As cosmopolitan a place like Chicago is…one only has to venture 20 miles south of downtown before evidence of the US hillybilly culture begins. It’s more or less disguised as ‘working class’ but the lack of education is manifested in the poor quality of life. I speak of the area from whence I came. The smart ones get out early…the rest are left to a life of drugs, alcohol, ignorance and misery.
My wife is from southern Illinois. Even Illinois, a state with some of the most progressive institutions in the country, is horribly backwards in most of the rural communities. Abject poverty runs amok.
Don’t get me started on the Ozarks. Same goes for most of the South.
Where in southern Illinois? I grew up in Alton which is on the other side of the river from St. Louis. The entire St. Louis metropolitan area is backwards, uneducated, etc.
Where in southern Illinois? I grew up in Alton which is on the other side of the river from St. Louis. The entire St. Louis metropolitan area is backwards, uneducated, etc.
You, my friend, are either running in entirely the wrong circles or have never ventured beyond the metropolitan area to acquire some perspective. STL is a progressive paradise compared to the rest of the state.
Where in southern Illinois? I grew up in Alton which is on the other side of the river from St. Louis. The entire St. Louis metropolitan area is backwards, uneducated, etc.
No surprises that St Louis Missouri is number 2. Missouri sounds like a backwater, if that fillum is anything to go by. Can any of you guys back up the rest of the cities that were named and shamed? Did the article get it wrong/right???
Flint Michigan? Isn’t that the “star” of the Michael Moore doco, Roger & Me?
No surprises that St Louis Missouri is number 2. Missouri sounds like a backwater, if that fillum is anything to go by. Can any of you guys back up the rest of the cities that were named and shamed? Did the article get it wrong/right???
Flint Michigan? Isn’t that the “star” of the Michael Moore doco, Roger & Me?
That list is laughable. And I didn’t even get the chance to run through all 10. The page was very slow to load and seemed more concerned with their ads than anything else.
Detroit…sure, downtown Detroit nothing to behold. But all in all, southeastern Michigan is great. No place else can claim to be the birthplace of Iggy and Stooges and the MC5.
Cleveland…wonderful town. Spawned some incredible artists and bands. It’s not glamourous, but it’s not glamourous in a good way.
Chicago? I can’t imagine anybody being more wrong about Chicago. Tourist season has already started and it’s not even 50 degrees yet.
The rest…I couldn’t be bothered with. After somebody makes the claim that Chicago is one of the 10 worst cites to visit in the US it sorta ruins their credibility.
Buffalo, Laredo, Little Rock top my list of worst cities. I think it’s important to remember that the most dismal places in the US are rural communities with less than 40,000 or so. It’s nothing but an endless trail of fast food chains and big box stores and most people look like they belong on Duck Dynasty.
Yes I can well imagine the “in between” cities (like the ones you’d pass on a highway on the way to somewhere “more important”) would be the worst cities.
Many of those mining/steel worker type towns in Pennsylvania seem horribly depressing. Ever seen The Deer Hunter?
St. Louis gets bad press for crime but there is a fairly large distortion in the statistics. When St. Louis was incorporated (the city actually seceded from the county), very specific boundaries were set beyond which it could not expand. So the city itself is only 66 square miles with 318,000 or so people- the 58th largest in the country. However if you look at the entire metropolitan area it is around 8,000 square miles (936 urban, the rest suburban or rural) with almost 3,000,000 people, the 19th largest in the country. Basically because of how the city was set up and artificially kept small instead of it being one big city like Chicago, you have one little city with 93 different satellite jurisdictions. So if you are looking at an area that has a higher level of lower income housing that has areas that have been in decline and others only newly on the upswing, you’re going to have an elevated crime rate, however that only represents a fraction of the area and population of the Greater St. Louis area. You dig? It’s a bum rap.
Yeah that list is silly…zero cred on that article…
Chicago is a wonderful city with great people…I’ve been there several times and have always had a blast…
I went to St Louis and saw this big concert there with the Flaming Lips…had a wonderful time…cool people and good vibes the whole time…rode that fucking metro link all over the god damn place…
some of the other cities on there get a bad rap too…
The guy who wrote that article is clueless and has obviously never been to much of the US…there are places in this country that make those cities look like fucking Shangri-La…
Buffalo is like so many other northern cities that were once thriving manufacturing centers and then lost their manufacturing base.
Example: Northwest Indiana was once the center of a huge steel industry. That raw material was then trucked over to south suburban Chicago were it was processed into products like…diesel locomotives, crankshafts and bridge trusses…you name it. Then the Japanese steel industry undercut the US steel industry rendering all those manufacturing plants useless.
It was a double whammy.
The US no longer has a healthy manufacturing base. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We’re now a service-based industry. We’re going nowhere fast.
Oh, also, what’s that place with all the mormons in it? The place where they have, like, three wives each or something? That’s some spooky assed shit.
The state of Utah. They no longer practice polygamy. perhaps some of those towns that are in between the in betweener towns might but mormons no longer practice that.
There have been a few compounds that have been broken up that practiced that. they all look like they are out of frontier days with the way they dress.
As for the state as a whole, if you just drive through on the major highways it is not great scenery, lots of ugly billboards, but we have one of the most diverse ranges of ecosystems in the country, some of which is unique to the state. The Ozarks waterways are actually thrillingly beautiful, the problem is the residents really aren’t too far off from what you see in Deliverance.
Chicago? I can’t imagine anybody being more wrong about Chicago. Tourist season has already started and it’s not even 50 degrees yet.
Aaaaah…yeah I dunno. I spent 2 weeks in Chicago and had a few problems. People I ran into were kind of burly and prickly. A few “the fuck are you looking at / doing here ?” type incidents soiled my view of Chicago. But fuck me they have some good pizza pie there. Went to one part of the city which was fairly Italian in look and feel. Must have gained about 5 kilos that week as I went and tried as many of they eateries as I could. It’s pizza heaven I’m telling you.
Maybe I have to spend more time there and give it a second shot. I’m going back to the states in a year so maybe I’ll check it out.
My favourite cities would be Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland Oregon. Minneapolis folks fucken rule! Made some of the best friends ever - still keep in touch. Scenery wise though you cannot go past Maine or Northern California.
Worst place - various parts of Florida. Frenchtown in particular. Never go there I’m telling you. I’m lucky to have survived a 10 day stay in that hell hole. Even a 30 minute stop at a roadside diner turned out to be a lesson in why not to fuck with the locals of Frenchtown Florida.
My wife and I stopped in West Virginia today to break up our road trip. We’re staying for the night. I doubt we’re going to see anything real backwater though; we’re in Charleston. Looked pretty at night. Maybe on our way out we’ll stop in one of those mountain towns with fifteen houses built on top of each other and look for some bathtub gin.
Florida
Georgia (northern)
Ohio
New York (northern)
but
West Virginia takes the cake. “Gummo” was filmed in Nashville, and that’s only partly trashy. There’s some other towns in TN that are on par with the above states.
What? The whole state? Surely it can’t be all bad?
Can it?[/reply]
No.South Florida should not be lumped in with Central Fl. and the panhandle…worlds apart…Miami is like it’s own country…polar opposite to places in the panhandle…and there are some beautiful places up both coasts…anytime people say the entire state of Florida,it’s immediately obvious that they haven’t seen the entire state…