The "Time to Slam a City Based on Your Negative Impression" Thread!

You are only allowed to slam a city that you have lived in for less than three months -or- that you merely visited for two weeks or less.

I'm going to slam San Francisco. It is crammed with dingy shops selling the cheapest plastic crap on the planet, and with tiny greasy-floored Asian food shops serving God-knows-what. No one speaks English and the prices are exorbitant.

Yes, this is based on a few-hours visit to Chinatown. But hey. That's enough to "diss" the entire city, no?

Go for it! Bash Huntington Beach for all I care! Bash any city you've never lived in!

Buncha rich, snobby, fake, coke-heads.

Maybe the quickest way from one side of LA to the other would be to mail yourself :evilgrin:

sorry

...

that *IS* Cleveland

But I'm not allowed to slam it, since I once had a girlfriend who lived there whom I visited for more than three hours.

Shitty place, though, that Billings. Maybe even the worst place in Montana. And that's saying something.

:P

There was nothing for me to eat at the Ohio State Fair and I never could find the booth selling Kucinich campaign gear. Also, people kept looking me like I'd sprouted a second head- apparently they'd never seen a woman carrying a kid in a sling before. :shrug:

The Whitest man in 'merica today....

Columbus use to be a testing ground for "new" products aimed at middle america....

Take OSU away and you have insurance companies and a mess o' republicans....

:scared:

next to nuthin'

Columbus is full of it.

Pampers were first test marketed in Peoria. In Columbus it was Depends.

Dirty, smelly, and expensive. This far outweighed the cool pictures I took.

it's full of wanna-be cowboys, driving gas-guzzling mega-trucks with fake balls on the trailor hitch. The weather is god-fucking-awful (do all of you people grow gills?). And the nearest beach boasts water the color of chocolate milk. :puke:

Don't drink the air... :rofl:

Just by the gills comment, I know you've actually been there.

I know, lived there for 20 years.

They park their oil-dripping pick-em up trucks on the beach and sit in the cab drinking beer. It's like the opposite of , say, Zuma Beach.

And yeah, we used to do an impression of the water: pour coffee in a bowl, and add toilet paper and cannelope rinds.

Spring - Buildings turn green from the constant rain

Summer - Leaves turn brown and crisp in the sun.

Autumn - it is safe to step outside of air conditioned buildings, beach air is colder than the water.

Winter - asphalt freezes solid on the streets, and it's time to start mowing the lawn.

Winter - Mud slides
Spring - Earthquakes
Summer - Riots
Fall - Fires

:shrug:

Otherwise, I'm with ya.

nt

is it one of those lovely urban legends?

Northern California's seasons are Floods, Mudslides, Smog, and Fires. :bounce:

You don't have smog.

People from Northern California always tell me that only LA has smog. Would they lie?

They say the brown haze in the northern part of the state isn't smog, it's "mellowness"

If there's a big earthquake when the weather is blistering hot, you'll hear people talk about earthquake weather.

No one seems to mention it if the weather is nice, or rainy, or cold. :shrug:

earthquake weather?

Is it scientific or just an urban legend-y thing? (says girl who had no clue there was a weather component whatsoever) ;)

it's utterly absurd. there is no way -- and the Cal Tech scientists remind us of this every time there's a big one when the weather is hot -- that the atmospheric temperature could heat the earth's crust deeply enough to affect the faults.

:hi:

Don't tell them that!

This is one of those stories we use to amuse naive visitors.

Next thing you will be telling them that grunion ARE real.

1. Summer

and

2. Christmas

I speak from experience - I live in Houston. :(

I have to go there Wednesday - to see Al Gore!!! :bounce:

In my experience as a Texan, only people FROM Houston, like Houston. They think we're provincials who can't appreciate the cosmopolitain-ness of it. Far from it. It's a cess pool. Did I mention that? Except for some museums (Fort Worth beats Houston, IMHO), and pro sports (blaaaah), Austin has everything Houston has plus a better climate, less oil-baptized corporate whores, better architecture, hills, THE major university in the region, and LIBERALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Houston sucks! :D

:hi:

:hi: :D

but your post covers it.

Really, it will.

They could give a shit that a major American city was lost to a natural disaster exacerbated by poorly constructed flood preventatives as a result of republican funding cutbacks because they believe lazy people lived there.

.... a really depressing and depressed city :(

Damn. Sorry to all Detroit DU'ers, but that place is a rundown shithole.

Detroit sucks.

detroit is the bomb

:hi:

What a crock!

At least there are nightbuses.

Mark.

What a stinking, speed trap, rat hole. Long story, long long time ago.

Suffice it to say that my brothers and I peed on the cop cars while our dad was in the court house paying a bogus ticket.

Chicago and KC sucked. The best city? New York! Battle Creek Michigan is kinda cool too...

any more rednecks into Calgary? :crazy:

in Deadmonton. :hi:

There are a few other Calgarians posting here: CanadianSocialist, Ironflange (haven't seen him in awhile)...I'm sure there's a few more.

Just kidding, and your right about the redneckiness here. Although we are getting better.

I'm often sorry to say it! :rofl:

Except on a perfect day like today, eating supper along the River Valley, feeding the valley gopher, watching the ducks swim by, and the gulls flying overhead...:)

Rains constantly, and overrun with those hideously ugly northern europeans. And they eat caviar there too! Bah!

Such a progressive, beautiful country. Länge leve Sverige!

However as Americans wearing anti-bush regalia, we met lots and lots more who despise the man.

I was in Mallorca many years ago and I was staying at a hotel that was full of Swedes. I got up early one morning and went to the pool to catch some rays. I fell asleep for about an hour and when I woke up, I was surrounded by beautiful Swedish women!!! I thought I had died in my sleep and had gone to heaven. Not only that, but most of them were topless!!

Skies so dark during the day from pollution you would think it was night time.

So much of the industry has shut down that the air quality has actually improved, a little. Don't get me wrong, I still make a point of rolling up the windows before I drive through Gary. The smell of the steel mills still seems to linger.

Amarillo. PU that place has a NAS-T aroma.

What a Genius idea to put a city on the shore of a lake full of undrinkable water!? It's so bland, so gridded.... I'm all for grids that make sense, but sometimes, your grid can make TOO MUCH sense. So much, that it all runs together.

"Ya, I'm at 4500 W 2600 S."

"Wha? 4600 S?"

etc....

Here's a clue (from Seattle of all places): roads going NS (or EW) should have numbers and be called Avenues, and those going EW (or NS) should have names and be called Streets.

Very bad place.

But there again, I can't say that since I spent 36 hours there.

Once you get used to the SLC grid, you can't naviugate anywhere else. The whole Salt Lake valley is wonderfully easy to find things in--if it weren't for all the crappy drivers.

Having lived in London, it struck me as underwhelming, all too new, too American, not as glamorous as I'd expected. The people I met through friends were all somewhat New-York-centric (and this coming from a TEXAN! haha), but what they were so excited about was beyond me.

San Francisco is WAY cooler than New York.

NYC wasn't bad, it just didn't live up to the hype.

I had the opposite reaction in Mexico City, I thought it was amazing!

haha

But with several, big people who speak fluent Spanish!

Glad to hear I am not the only one underwhelmed with NYC. I got flamed big time for posting about it, from my blog, back in March. A bunch of pure vitriol from New Yorkers. Made me wonder how they'd manage to avoid a stroke if they got bashed as much, and as unfairly, as Texas. :shrug:

but before I went I was told by New Yorkers it would be like super-rad fantastic on wheels with Disneyland on steroids. It was just a city as far as I could tell, nothing more, nothing less, but it certainly didn't live up to the hype.

Mexico City I found totally awesome. It can be dangerous, but I think if you don't act like a tourist, then you'll be fine. Be aware of your surroundings of course, but don't be terrified...

And to think it's called the "Capital of the World"!

Where in the world did you ever stay in NY to give you such an
opinion?

Times Square??

However, the touristy parts suck a whole lot. Mostly because it's overpriced and filled with tourists acting lost and thinking they've really seen NYC, when they're really just holding up the sidewalk and getting ripped-off.

That's why I asked if they stayed in Times Square.
Tourists think that Times Square IS New York....I had to go there the other day..saw all the tourists with maps in their faces looking lost.

They also think "Tavern on the Green" and "One if by Land" are "real NYC restaurants.
I guess that's what the travel itinerary tells them what to do, where to go.

Boring as hell. Hated it.

Now they're getting the NASCAR hall of fame....be still my heart! :eyes:

the way I feel about is that we're better off that way. I'd rather have all the tourists filling up Times Square and South Street Seaport and leaving the rest of the city to those of us who actually live here and appreciate it.

I don't live there, but I do cross the river fairly regularly and I would like to live there eventually.

I think we can extend "us" to the greater NYC area

Prefab, conservative, stifling and sterile.

you are correct

if it was picked up wholesale & moved to the west coast, though, it would be pretty. there are nice buildings there. or there were (not a big town for historic preservation).

except for Beale Street.
Assholes everywhere....and strangely; a HUGE preponderance of crossdressers! NOT that that's bad; it just suprised me at the time.

Was there in 1995 to teach a class for my employer, and the downtown area was one big boarded-up mess. I was teaching the class in an area of downtown with several mid-rise buildings surrounding a huge courtyard (can't remember the name), and the whole place was boarded-up, litter-strewn, and graffiti-covered. I could not believe the cab driver had dropped me at the right place!

mikey_the_rat

The most boring place in CT. Even the crime is boring. The people bore you to tears. I feel sorry for it in a way. Cuz it can't be New Haven and neither can Bridgeport be New Haven. They are all jealous of the great New Haven ambience and culture.

I was only there to see Sinatra before he died. The whole scene depressed me. The natives hate the tourists and treat them with disdain and I can't blame them. Some of the tourists are just awful.

I never want to go there again.

Never before or since have I ever found a place that I hated worse than Xuan Loc Vietnam, circa 1971. At least, in Xuan Loc, I could carry an M-79 grenade launcher, use it frequently, and if I found anything that a 40mm grenade couldn't take out, I could always call in artillery and air strikes. Them thar local police and Texas Rangers tend to frown on such things.

Not only does it have "all hell for a basement" as Rudyard Kipling said but it has all hell for every other room in the house.

What a dirty, gross city

...their shithole of a city is better than Chicago. :rofl:

To what else to you expect us northeastern hicks to cling?

:P

Gorham?



Brattleboro? :shrug:

and I never met so many miserable,unfriendly people. It is, by far the easiest place in the United States to get laid ( seriously folks...you can be the ugliest person in the world and not have any appendages, but show some money and you are set ). Not to mention their stinking crime rate......

Just say it out loud...

ox-NARD

ok-SNARD

Yuck. It sounds like something I'd want to wipe off the bottom of my shoe.

Sleazy, cheap, gaudy, noisy, and WAY overdone. An absolutely meretricious, kitschy hellhole.

:puke:

"humor" in the Lounge these days (or more fittingly,"daze")


Here's the Crowned Heads of my FAVORITE CITY...so nice, they named it twice..

NY,NY











BTW: J.A.F.O.

gray hair and a receding hairline, he looks like a kid.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6D91230F934A3575BC0A961948260

Apparently in Ireland everyone drives on the wrong side of the road.

I stopped there once for gas and listened to clerk talking to a bunch of teenagers. They were rating the towns they'd been to on how white each one was. Houston was black. Sugarland was alright, it was real white. Etc.

To be fair, one of the teenagers glanced back at me a couple of times with an "I'm sorry, could you get me the hell away from these jackasses?" kind of expression.

And Houston rocks!! So there!

Is known as the hotbed of racism and Klan activity in Texas. Until the last decade, they had NO bladck residents.

where several black families moved in as an attempt to integrate the area. They were all run out prett quickly. The last one to leave moved to Houston, where he was mysteriously shot soon afterwards. Haven't heard if they've solved that crime yet.

It's also near where James Byrd was dragged to death.

And this isn't the 70s or 60s. This was the 90s.

So yeah, not a pretty place, people wise. They vote overwhelmingly Republican. Surprise.

Plus, my dad got ripped off on some mechanic work there once while travelling! I hang on to these things for too long! :)

Not as famous as Vidor, but, obviously, equally shit.

What a shithole.

:scared:

compared to Spokane

No, really. It sucks a LOT.

Visitors and residents both tend to be wholly unimpressed with this shitheap in the desert.

The only Southern city I would call "Lovecraftian." Everything seems to be crumbling around the edges, everyone has noticed, and no one cares.

Nothing but insurance companies there, only two "good" hotels and even fewer restaurants. They roll up the sidewalks at 8:00 PM and good golly I couldn't get outta there fast enough!!

Bake

one forever fucking long concrete strip mall and not one freaking tree...

Just kidding!

The area around Broadway is awesome and the older residential areas are nice. it's the suburban crap on the outskirts of town that's ugly. Oh, and whoever had the bright idea of puting the Moorhead City Hall in the Moorhead Center Mall should be shot!

Nothing but a swamp-assed shitbox stripmall hellhole, populated by the most vile of all subhumanity and idiot tourists.

Never left without a splitting headache.
I hope they have cleaned up the air and improved the interstate on ramps since I last spent time there.

The air was just foul and dense with humidity, and the ramps to the expressways are about 12 feet long so you can't accellerate at all.

My ex husband's family was all from there and I had some fairly unpleasant stays there too, but mostly I just hated the air and humidity.

I spent some time growing up in Louisville. Love that city. But then again, I like the sweat inducing humidity here in the Ohio Valley.

unbelievably cruddy...we would drive up through New Albany into Indiana, look back down over the city and you couldn't see the city lights at night in the summer. Smog, ugh. Paint factories, refineries, distilleries, etc.

LIke I said before I always had a serious headache when I was there.

I lived in Nashville and far southern Ky for many year so I totally understand humidity.

Problem w/sweat inducing humidity is it doesn't evaporate off very well.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/using/useful-info/technical/24.asp
The bars close too early as well!

Berlin kicks their ass. 24 hours of transportation and there are always some bars open for getting drunk. Even if it is a specialty "morning bar"

The company I work for is based there, and I've had to go twice for training. Cleveland sucks massively. :puke:

Oh, and I hate Gary, Indiana. :puke: It's the runner-up.

Jesus on a Ritz with Velveeta! If I lived there, I'd be dead. From suicide.

Flat, hot, oil wells, no culture, dumbass rednecks -- now THAT is Bush country. :puke:

all the museums close early, the streets are so narrow & bumpy that i could barely get my H1 down them, and the citizens don't even have the courtesy to SPEAK ENGLISH!

oh, and Houston. though the DeMenil collection & the Rothko Chapel are SWEET.

that place can't possibly be as shitty as it seems.

The aquarium there is nice though.

It's like Chernobyl, but with crack rocks instead of uranium.

:rofl:

I remember absolutely nothing about it except that you could buy a steak at a little stand right after you got off the plane in the airport. I cannot recall another single detail about the city, that's how boring it was.

Liberal on the outside...

Oh hell, I'd better leave it at that.

n/t

your way to end up in Hell.

Purgatory is in Bremerton WA.

Dallas makes me want to piss on it. It is vulgar, ugly and representative of American business arrogance seeping into everyday life on a massive scale.

Fuck Dallas and its megachurches.

not a fan of Dallas either.

It's sole reason for existence is to provide motel rooms and chain restaurants for old people going to Branson. Wherever you go, you will be the youngest person there. Your age does not matter.

I don't like the state of Tennessee in general much, but I was in Murfreesboro for about 20 minutes and it was awful. Even the name is redneck. If you have to go through the city, or even the state, I don't recommend stopping for any reason.

Talk about a one horse town. Population about three thousand something. I worked for a radio station there years ago. The bank would not even cash my paycheck cause the station was broke most of the time. The rent was horrible, and I could not use the tennis courts simply because I was not Mormon.

The station I worked at was a country western station,(KPST or later renamed KACH) so we used to play alot of stuff like Charlie Daniels, Marshall Tucker...and the locals would call in and complain we would not play Patsy Kline...or Merl Haggard enough. They hated Willy Nelson for god sakes!! They hated Crystal Gale.. and to tell you the truth I was never a big fan of Country Western music to begin with but it was a job in Radio. It would lead me eventually to a more decent station.

During the winter the place was always under a ton of snow. I had to walk to work which was about six miles. I was the only person at the time who had a First Class Radiotelephone license and the only reason they hired me was that no one with that kind of license would risk hanging it on their wall for fear the FCC would come, shut down the station and fine the engineers. The transmitter sucked, it jumped all over the place and the only near by city was like 60 some miles away.

The area was called Cache county known for their cheese, yet I could never find any of the stuff in Preston. They had an Artic Circle restaurant there which was probably the only fast food place in the entire town.

I hated it there. I moved down to Salt Lake city after being there for two years. Fortunately I got to work for a decent Radio station (Thats no longer there now--KPRQ)in Murray Utah. Where I got to do the midnight to 6am shift..along with weekends. This station played easy Rock which for me was far better than what I played up in Preston Idaho. That place still brings a shiver down my spine.those people there were ...so...bizarre.

Lakeside McMansion Central. :puke:

I'm going to stereotype here (so go ahead and flame away, but at least I admit to the stereotyping), but you'd think that a group as uptight as Mormons would keep the bathrooms in their airports clean (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).

Oh yeah - the city sucks too. :)