Salt Lake City, Utah. Utterly gorgeous, but strongly reconsider moving there if you aren't a Mormon. The whole valley/arguably state has a constant fog of oppressively bad juju looming over it, despite being truly breathtaking.
So, so much. My very long comment got wiped before I could finish--I was trying to find an old 1800s newspaper account from the Library of Congress, so consider yourself lucky I'm relegated to a phone keyboard. I'm working on a book myself, so I've got huuuuuundreds of sources, but many of them are historic and hard to share conveniently. For a quick variety:
Fifteen Years Among the Mormons by Mary Ettie V. Smith (1860) is one of the most breathtaking page-turners I've ever read. Like many works that touch on history Mormons don't like, they've been very successful at whitewashing this to a mere "unfair anti-Mormon polemic," but...eh. Very complicated, but it really has the ring of truth to me compared to other similar sources. That's the source of the screenshot re: SLC.
Exposé of Polygamy in Utah: A Lady’s Life among the Mormons by Fanny Stenhouse (1872) is a favorite. She had a sharp wit.
No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie (1945) was a nuclear bomb of a book.
In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (1997) goes into the MINIMUM 33 girls and women Smith "celestially wed," including minors, mother-daughter pairs, etc...
For a much more accessible option, look up Mormon Stories on YouTube. The church recently sued them, so you know they're good. And lest you sneeze at that, the Mormons successfully forced fucking WIKILEAKS to take down one of the church's internal instruction manuals (it's copyrighted material of the literal legal corporation that is the Mormon church). They've got crazy money, crazy connections. You've no idea.
Look up what was the first Sherlock Holmes book (Part 2) and ask yourself why captive Mormon women became such a theme then. In the UK!? Yup. And so much more.
Did you know that the Mormon church owns 2% of the landmass of Florida? Like right now?
I'm just trying to say: it's a deeeeep fucking rabbit hole.
I just discovered this yesterday and went all the way down that rabbit hole. Holy moly they are really trying to beat down on the guy trying to do the right thing. That police department is NASTY.
It looks like he has some good lawyers coming his way though. Looking forward to the second part of the civil rights lawyer's video (and part three of his own).
Look, I'm just going to say it: I cried the first time I visited, okay? It was that beautiful. Then I immediately moved there. Whoops. Worth it(??????) I'm still not sure. Those 5-6 years definitely took a piece of me.
The first time I went to Paris it was in late November and freezing rain was falling. There was a transportation strike and only one subway line was running. I got drenched and caught double-pneumonia on my first day there and was very sick the entire week I was there.
Phoenix. Don’t ever make the mistake of moving there or you’ll have a hard time leaving. It’s the closest thing to purgatory I’ve ever experienced. I certainly aged, but I don’t think I matured a day while I was there.
i mean its basically a desert, so you arnt far off. family guy did a episode where arizona(i think one of the city) is where people got o become DUMB as rocks, they used to cure peters genius level intellect.
It’s the world’s biggest parking lot. Every tree is artificial unless it’s a cactus. The few places you can climb give you a great view of said parking lot. It’s 40 miles wide and can take over an hour to cross, yet bizarrely, everywhere you need to be is 30 minutes away. Some street intersections require multiple passes of building prior knowledge to safely traverse.
I seen my first 8 years there riding the public transport there and it’s an entirely separate hell. Everything goes from 30 minutes away to anywhere from an hour to 90 or more. I would say about 6 months of my time spent there must have been traveling.
And never to go anywhere actually interesting. Everything is one or two floors unless it’s an office building you’ll likely never have the lifestyle to be a part of unless it’s a temp gig.
They are neighborhoods so similar, miles apart from each other that I almost knocked on the wrong friend’s door before I realized I had driven to the wrong place.
That sounds fucking awful my guy. I live in Red Deer Alberta, and it has its faults but I enjoy jogging and skateboarding and walking my dog and the trails here are amazing.
Council Bluffs, IA. I once had family there and there's a story in our family. One of them had a radio of some sort that works on trucker frequencies and he overheard a conversation between trucker CBs that went something like:
"I've never been to Council Bluffs before. What's it like?"
"Well, if the earth needed an enema, Bluffs is where they'd put the tube."
It used to be a railroad town, but the railroad pulled out and left economic carnage in its wake. Meanwhile, Omaha, just across the river, is comparatively very affluent with skilled jobs in tech, so Bluffs is kindof "the slums" (casualties of the worst end of capitalism.) and Omaha is all gentrified and hip, which rubs salt in the wound, and those who are still in Bluffs are the ones who lacked the wherewithal (luck, credit (social, financial, or otherwise), mental health, etc) to move to Omaha. Last time I was in Bluffs (and that was even before I knew the rail background story) it really felt like there was just a pall over the whole place. The strangers you saw at the grocery store or whatever just seemed "down and out" in an undefinable way. The local government seems some combination of corrupt and incompetent and the few folks I know of who still live in Bluffs there are racists and MAGA nuts and grifters and (I say this with love) deeply mentally ill. It's a disturbingly strange and depressing place.
I'm not sure I'd describe it as "bad vibes", but Detroit has always struck me as charmingly postapocalyptic. It's the only place I've ever seen fires in barrels in the middle of streets in real life.
I went to St Louis the day before the eclipse in 2017. It was a spur of the moment decision, literally decided to go that morning. My friend suggested we spend the night in a Walmart parking lot and the nearest one was on the other side of the river.
Driving through the area in the morning, I wondered how we survived the night. Holy shit. Half the city is abandoned, there's guys with AKs sitting in their porches, and the only other businesses were gun stores and pawn shops.
Fucking Dallas, TX. Of all the major cities in North America, Dallas is the most devoid of culture. It is a city inhabited by cars, not people. If you took the average of all North American cities, it would be Dallas, but not in a way that derives any value from the cities included in the average. If you asked an LLM to generate an American metroplex, you would get a low-resolution, but otherwise one-to-one map of Dallas and Ft. Worth. Dallas is the backrooms except with a clear view of the sky.
Dallas is Night City without the cool tech or culture, just the crushing capitalism and roads..
Edit:
I wrote this on a base level comment but I'm going to put it here too:
Dallas is a soulless corpse where you can't walk anywhere due to highways, but it you use the highways then it's like trying to dodge clicking on sketchy ads trying to trick you to click them on PC, except the ads are toll roads. Also every car is trying to kill you. I tried to go to a music show once. It was in a really run down part of town with sketchy people standing around staring at us. There was no signage. We weren't even sure we were in the right place and no one looked friendly so we just left, and got hit by more surprise tolls on the way back. You can't leave your house there without having to pay money. It is the most miserable place I've ever been.
Having lived a number of years there, where in Houston you are can feel like entirely different cities (and, in terms of distance, probably should be).
I’m from the south so I dunno if this is true for locals there, but I say it almost like the beer coors light without the -s so “coo-ER de lean”? I think, it’s had to type that one out how I say it… and now I’ve said it too many times to remember how I normally say it
Since I'm not sure how many anglophones know how to pronounce beurre, it sounds like "bear" but the r sound is made with the uvula and rolls off into the distance.
I was speaking with a friend yesterday who had no idea French had a guttural R, so I don't think it's common knowledge. The œ also trips them up
The Idaho panhandle has a reputation for being full of racists. It was home to the aryan nations neo-nazi compound until the year 2000. The neo-nazi scene has become a bit more scattered since then, but there are still more than a dozen hate groups operating in the area.
That said, it's important to note that most of the people who live there are not neo-nazis and are proud to oppose them.
The scenery is wonderful but the locals give me a “we don’t take too kindly to your kind around here vibe” where “your kind” essentially means any outsiders but has a lot of other potential implications depending on what about you brought on that conclusion in their minds
The top post in this thread specifically calls out Salt Lake City as being gorgeous but the Mormons ruined it with their bad vibes? Why doesn’t that apply to Idaho?
I happened to be there during the Ommegang and got tickets. It was awesome. That square is the only bit I enjoyed about Brussels, though. And the fries, naturally.
I hated Brussels.. it was so depressing. I took the high-speed train from Amsterdam.. my introduction to the city was stepping into Midi Station, which smelled like a urinal. The sheer number of homeless people was shocking. No one cared about them either, they were sat on the ground surrounded by garbage 💔
It's like Marseille without the sun and friendly Southern vibes, that's what it reminds me of, especially the Midi area. I recall walking nearby and there's like a tunnel where the tram goes by, and people had set up tents and impromptu "restaurants" in it. What a mess. But my brother and his lady just went to Bruges and they said it was beautiful so it's not like the whole of Belgium is as ugly. 🙏
I lived in Calgary while I went to college and I made so many friends with zero effort. I thought that the huge transient population was kind of cool. I live on vancouver island now and connecting with people here is almost impossible by comparison
I'm in Victoria, too. 8 years here and not much of a friend group even with such like minded people at work.
I feel like Victoria is maybe the best city in all of NA but man the vibes here are strange. Go out west into the woods and it just gets weirder. I have stories and those woods breathe evil I swear.
My gf moved here less than a year ago from mainland and she can't believe how strange and different people are on the island compared. There's also that weird group of people who never seem to leave victoria and they have such an incredibly narrow minded view of everything. My manager at work was born in victoria and the furthest place he's been on the island is point no point. Wtf.
Strange. I lived in both Calgary and Edmonton and didn’t notice much of a difference in how people treated me between the two. I worked as a carpenter in both places.
Salvador may be dangerous and dirty and the hills incredibly steep, but at least
But at least what?
Having lived there for almost a decade: It's hot all year round, which sounds like a good thing but it gets tiresome very quickly. It is very dangerous and dirty, but it is pretty and the food is one of the best I've tried in my life, although I think it's not for everyone.
Theres a lot of toxicity there. Been punched in the head, throat, kicked in the back (lol), spat on, had slurs screamed my way, and hit by cars (yes, plural).
But hpx, what’d you do to provoke all this?
Nothing, friend. I’m quiet, polite in interactions, keep my yap shut and mind my own business. Every single one of these happened out the blue with little to no input my end. Each left me more flabbergasted than the last.
Some I actually get - unhoused or mentally compromised folk lashing out at unlucky targets. But others had more malice - the pack of skinheads looking for a fight or drivers who felt inconvenienced because they had to stop at crosswalks.
But hey, least it ain’t Calgary. Fuuuuck that place.
Paris is shitty for tourists who follow the main path. It certainly has many cool places and things if you care to look. You just won't see any camera wielding Japanese tourists there. And of course it has all the crime and poverty problems you expect from a city that attracts anything and anyone of note from the whole country.
Now Lille, that felt off. Or any place on the Mediterranean in winter.
Tbh, it has been a while and maybe I am confusing it with another city. But it just felt... like nothing special. No reason to be there. Mediocre at best, lame at worst. Big ugly cities usually have a thriving subculture, or surviving there is an experience by itself at least. But it just felt like the city equivalent of the word "meh"
As a lifelong NYer now living in Toronto I beg to differ. Sure it's smaller than NYC by almost every metric except land size, but it has hidden pockets of community and life if you look for them. Compared to NYC, Toronto is greener, friendlier, and better for artists. It has lots of third spaces, which are all but extinct in NYC. Parts of NYC truly are nothing more than dystopian concrete slabs (ever visit Midtown?)
Unfortunately, both cities are victims to festering capitalism and governments that hate us, so you are correct in your assessment of gentrifiers stripping it for parts. The same exact thing can be said about nearly every city in the US and Canada. It's almost always done against the will of the people who actually have to live with their changes. In NYC, just last year we all banded together to narrowly defeat a proposal that threatened to demolish Coney Island and replace it with a dystopian mega casino - and that was just one of six casino proposals that year. At the same time in Toronto, Ford's spa was a mirror of the same type of development and now Sneaky Dee's is at risk of becoming condos. I don't see this as a failure of each city but rather a casualty of right wing politics and the greater class war.
For what it's worth, I do miss NYC and all my friends and loved ones out there. As they say, you can take the NYer out of NY but you can't take NY out of the NYer. I truly do love both cities and look forward to the day I can reunite them.
Dallas is a soulless corpse where you can't walk anywhere due to highways, but it you use the highways then it's like trying to dodge clicking on sketchy ads trying to trick you to click them on PC, except the ads are toll roads. Also every car is trying to kill you.
I tried to go to a music show once. It was in a really run down part of town with sketchy people standing around staring at us. There was no signage. We weren't even sure we were in the right place and no one looked friendly so we just left, and got hit by more surprise tolls on the way back. You can't leave your house there without having to pay money. It is the most miserable place I've ever been.
Second runner up is Port Arthur, Texas. Going to take the scenic route down the coast, are you? Well it's nothing but pipes and smoke stacks. You can see only a little bit of the marsh that used to be there. The city itself is run down, rotting houses leaning sideways with the pipes and industry always being in the backdrop. Clearly the town is receiving no tax money from the oil corporations infesting their coast in what would otherwise be a nice place. It was a mostly black population I saw outside. Inside stores the people I saw wearing plant uniforms were white or Hispanic and clearly didn't live in the immediate area. The story writes itself.
I Google the town and it turns out it used to be a nice place with a little permanent carnival on the coast with a ferris wheel and rides with a flourishing tourist industry, but all those people who could afford it moved out when the oil industry moved in and drained the town. Now the only people there are the ones who can't get out.
It was the most depressing town I've ever been through.
I grew up in one of the (many) suburbs of Dallas in the late 90's early 00's and the problem I had with it is it's the most extreme form of gentrification I've ever witnessed. You can probably estimate an individual's annual salary within about $20k based on their zip code. The city is so concerned with seeming like a good place to visit, they don't seem to care if it's a good place to live.
Was there a little over a decade ago on a beautiful summer Saturday afternoon. There was barely any traffic in the city, and we were the only people out walking around (we stopped by during travel to see the flood museum, it's small but really interesting and slightly eerie, if you're ever in the area go check it out, it's worth the stop). I don't think we really saw other people until we went over to the edge of town to another main tourist attraction (the incline plane railroad).
Although to be fair most of the rural East Coast (and I guess the US, but I've mostly traveled around the East Coast states) is like that. A bunch of sad towns that maybe were something once when their respective industries were booming, but now are sad, impoverished towns filled with once beautiful buildings that are falling apart.
Lots of Western PA and most of WV are like this. Absolutely gorgeous wilderness areas and amazing outdoor activities but the towns are really depressing.
Summersville, WV is one of my favorite places to visit but I'd never live there. Fayetteville is awesome and the new National Park is helping bring money. It's funny to me the locals are upset that it is bringing in money but it was kind of depressing before. There needs to be some happy medium so the locals benefit but they need to stop fighting progress.
A lot of upstate New York is like this. Many once great towns but population dropping for decades.
The town I grew up in was a great place to grow up. But the major employer left and nothing replaced it. It looks exactly the same except greyer, run down, partly abandoned. At least I don’t think there are any $5,000 houses left , so that’s something
There are too many rural towns in upstate NY (especially driving up to Buffalo) where you keep your windows rolled up and don't stop anywhere. Very white supremacist coded.
I get that they were left behind and remaining residents feel desperate, but that shouldn’t mean a sharp turn toward the right
I said similar in the last few elections: do you really prefer the guy wanting to “tear it all down”, over the candidate who at least recognizes the problem and proposes something, even if you don’t believe it? So now we have cuts in aid of all sorts, cuts in healthcare, cuts in job development, cuts in pollution remediation for the least advantaged, instead of retraining that you don’t believe in? Really? So it’s better to sit there starving with no heat, not enough food, no access to healthcare, mine tailings threatening your town, etc? But at least you p*wned the libs, who wanted to …. Help?
I went to Fresno once and wanted to go to a random local restaurant. Walked into one at 10 am, and it was actually a bar with quite a few people drinking for it being 10 am on a Tuesday.
I was once at a blues concert in New York. The singer was all “this song is about Bakersfield” and most of the patrons politely clapped. I walked past the stage with a frown and double thumbs down and he was like “yeah! Yeah I see you” and went on to sing
You have a broad definition of what a city is. Tracy is more of a highway truckstop with aspirations. Gustine is barely a hamlet. Hilmar isn't even incorporated.
Bakersfield California, drive through it once. It was like someone was making the most depressing movie about drugs and prostitution and dilapidated infrastructure so they built Bakersfield to be the backdrop
Branson, MO. I've been pretty far south, but I've never felt so many judgemental eyes on me until I went to Branson. Crazy religious stuff everywhere, casual racism and bigotry. Felt like going back in time.
Yeah, Cleveland was always an uncomfortable stop on road trips. I’m not entirely sure why, nothing else felt like that. But it was the only place I always wanted to get out asap.
I’m sure there are places that people like, but I never saw them
Honestly, it's just the vibe. I'm sure there's something that makes me feel that way in Cleveland, but I don't know what it is. It's uncomfortable. It just doesn't feel right.
Memphis, TN. There was literally no one there on the streets and the high crime didn’t make it any more appealing. Your city really sucks when the best thing to see there is a Bass Pro Shops lol
Joetsu, Niigata, Japan. I can't put my finger on it and was only there for a day, but I don't feel any need to go back. Weird layout, bad roads, rusting (not that that's rare for Japan outside of the metropolis areas), etc. People were a mixed bag as well, though no one was overtly unfriendly.
Dallas Fort Worth and Houston both felt like a place God forgot. Didn't visit the rest of Texas, I could have been picking up on the state's overall vibe.
fun fact, when filming the original robocop, they needed a blownout urban hellscape for future-detroit. actual detroit (at the time, very much still collapsed) was considered too clean so they went with dallas
I've been through Amarillo, TX and it was kinda surreal. The ONLY two kinds of business in the city are steak houses and gas stations. It felt like a movie set.
Never having actually been there, and therefore just going off vibes I get from portrayals on the internet: that city in Florida where they designed it around every property having boat access (I forget the name, looking up "Florida canal city" gives me one called "Cape Coral" so it may be that one, or there might be some other similar place ive seen pictures of before out there that im mistaking for it). Cool concept in theory but every picture Ive seen of the place it looks like someone took generic slightly rich car-filled suburbia and made it even more overpriced and dysfunctional
It took me a moment to realise that's a circuit board of man-made canalways for waterfronts. Entirely defeating the point of why people want waterfront.
Nooo! I thought it was an awesome picture to share! off to sleep and early to rise to listen to the birdies. And I'm gonna make up with the jays. I've been trying to distinguish between a blue jay and something called a yard jay?
Cape Coral is fucking weird. But it is basically in the center of the state that is the most backward and weird on earth. It is beautiful if you can see Florida without massive suburban development and Wawas on every turn. But Cape Coral is very very weird. Like if you planned a city around canals, then why is it still so utterly car centric?
Like if you planned a city around canals, then why is it still so utterly car centric?
Water is recreation, but roads are for everyday living. You likely would not be able to shop easily or visit your vet via the water: the entire business district would have to be marina-style. This is about a fairy tale dreamed up by real estate developers more than anything else, not actually about water-based living.
Many years ago I briefly lived in a small Florida subdivision that was exactly like this. Like Florida itself, this canal-style layout has always been popular for people who want to live on the water, especially (at that time) snowbirds who didn't know better. And it would have been impossible to use boats to get anywhere, because the actual marinas were nowhere near this subdivision, and to even get that far would have required actual boating skill to get in and out of the bigger swamp all of this carved-out land abutted.
It was all kind of shitty and we weren't there long. The houses themselves tend to be overpriced because they are technically "waterfront" even if your view is the ass end of someone else's dock. Boats are holes in the water into which you pour money. Your expensive water sports equipment sits under tarps most of the year, requiring both maintenance and insurance even when you're not using it. And speaking of tarps, mosquitos breed in standing water.
Even the canals themselves interrupt the natural movement of water from point A to point B, so unless your locality is spraying regularly (which is another ecological nightmare) you are going to have a lot of problems with mosquitos, and even if you don't, the water itself just gets stagnant, nasty and stinky. Look at that aerial view someone posted: how can the water naturally move or circulate past all those artificial obstacles? Answer: except for tidal motion and some wind, it really doesn't move much at all. You cannot swim in it safely, and the nearer you get to the smell of the water the less appealing that idea of swimming even seems, which explains why you will see swimming pools behind a lot of those homes, just yards from the actual canal. Algae and excess moisture on everything exterior (and eventually interior, like on fans) is a constant problem.
I couldn't speak for it today, but at the time there tended to be a good bit of turnover: people bought in on the dream of being able to live like it was vacation, realized what an albatross they'd hung around their own neck in terms of expense, maintenance, and general unpleasantness, and then sold up.
Some people do thrive on it, love it all and take their boats out regularly. But when they do, it's not on a grocery run.
Aww, I heard Cape Coral is meh, but I was disappointed I didn't get a chance to head there when I was in Florida last year. They have a ton of easily accessible Burrowing Owl populations and they put a ton of effort into caring for them.
Vegas, no doubt! And I don't really remember the name of the country all that much, it was somewhere in the Pacific Islands. I was really young, but I remember not ever feeling comfortable.
The Vegas Strip is the only thing remotely interesting (the rest of Vegas is just a huge car park in the desert) and it is somsoul suckingly vapid, void of culture even though they try so hard to shove artists down your throat.
Gambling everywhere of course and nobody gives a fuck, just gamble, lose all your money, fuck a destitute prostitute who desperately needs to leave that hell hole, and then fuck off.
My parents came to visit me in Wales. They suggested we go to Newport to look around. I just answered "Hm, let's not". There's just such an odd feeling walking around that city.
It is very poverty stricken. There's plenty of dangerous/sketchy characters if you go looking for it. Clearly quite drugged people are everywhere. Young kids with the iconic gray tracksuit and balaclavas racing about on bikes. Closed shops and signs of attempts at reviving the city are abundant.
Me and a friend walking down the main street saw this really odd shop. It was the size of a moderate clothes shop, but it was like stripped down to the concrete, no music, little to no shelving, just random products stacked on the floor on pallets. Things like microwaves, bbqs, fans, and such. A couple of guy were eyeing us the entire time. What my friend told me is that's a store for things "that fall off a lorry".
Edit: I should add though that the city as a whole is surprisingly low on actual crime. I think it has a pretty decent community mindset. Just don't go to Pillgwenlly :P
I thought Spokane was cool. Run down in places for sure, and definitely meth tinted, but I had a great walk along the river and through the Gonzaga campus
I like Las Vegas but I was a child so my memories are visiting my grandmother's trailer home, going to the YMCA, seeing kids that had year round school, going to a single show on the strip where I got heat exhaustion and threw up, and great grandmother and her cutting out paper dollies.
Oh, I've been through a few.
Most places in Ohio, but particularly Toledo and Cleveland. Sandusky, OH is also pretty off. Oh, and Cincinnati for hiring demons for its urban planning. I visited once and felt queasy the whole time. I mean, I don't have a problem with hills but Cinci is an M C Escher print mixed with a Sonic the Hedgehog stage.
Helen, Georgia has a pretty rotten energy. Atlanta, GA isn't much better around Easter. Now, Atlanta was better when I lived there some years ago, but it seems to have dropped off sharply around the time I left. I'd say before that specifically Five Points and Buckhead, sometimes Inman Park, felt not good, but now a days it's probably the whole city. I definitely felt a shift which prompted me to get out when I did.
Dallas, Texas. What cold, miserable people. And I can't really pick a place in Florida. I've been to a few, they all suck.
IMO the strangest thing about Buffalo is how haphazardly placed everything is. New updated public area, new hotel, office tower - and a dirt lot (not even parking) in between them. New apartment buildings next to abandoned colonial home with "jazz club" sign. Main street feels like a service road once you leave downtown (abandoned buildings, mechanics, garages, and storage for a few miles)
Wheeling, West Virginia is definitely a city which has seen better days. It feels like the apocalypse got started there before venturing out to the neighboring areas.
So, recently visited and therefore benefits from recency bias, but good GAWD, Baltimore is a giant pile of infected asshole. Port city, balmy climate, proximity to the Captal, has a lot of theoretical potential.
Besides what I physically witnessed (the poster child for urban decay and an apparently absentee municipal government), I have heard it is a human trafficking capital as well.
Bellevue, WA. Very eerie and felt like a simulation.
New Orleans felt just sketchy throughout.
And then there are fun ones (mostly in Ohio)
Random suburban road through the mixed woods / fields that suddenly slows down to 25MPH, with very neat lawns, clean buildings, but barely any people (usually there is a cop waiting for speeders).
Some side road between an interstate and suburban development goes down into a valley to some creepy Lovecraftian old town
In a middle of farm fields, a network of roads, clearly prepared for a residential development, but never finished, but they lead to a large patch of woods (yes, in middle of a farm field), and inside of it is a branch of a local university.
lol I live right outside of Bellevue and it gets a lot of flack for “having no soul” because it’s a bigish city built from new money but it’s a perfectly nice place otherwise, I think it’s “too nice” for some people because it’s mostly still very new. I like Bellevue personally
When I pass through Surrey, bc, Canada, I feel their "stroads and burbs" parts are super ooky. I haven't been them rough to experience their mixed-use towers yet to see if that vibes well there too.
Glasgow in the 90s. I live in rural Scotland, but while studying in Edinburgh I used to travel through to see my girlfriend. As soon as I got off the bus I'd get this weird, hostile vibe. I was approached all the time by folk trying to hustle me for money or crazies just being weird AF. The city aggressively prides itself on being friendly, but I always found it intimidating.
I was in Glasgow a fair bit during the Commonwealth Games and the locals were almost aggressively friendly, it was pretty funny. I live in Edinburgh and I like going to Glasgow for a break from all the tourists.
Me personally, I don't like Irvine, CA. It feels fake, corporate, unnatural. It's most likely because everybody there is high income and they're just corporate slaves.
You're absolutely right about Paris. I've traveled to a number of big cities but Paris was the first city that I felt I was in actual danger. The first time was traveling around Montmartre, there were a number of aggressive scammers who grabbed my arm and tried to "give" me a bracelet. The second was traveling near a circus or park and I clearly wander too far off that I felt the need to run back to the train station.
Sure it was 10+ plus years ago, so maybe it's better now, amd there was much more of the city that I felt fine traveling around. In fact most of the city was fine. But on those two occasions, I've never felt less safe, and that includes traveling to LA where I saw a man kicked out of a bar... and then kicked in the middle of the road while a large crowd just watched.
Salt Lake City, Utah. Utterly gorgeous, but strongly reconsider moving there if you aren't a Mormon. The whole valley/arguably state has a constant fog of oppressively bad juju looming over it, despite being truly breathtaking.
Relevant but I'm currently going down this Bricks & Minifigs vs Ben rabbit hole and wow these mormons are creepy as fuck.
Their entire history is insanely, deeply fucked in ways most people don't realize. Dating back to the very beginning.
Do you have any recommended reading?
So, so much. My very long comment got wiped before I could finish--I was trying to find an old 1800s newspaper account from the Library of Congress, so consider yourself lucky I'm relegated to a phone keyboard. I'm working on a book myself, so I've got huuuuuundreds of sources, but many of them are historic and hard to share conveniently. For a quick variety:
Fifteen Years Among the Mormons by Mary Ettie V. Smith (1860) is one of the most breathtaking page-turners I've ever read. Like many works that touch on history Mormons don't like, they've been very successful at whitewashing this to a mere "unfair anti-Mormon polemic," but...eh. Very complicated, but it really has the ring of truth to me compared to other similar sources. That's the source of the screenshot re: SLC.
Exposé of Polygamy in Utah: A Lady’s Life among the Mormons by Fanny Stenhouse (1872) is a favorite. She had a sharp wit.
No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie (1945) was a nuclear bomb of a book.
In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (1997) goes into the MINIMUM 33 girls and women Smith "celestially wed," including minors, mother-daughter pairs, etc...
For a much more accessible option, look up Mormon Stories on YouTube. The church recently sued them, so you know they're good. And lest you sneeze at that, the Mormons successfully forced fucking WIKILEAKS to take down one of the church's internal instruction manuals (it's copyrighted material of the literal legal corporation that is the Mormon church). They've got crazy money, crazy connections. You've no idea.
Look up what was the first Sherlock Holmes book (Part 2) and ask yourself why captive Mormon women became such a theme then. In the UK!? Yup. And so much more.
Did you know that the Mormon church owns 2% of the landmass of Florida? Like right now?
I'm just trying to say: it's a deeeeep fucking rabbit hole.
Extremely interesting, thank you for the recommendations!
I just discovered this yesterday and went all the way down that rabbit hole. Holy moly they are really trying to beat down on the guy trying to do the right thing. That police department is NASTY.
It looks like he has some good lawyers coming his way though. Looking forward to the second part of the civil rights lawyer's video (and part three of his own).
Seems like it's a really deep rabbit hole!
I lived in Provo for 2 years. I'd still be there if not for the Mormons.
I've heard that, in terms of geography and natural scenery, Salt Lake City is the city people want when they think they want Denver.
What do you get instead with actual Denver?
High plains just before the mountains. SLC is more in the mountains
Worst city on earth.
Look, I'm just going to say it: I cried the first time I visited, okay? It was that beautiful. Then I immediately moved there. Whoops. Worth it(??????) I'm still not sure. Those 5-6 years definitely took a piece of me.
The first time I went to Paris it was in late November and freezing rain was falling. There was a transportation strike and only one subway line was running. I got drenched and caught double-pneumonia on my first day there and was very sick the entire week I was there.
Still had a better time there than SLC.
Definitely SLC. Hands down.
Shit is like walking through the looking glass.
And not in the cool, drug-induced way. Not like that at all.
They have a program that marches the homeless around the city on rotation to keep them out of sight.
There's a disturbing degree of popular support and blissful ignorance
Yes! I've been there several times, and I hate to be the type of person that describes it as having bad vibes, but it always feels weird
Phoenix. Don’t ever make the mistake of moving there or you’ll have a hard time leaving. It’s the closest thing to purgatory I’ve ever experienced. I certainly aged, but I don’t think I matured a day while I was there.
i mean its basically a desert, so you arnt far off. family guy did a episode where arizona(i think one of the city) is where people got o become DUMB as rocks, they used to cure peters genius level intellect.
How so? Is it the people there?
It’s the world’s biggest parking lot. Every tree is artificial unless it’s a cactus. The few places you can climb give you a great view of said parking lot. It’s 40 miles wide and can take over an hour to cross, yet bizarrely, everywhere you need to be is 30 minutes away. Some street intersections require multiple passes of building prior knowledge to safely traverse.
I seen my first 8 years there riding the public transport there and it’s an entirely separate hell. Everything goes from 30 minutes away to anywhere from an hour to 90 or more. I would say about 6 months of my time spent there must have been traveling.
And never to go anywhere actually interesting. Everything is one or two floors unless it’s an office building you’ll likely never have the lifestyle to be a part of unless it’s a temp gig.
They are neighborhoods so similar, miles apart from each other that I almost knocked on the wrong friend’s door before I realized I had driven to the wrong place.
I could go on…
That sounds fucking awful my guy. I live in Red Deer Alberta, and it has its faults but I enjoy jogging and skateboarding and walking my dog and the trails here are amazing.
Council Bluffs, IA. I once had family there and there's a story in our family. One of them had a radio of some sort that works on trucker frequencies and he overheard a conversation between trucker CBs that went something like:
It used to be a railroad town, but the railroad pulled out and left economic carnage in its wake. Meanwhile, Omaha, just across the river, is comparatively very affluent with skilled jobs in tech, so Bluffs is kindof "the slums" (casualties of the worst end of capitalism.) and Omaha is all gentrified and hip, which rubs salt in the wound, and those who are still in Bluffs are the ones who lacked the wherewithal (luck, credit (social, financial, or otherwise), mental health, etc) to move to Omaha. Last time I was in Bluffs (and that was even before I knew the rail background story) it really felt like there was just a pall over the whole place. The strangers you saw at the grocery store or whatever just seemed "down and out" in an undefinable way. The local government seems some combination of corrupt and incompetent and the few folks I know of who still live in Bluffs there are racists and MAGA nuts and grifters and (I say this with love) deeply mentally ill. It's a disturbingly strange and depressing place.
I'm not sure I'd describe it as "bad vibes", but Detroit has always struck me as charmingly postapocalyptic. It's the only place I've ever seen fires in barrels in the middle of streets in real life.
oh that sounds lovely, I'm adding Detroit to the list
Dubai is the most liminal fucking city in the world. If a hospital corridor was a city, it would be Dubai.
The opposite of this would be Hanoi. That's a city where each street feels like a living, breathing animal.
As someone who grew up and lived in Dubai in the 80s to the late 2000s I cannot find fault in your assessment.
I never want to go back to St Louis.
This. Or anywhere near Missouri, for that matter.
Never seen so many billboards for sex shops and strip clubs as driving through missoura...
Also true. I guess Columbia was ok
If you think St. Louis is bad (which it is), stay well away from East St. Louis
I went to St Louis the day before the eclipse in 2017. It was a spur of the moment decision, literally decided to go that morning. My friend suggested we spend the night in a Walmart parking lot and the nearest one was on the other side of the river.
Driving through the area in the morning, I wondered how we survived the night. Holy shit. Half the city is abandoned, there's guys with AKs sitting in their porches, and the only other businesses were gun stores and pawn shops.
Sounds like a great name for a song.
was there recently, goddamn despressing
Fucking Dallas, TX. Of all the major cities in North America, Dallas is the most devoid of culture. It is a city inhabited by cars, not people. If you took the average of all North American cities, it would be Dallas, but not in a way that derives any value from the cities included in the average. If you asked an LLM to generate an American metroplex, you would get a low-resolution, but otherwise one-to-one map of Dallas and Ft. Worth. Dallas is the backrooms except with a clear view of the sky.
Dallas is Night City without the cool tech or culture, just the crushing capitalism and roads..
Edit: I wrote this on a base level comment but I'm going to put it here too:
Dallas is a soulless corpse where you can't walk anywhere due to highways, but it you use the highways then it's like trying to dodge clicking on sketchy ads trying to trick you to click them on PC, except the ads are toll roads. Also every car is trying to kill you. I tried to go to a music show once. It was in a really run down part of town with sketchy people standing around staring at us. There was no signage. We weren't even sure we were in the right place and no one looked friendly so we just left, and got hit by more surprise tolls on the way back. You can't leave your house there without having to pay money. It is the most miserable place I've ever been.
Houston.
Having lived a number of years there, where in Houston you are can feel like entirely different cities (and, in terms of distance, probably should be).
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho but really just the whole panhandle
Wait what? There is a Cœur D’Alene in Idaho?
Now I’m curious and wonder how you guys try to pronounce that very French name (with a strong R at the end of cœur)
Edit: I watched some videos and most of the people seemed to say "core da lane" with a different emphasis on lane. And one fella saying "coor d’alane"
In French it’s Coeur like beurre, and Alène like À laine. Anyway, it’s cool to have a place named "heart of" something
Core da lane
I’m from the south so I dunno if this is true for locals there, but I say it almost like the beer coors light without the -s so “coo-ER de lean”? I think, it’s had to type that one out how I say it… and now I’ve said it too many times to remember how I normally say it
Since I'm not sure how many anglophones know how to pronounce beurre, it sounds like "bear" but the r sound is made with the uvula and rolls off into the distance.
I was speaking with a friend yesterday who had no idea French had a guttural R, so I don't think it's common knowledge. The œ also trips them up
I'd love to hear more about Why, because the panhandle is quite picturesque
The Idaho panhandle has a reputation for being full of racists. It was home to the aryan nations neo-nazi compound until the year 2000. The neo-nazi scene has become a bit more scattered since then, but there are still more than a dozen hate groups operating in the area.
That said, it's important to note that most of the people who live there are not neo-nazis and are proud to oppose them.
Disagree. That area is gorgeous.
The scenery is wonderful but the locals give me a “we don’t take too kindly to your kind around here vibe” where “your kind” essentially means any outsiders but has a lot of other potential implications depending on what about you brought on that conclusion in their minds
Sure, but it's easy to enjoy the scenery and not interact much with the people. The environment itself gives great vibes, not creepy ones.
The top post in this thread specifically calls out Salt Lake City as being gorgeous but the Mormons ruined it with their bad vibes? Why doesn’t that apply to Idaho?
IME, Brussels is truly awful. Grey, ugly, depressing and decaying.
I love Belgium but Brussels is alarmingly lame
I happened to be there during the Ommegang and got tickets. It was awesome. That square is the only bit I enjoyed about Brussels, though. And the fries, naturally.
There is one nice square with the Leonidas place and that's it. You don't need more than a few hours there.
I hated Brussels.. it was so depressing. I took the high-speed train from Amsterdam.. my introduction to the city was stepping into Midi Station, which smelled like a urinal. The sheer number of homeless people was shocking. No one cared about them either, they were sat on the ground surrounded by garbage 💔
It's like Marseille without the sun and friendly Southern vibes, that's what it reminds me of, especially the Midi area. I recall walking nearby and there's like a tunnel where the tram goes by, and people had set up tents and impromptu "restaurants" in it. What a mess. But my brother and his lady just went to Bruges and they said it was beautiful so it's not like the whole of Belgium is as ugly. 🙏
Hagen, NRW.
In front of the train station, 3 casinos. Not shiny ones but rancid slot machine cellars.
Smashed door of the job centre.
I see no one here has ever had to pit stop in Gary Indiana. Or pass through Flint?
Harrisonburg PA surprised me a bit as well. Super industrial parts were Flint esq from what I remember and the vibe downtown felt just off.
I have had no issues in Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, or Cleveland. I think Cleveland gets a bad rap but I haven't spent more than a few days there.
When you were in Cleveland, did you see both of their buildings?
I just watched that yesterday haha. Yeah ad.
Why Calgary? One of the nicest large cities I've spent time in.
Stampede is bad energy though.
What about Deadmonton, especially the last 10 years? It's like a giant liminal space
I lived in Calgary while I went to college and I made so many friends with zero effort. I thought that the huge transient population was kind of cool. I live on vancouver island now and connecting with people here is almost impossible by comparison
I'm in Victoria, too. 8 years here and not much of a friend group even with such like minded people at work.
I feel like Victoria is maybe the best city in all of NA but man the vibes here are strange. Go out west into the woods and it just gets weirder. I have stories and those woods breathe evil I swear.
My gf moved here less than a year ago from mainland and she can't believe how strange and different people are on the island compared. There's also that weird group of people who never seem to leave victoria and they have such an incredibly narrow minded view of everything. My manager at work was born in victoria and the furthest place he's been on the island is point no point. Wtf.
Strange. I lived in both Calgary and Edmonton and didn’t notice much of a difference in how people treated me between the two. I worked as a carpenter in both places.
Salvador may be dangerous and dirty and the hills incredibly steep, but at least
I also hate Miami so I'll trust your judgement on the others, but to be fair I never had any positive expectations about UAE or Saudi.
But at least what?
Having lived there for almost a decade: It's hot all year round, which sounds like a good thing but it gets tiresome very quickly. It is very dangerous and dirty, but it is pretty and the food is one of the best I've tried in my life, although I think it's not for everyone.
Why Miami, I know the florida man stories but I assumed that happens more in the north and areas outside the main city ?
....Toronto? Wtf is wrong with Toronto
Spent 30 odd years in TO.
Theres a lot of toxicity there. Been punched in the head, throat, kicked in the back (lol), spat on, had slurs screamed my way, and hit by cars (yes, plural).
But hpx, what’d you do to provoke all this?
Nothing, friend. I’m quiet, polite in interactions, keep my yap shut and mind my own business. Every single one of these happened out the blue with little to no input my end. Each left me more flabbergasted than the last.
Some I actually get - unhoused or mentally compromised folk lashing out at unlucky targets. But others had more malice - the pack of skinheads looking for a fight or drivers who felt inconvenienced because they had to stop at crosswalks.
But hey, least it ain’t Calgary. Fuuuuck that place.
OP must be québécois.
I don't get Paris either. It's a big city, what do you expect? I love it. I'm currently in Prague and I reaaaalllly prefer Paris.
Paris is shitty for tourists who follow the main path. It certainly has many cool places and things if you care to look. You just won't see any camera wielding Japanese tourists there. And of course it has all the crime and poverty problems you expect from a city that attracts anything and anyone of note from the whole country.
Now Lille, that felt off. Or any place on the Mediterranean in winter.
I'd be curious to know what felt off in Lille?
Tbh, it has been a while and maybe I am confusing it with another city. But it just felt... like nothing special. No reason to be there. Mediocre at best, lame at worst. Big ugly cities usually have a thriving subculture, or surviving there is an experience by itself at least. But it just felt like the city equivalent of the word "meh"
There's a strong organized crime presence
Hey Doug Ford is a provincial problem
It's just NYC without any sort of character. Concrete buildings and dystopian. I just don't like being there.
As a lifelong NYer now living in Toronto I beg to differ. Sure it's smaller than NYC by almost every metric except land size, but it has hidden pockets of community and life if you look for them. Compared to NYC, Toronto is greener, friendlier, and better for artists. It has lots of third spaces, which are all but extinct in NYC. Parts of NYC truly are nothing more than dystopian concrete slabs (ever visit Midtown?)
Unfortunately, both cities are victims to festering capitalism and governments that hate us, so you are correct in your assessment of gentrifiers stripping it for parts. The same exact thing can be said about nearly every city in the US and Canada. It's almost always done against the will of the people who actually have to live with their changes. In NYC, just last year we all banded together to narrowly defeat a proposal that threatened to demolish Coney Island and replace it with a dystopian mega casino - and that was just one of six casino proposals that year. At the same time in Toronto, Ford's spa was a mirror of the same type of development and now Sneaky Dee's is at risk of becoming condos. I don't see this as a failure of each city but rather a casualty of right wing politics and the greater class war.
For what it's worth, I do miss NYC and all my friends and loved ones out there. As they say, you can take the NYer out of NY but you can't take NY out of the NYer. I truly do love both cities and look forward to the day I can reunite them.
Dallas is a soulless corpse where you can't walk anywhere due to highways, but it you use the highways then it's like trying to dodge clicking on sketchy ads trying to trick you to click them on PC, except the ads are toll roads. Also every car is trying to kill you.
I tried to go to a music show once. It was in a really run down part of town with sketchy people standing around staring at us. There was no signage. We weren't even sure we were in the right place and no one looked friendly so we just left, and got hit by more surprise tolls on the way back. You can't leave your house there without having to pay money. It is the most miserable place I've ever been.
Second runner up is Port Arthur, Texas. Going to take the scenic route down the coast, are you? Well it's nothing but pipes and smoke stacks. You can see only a little bit of the marsh that used to be there. The city itself is run down, rotting houses leaning sideways with the pipes and industry always being in the backdrop. Clearly the town is receiving no tax money from the oil corporations infesting their coast in what would otherwise be a nice place. It was a mostly black population I saw outside. Inside stores the people I saw wearing plant uniforms were white or Hispanic and clearly didn't live in the immediate area. The story writes itself.
I Google the town and it turns out it used to be a nice place with a little permanent carnival on the coast with a ferris wheel and rides with a flourishing tourist industry, but all those people who could afford it moved out when the oil industry moved in and drained the town. Now the only people there are the ones who can't get out.
It was the most depressing town I've ever been through.
God I fucking hate Texas.
I'm from Dallas and this is exactly how is describe it too. It's an absymally failed attempt to create a human society.
I used to be a trucker, and ya Dallas had bad vibes. It was always so sad seeing all the stray dogs running around.
Literally read a Texas Monthly article asking What's Wrong with Downtown Dallas today: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/whats-wrong-with-downtown-dallas/
I grew up in one of the (many) suburbs of Dallas in the late 90's early 00's and the problem I had with it is it's the most extreme form of gentrification I've ever witnessed. You can probably estimate an individual's annual salary within about $20k based on their zip code. The city is so concerned with seeming like a good place to visit, they don't seem to care if it's a good place to live.
Johnstown PA.
Was there a little over a decade ago on a beautiful summer Saturday afternoon. There was barely any traffic in the city, and we were the only people out walking around (we stopped by during travel to see the flood museum, it's small but really interesting and slightly eerie, if you're ever in the area go check it out, it's worth the stop). I don't think we really saw other people until we went over to the edge of town to another main tourist attraction (the incline plane railroad).
Although to be fair most of the rural East Coast (and I guess the US, but I've mostly traveled around the East Coast states) is like that. A bunch of sad towns that maybe were something once when their respective industries were booming, but now are sad, impoverished towns filled with once beautiful buildings that are falling apart.
Lots of Western PA and most of WV are like this. Absolutely gorgeous wilderness areas and amazing outdoor activities but the towns are really depressing.
Summersville, WV is one of my favorite places to visit but I'd never live there. Fayetteville is awesome and the new National Park is helping bring money. It's funny to me the locals are upset that it is bringing in money but it was kind of depressing before. There needs to be some happy medium so the locals benefit but they need to stop fighting progress.
The problem with greater tourism is developing it right. It is really easy for them to develop the area to look like Gatlinburg, TN.
A lot of upstate New York is like this. Many once great towns but population dropping for decades.
The town I grew up in was a great place to grow up. But the major employer left and nothing replaced it. It looks exactly the same except greyer, run down, partly abandoned. At least I don’t think there are any $5,000 houses left , so that’s something
There are too many rural towns in upstate NY (especially driving up to Buffalo) where you keep your windows rolled up and don't stop anywhere. Very white supremacist coded.
I get that they were left behind and remaining residents feel desperate, but that shouldn’t mean a sharp turn toward the right
I said similar in the last few elections: do you really prefer the guy wanting to “tear it all down”, over the candidate who at least recognizes the problem and proposes something, even if you don’t believe it? So now we have cuts in aid of all sorts, cuts in healthcare, cuts in job development, cuts in pollution remediation for the least advantaged, instead of retraining that you don’t believe in? Really? So it’s better to sit there starving with no heat, not enough food, no access to healthcare, mine tailings threatening your town, etc? But at least you p*wned the libs, who wanted to …. Help?
My two cents as an outsider: there are two parties in the US, the conservatives and then the Republicans.
If you are desperate, you vote for change. Any change. That includes the candidate that promises to spit in your face personally.
Trenton, NJ
Newark, NJ
actually just the whole New Jersey
wait no Asbury Park is nice.
most of New Jersey
New Hope is solid.
Because that's PA.
Jersey City has its own charm in a gritty sort of way.
oh man I do not enjoy Jersey City
the PATH train and having to wait 20+ minutes for it can fuck all the way off
although at least there is a train I guess
Alamogordo, NM. All of Oklahoma.
Modesto. Fresno. Ceres. Bakersfield. Oakland. Gustine. Hilmar. Tracy.
I went to Fresno once and wanted to go to a random local restaurant. Walked into one at 10 am, and it was actually a bar with quite a few people drinking for it being 10 am on a Tuesday.
Overnight workers exist.
Can't be drunk all day if you don't start in the morning.
Ha! You have been to the central valley thats for sure.
Bakersfield is special sort of place.
I was once at a blues concert in New York. The singer was all “this song is about Bakersfield” and most of the patrons politely clapped. I walked past the stage with a frown and double thumbs down and he was like “yeah! Yeah I see you” and went on to sing
https://youtu.be/GO4gkvuC5WA
You have a broad definition of what a city is. Tracy is more of a highway truckstop with aspirations. Gustine is barely a hamlet. Hilmar isn't even incorporated.
Just hating on the whole Central Valley plus some.
Its over 100F this week. Woo.
It's only like half, let's not exaggerate here. :p
Wow, New Orleans? I love that city.
Downtown Clearwater FL has been pretty much taken over by Scientologists and is quite creepy now.
I love Nola too but I could see it overwhelming people that are unacquainted or less… let’s say libertine
Bakersfield California, drive through it once. It was like someone was making the most depressing movie about drugs and prostitution and dilapidated infrastructure so they built Bakersfield to be the backdrop
How I felt going through Sacramento
Reminds me of the show Baskets
Branson, MO. I've been pretty far south, but I've never felt so many judgemental eyes on me until I went to Branson. Crazy religious stuff everywhere, casual racism and bigotry. Felt like going back in time.
MO is an entire state built around punishing 2 cities
Clanton, AL for this vibe
True, it’s weird. But I’ve enjoyed the trip there just for the stop at Lambert’s nearby.
Amarillo.
And Lubbock. Also anything west of Fort Worth on Interstate 20. That is the most soul sucking run of highway in the US.
Anything in or near the scar of the Dust Bowl is gonna feel just a bit wrong.
Interstate 20 is its own special type of wrong. Fracking for about 200 miles between Pecos and Colorado City.
I remember stopping through there, once. I recall instantly pissing off one of the locals for pronouncing the name correctly.
hows that?
It mostly comes down to how the double L is pronounced. Locals pronounce it like the double L in "yellow".
The Spanish word for yellow is pronounced with its double L as a sound closer to a Y. Like the double L in "tortilla."
Cleveland, Ohio
Yeah, Cleveland was always an uncomfortable stop on road trips. I’m not entirely sure why, nothing else felt like that. But it was the only place I always wanted to get out asap.
I’m sure there are places that people like, but I never saw them
What specifically about Cleveland? Can't think of anything unusual compared to other midwest cities
Fun times in Cleveland Today!
Seems about right.
Honestly, it's just the vibe. I'm sure there's something that makes me feel that way in Cleveland, but I don't know what it is. It's uncomfortable. It just doesn't feel right.
https://youtu.be/ysmLA5TqbIY
https://youtu.be/oZzgAjjuqZM
Apologies for the 2009 r-word in the second video.
Yeah, that seems about right.
Memphis, TN. There was literally no one there on the streets and the high crime didn’t make it any more appealing. Your city really sucks when the best thing to see there is a Bass Pro Shops lol
Joetsu, Niigata, Japan. I can't put my finger on it and was only there for a day, but I don't feel any need to go back. Weird layout, bad roads, rusting (not that that's rare for Japan outside of the metropolis areas), etc. People were a mixed bag as well, though no one was overtly unfriendly.
Dallas Fort Worth and Houston both felt like a place God forgot. Didn't visit the rest of Texas, I could have been picking up on the state's overall vibe.
fun fact, when filming the original robocop, they needed a blownout urban hellscape for future-detroit. actual detroit (at the time, very much still collapsed) was considered too clean so they went with dallas
I did not know that. That is a fun fact!
I've been through Amarillo, TX and it was kinda surreal. The ONLY two kinds of business in the city are steak houses and gas stations. It felt like a movie set.
It's that literally surreal quality, I noticed it too. It's like a whole state fell for its own image and now can't let the facade down.
Only town in Texas I ever enjoyed was Austin.
Never having actually been there, and therefore just going off vibes I get from portrayals on the internet: that city in Florida where they designed it around every property having boat access (I forget the name, looking up "Florida canal city" gives me one called "Cape Coral" so it may be that one, or there might be some other similar place ive seen pictures of before out there that im mistaking for it). Cool concept in theory but every picture Ive seen of the place it looks like someone took generic slightly rich car-filled suburbia and made it even more overpriced and dysfunctional
This is Cape Coral FL USA
From [email protected]. sorry for no credit I'm really bad at sharing in mobile Credit: setsneedtofeed
It took me a moment to realise that's a circuit board of man-made canalways for waterfronts. Entirely defeating the point of why people want waterfront.
Same thought. Imagining crawling a boat through miles of that maze to spend an hour in open water before having to turn around to crawl back. Smh.
well it will be underwater when hurricanes hit.
the state that is mostly underwater half the time, or when STORM hits.
We've got to stop meeting like this tonight
Now people are poo-pooing the Burrowing Owl capital of the east?! 😄
Nooo! I thought it was an awesome picture to share! off to sleep and early to rise to listen to the birdies. And I'm gonna make up with the jays. I've been trying to distinguish between a blue jay and something called a yard jay?
The picture is neat! It makes me think of SimCity.
I never heard of a yard jay and Google didn't show me anything for that.
Stellars Jays are the ones I want to meet, but I'm on the wrong side of the country.
Most navigable waterways of any city in the world.
Cape Coral is fucking weird. But it is basically in the center of the state that is the most backward and weird on earth. It is beautiful if you can see Florida without massive suburban development and Wawas on every turn. But Cape Coral is very very weird. Like if you planned a city around canals, then why is it still so utterly car centric?
Water is recreation, but roads are for everyday living. You likely would not be able to shop easily or visit your vet via the water: the entire business district would have to be marina-style. This is about a fairy tale dreamed up by real estate developers more than anything else, not actually about water-based living.
Many years ago I briefly lived in a small Florida subdivision that was exactly like this. Like Florida itself, this canal-style layout has always been popular for people who want to live on the water, especially (at that time) snowbirds who didn't know better. And it would have been impossible to use boats to get anywhere, because the actual marinas were nowhere near this subdivision, and to even get that far would have required actual boating skill to get in and out of the bigger swamp all of this carved-out land abutted.
It was all kind of shitty and we weren't there long. The houses themselves tend to be overpriced because they are technically "waterfront" even if your view is the ass end of someone else's dock. Boats are holes in the water into which you pour money. Your expensive water sports equipment sits under tarps most of the year, requiring both maintenance and insurance even when you're not using it. And speaking of tarps, mosquitos breed in standing water.
Even the canals themselves interrupt the natural movement of water from point A to point B, so unless your locality is spraying regularly (which is another ecological nightmare) you are going to have a lot of problems with mosquitos, and even if you don't, the water itself just gets stagnant, nasty and stinky. Look at that aerial view someone posted: how can the water naturally move or circulate past all those artificial obstacles? Answer: except for tidal motion and some wind, it really doesn't move much at all. You cannot swim in it safely, and the nearer you get to the smell of the water the less appealing that idea of swimming even seems, which explains why you will see swimming pools behind a lot of those homes, just yards from the actual canal. Algae and excess moisture on everything exterior (and eventually interior, like on fans) is a constant problem.
I couldn't speak for it today, but at the time there tended to be a good bit of turnover: people bought in on the dream of being able to live like it was vacation, realized what an albatross they'd hung around their own neck in terms of expense, maintenance, and general unpleasantness, and then sold up.
Some people do thrive on it, love it all and take their boats out regularly. But when they do, it's not on a grocery run.
You may also enjoy reading about Ocean Shores WA. It's like this but it's sinking and then sun doesn't really shine lol
Aww, I heard Cape Coral is meh, but I was disappointed I didn't get a chance to head there when I was in Florida last year. They have a ton of easily accessible Burrowing Owl populations and they put a ton of effort into caring for them.
Vegas, no doubt! And I don't really remember the name of the country all that much, it was somewhere in the Pacific Islands. I was really young, but I remember not ever feeling comfortable.
The Vegas Strip is the only thing remotely interesting (the rest of Vegas is just a huge car park in the desert) and it is somsoul suckingly vapid, void of culture even though they try so hard to shove artists down your throat.
Gambling everywhere of course and nobody gives a fuck, just gamble, lose all your money, fuck a destitute prostitute who desperately needs to leave that hell hole, and then fuck off.
Vegas is the asshole of the world
I think you need to have a large and varied drug collection and the will to commit capital fraud to enjoy Vegas.
Or enjoy live shows. Vegas has a thriving live events industry.
My parents came to visit me in Wales. They suggested we go to Newport to look around. I just answered "Hm, let's not". There's just such an odd feeling walking around that city.
As in dangerous or what exactly?
It is very poverty stricken. There's plenty of dangerous/sketchy characters if you go looking for it. Clearly quite drugged people are everywhere. Young kids with the iconic gray tracksuit and balaclavas racing about on bikes. Closed shops and signs of attempts at reviving the city are abundant. Me and a friend walking down the main street saw this really odd shop. It was the size of a moderate clothes shop, but it was like stripped down to the concrete, no music, little to no shelving, just random products stacked on the floor on pallets. Things like microwaves, bbqs, fans, and such. A couple of guy were eyeing us the entire time. What my friend told me is that's a store for things "that fall off a lorry".
Edit: I should add though that the city as a whole is surprisingly low on actual crime. I think it has a pretty decent community mindset. Just don't go to Pillgwenlly :P
Hmmm...I think I got the vibe.
Yeah, I'd pass k owijg that too :p
Mannheim
Why say Mannheim when Barad-dûr is right there (Ludwigshafen)?
You mean the vestigial town attached to the side of the BASF facility?
Spokane, Washington is one giant liminal space.
I thought Spokane was cool. Run down in places for sure, and definitely meth tinted, but I had a great walk along the river and through the Gonzaga campus
Clarksville, TN, USA radiates bad vibes.
Didn't expect to see a Clarksville shoutout on Lemmy, but you're absolutely right. Moved away from there over 10 years ago and we'll never move back.
I like Las Vegas but I was a child so my memories are visiting my grandmother's trailer home, going to the YMCA, seeing kids that had year round school, going to a single show on the strip where I got heat exhaustion and threw up, and great grandmother and her cutting out paper dollies.
Oh, I've been through a few. Most places in Ohio, but particularly Toledo and Cleveland. Sandusky, OH is also pretty off. Oh, and Cincinnati for hiring demons for its urban planning. I visited once and felt queasy the whole time. I mean, I don't have a problem with hills but Cinci is an M C Escher print mixed with a Sonic the Hedgehog stage. Helen, Georgia has a pretty rotten energy. Atlanta, GA isn't much better around Easter. Now, Atlanta was better when I lived there some years ago, but it seems to have dropped off sharply around the time I left. I'd say before that specifically Five Points and Buckhead, sometimes Inman Park, felt not good, but now a days it's probably the whole city. I definitely felt a shift which prompted me to get out when I did. Dallas, Texas. What cold, miserable people. And I can't really pick a place in Florida. I've been to a few, they all suck.
Naples in Italy
Got robbed at gunpoint by two dudes on a vespa there.
Never again. Naples is a dump.
** bucket list updated **
Naples is breathtaking, but... Yeah. That constant niggling feeling dampens the experience a wee bit.
Luton
I see your Luton and raise you a Swindon.
The Swindon lot are little slugs, little slugs with no personality who are just jealous of us because we're better than them at everything.
I don't know there names but north east US have these suburbs that just feel like I wouldnt have been allowed to hang out in as a kid
Some are still like it, like Clarkkk, NJ.
Yep... That's the kind ... Just heebeejeebies in those kind of places to me
Buffalo
Some of the downtown is a bit uncomfortable in places, but holy cow the people are nice. It's the midwesternest part of NY.
Same first inpression of Buffalo, but recently went back and found it very different (in a good way).
IMO the strangest thing about Buffalo is how haphazardly placed everything is. New updated public area, new hotel, office tower - and a dirt lot (not even parking) in between them. New apartment buildings next to abandoned colonial home with "jazz club" sign. Main street feels like a service road once you leave downtown (abandoned buildings, mechanics, garages, and storage for a few miles)
Charlotte, NC. That place is still segregated
Centralia, PA.
Bloemfontein
Ipswich.
Wheeling, West Virginia is definitely a city which has seen better days. It feels like the apocalypse got started there before venturing out to the neighboring areas.
8/10 towns above 10k population in West Virginia are like Wheeling.
I could name a lot but Jesus does Gary, IN eminate bad vibes at its own special frequency
If you've seen Barbarian, the bits set in Detroit capture the vibe pretty well (which tbf is relatively close to Gary)
Baltimore. Cleveland.
Jacksonville
There are a few of them. Which one? Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Oregon?
(I'd 100% agree on the Florida one.)
Florida. I think the other ones are pretty normal.
Cosby, TN if you need gas drive to the next town.
So, recently visited and therefore benefits from recency bias, but good GAWD, Baltimore is a giant pile of infected asshole. Port city, balmy climate, proximity to the Captal, has a lot of theoretical potential. Besides what I physically witnessed (the poster child for urban decay and an apparently absentee municipal government), I have heard it is a human trafficking capital as well.
Parts of Baltimore are nice, but it becomes rather apparent that the nice edges are rather close in and there is a sudden drop off in urban decay.
But it looked great on The Wire
Spartanburg, SC in the States, Purmerend in the Netherlands.
That's a diverse set of cities.
Purmerend is the worst
Bellevue, WA. Very eerie and felt like a simulation.
New Orleans felt just sketchy throughout.
And then there are fun ones (mostly in Ohio)
lol I live right outside of Bellevue and it gets a lot of flack for “having no soul” because it’s a bigish city built from new money but it’s a perfectly nice place otherwise, I think it’s “too nice” for some people because it’s mostly still very new. I like Bellevue personally
When I pass through Surrey, bc, Canada, I feel their "stroads and burbs" parts are super ooky. I haven't been them rough to experience their mixed-use towers yet to see if that vibes well there too.
Also the only place in BC without cannabis stores. Strange...
Stuart , Florida. Dark vibes everywhere. Even though it looks clean , and nice. It has a very seedy underbelly.
Amerika
Glasgow in the 90s. I live in rural Scotland, but while studying in Edinburgh I used to travel through to see my girlfriend. As soon as I got off the bus I'd get this weird, hostile vibe. I was approached all the time by folk trying to hustle me for money or crazies just being weird AF. The city aggressively prides itself on being friendly, but I always found it intimidating.
I was in Glasgow a fair bit during the Commonwealth Games and the locals were almost aggressively friendly, it was pretty funny. I live in Edinburgh and I like going to Glasgow for a break from all the tourists.
it's not that bad any more. west end is tame too
Me personally, I don't like Irvine, CA. It feels fake, corporate, unnatural. It's most likely because everybody there is high income and they're just corporate slaves.
All the cities in the USA except for New York and the small parts of other cities that are walkable
You're absolutely right about Paris. I've traveled to a number of big cities but Paris was the first city that I felt I was in actual danger. The first time was traveling around Montmartre, there were a number of aggressive scammers who grabbed my arm and tried to "give" me a bracelet. The second was traveling near a circus or park and I clearly wander too far off that I felt the need to run back to the train station.
Sure it was 10+ plus years ago, so maybe it's better now, amd there was much more of the city that I felt fine traveling around. In fact most of the city was fine. But on those two occasions, I've never felt less safe, and that includes traveling to LA where I saw a man kicked out of a bar... and then kicked in the middle of the road while a large crowd just watched.
Fuck Paris.
Budapest
The ones that feel off have high levels of human trafficking, hope that helps
Has anyone said this yet? Every U.S. city
Seattle is pretty great, as US cities go. NYC is hit and miss but also feels like a place where real people live real lives.