instead of continuing home to Brooklyn.