The most depressing f*cking shithole in the continental U.S.

Where is it?

Damron Fodor
• Somewhere I haven''t been.

• There are too many candidates R23, you have to be more specific about what you consider depressing.

• Any high school.

• I''ve heard Youngstown, Oho is pretty bad but I haven''t been.\ \ I''m in the Northwest and would say Aberdeen, WA, is one of the most depressing places in this region. Kurt Cobain''s hometown which explains a lot about his music and suicidal tendencies.

• R4, he was murdered.

• Detroit. Period. No other major metropolitan city has ever reverted to farmland till Detroit.

• Phoenix

• R6 wins, it''s a wasteland.

• Galveston, TX

• St. Louis is pretty grim. \ \ New Orleans, beyond the surface party sheen, is a filthy shithole.\ \ But McComb, Mississippi is probably the most depressing place I''ve ever spent time in. The mall was like the one from "Roseanne" - WalMart is the anchor store. There''s just nothing there and no reason not to run far away.

  Jed

• What''s the situation in St. Louis?

• Memphis

• St. Joseph, Missouri. Dirty, decaying, empty, and full of the dumbest people I''ve ever seen. It''s known for one thing and one thing only--Jesse James'' House. We drove around for 20 minutes and must have asked a dozen people for directions to it, and not one damned person knew what we were talking about.

• Galveston

• Definitely St. Louis. The city has lost more than 2/3 of its population since 1950, it has the highest crime rate of any city in the country, the downtown area has 35% of its office space vacant, the entire metroplitan area continues to hemmorage jobs, the airport is under-utilized and half empty, and the inner ring suburbs that surround the city are quickly turning into crime ridden slums (Jennings, Wellston, Pine Lawn, Moline Acres, just to name a few). %0D\ %0D\ Yet the clueless people and the area''s "leadership" think everything is just great the way it is and keep telling themselves they''re better off than Detroit or Cleveland.

• I''m from rural Oklahoma originally. It could definitely be a contender.

• I''ve been to St Louis, Youngstown, and Galveston before. Of those three, Youngstown is the worst, with Galveston a close second. But there are certainly worse shit-holes in this country.%0D\ %0D

• This again? Okay, New York.

• Galveston has a beach - Detroit gets my vote.

• Indiana

• Gwyneth.

  Blythe

• Stockton California

• Bridgeport, Connecticut.

• Galveston''s beach:

  http://betaphilings.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/crystal-beach.jpg

• Barstow, CA

• Mississippi

• Crystal Beach is on the mainland, not Galveston Island.

• Agree about Bridgeport, Connecticut. It''s almost like you''re in the third world. Many CT residents do not get off I-95 in Bridgeport for any reason whatsoever. If your tank is on empty, you''re about to shit your pants, etc. you just white-knuckle it till you cross into Fairfield. Sections of New Haven and Hartford are just as bad. %0D\ %0D\ Years ago, I got lost in Newark, New Jersey at 1:00 in the morning looking for the airport. Jesus Christ what a fucking shithole that place is.

• Isn''t Bridgeport, CT where Ricky and Lucy moved to?

• Indeed r29.

  Lucy''s sunken living room

• Ever hear of Imperial County, California? It''s located in the far southeast corner of the state, brushing up against Arizona and Mexico. It''s in the middle of a god-forsaken desert where the temperature often exceeds 120 degrees during the summer. The country''s most polluted river, the New River, runs through it, carrying untreated sewage from Mexicali, Mexico, to the Salton Sea. Currently, the county holds an unemployment rate of 25.1%.\ \ The county is home to some of the absolute shittiest cities and people; but an unincorporated area called Slab City, or just "The Slabs," takes the cake. The dictionary definition of dreary...

  http://www.google.com/images?q=slab+city&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=uSI&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&source=lnms&tbs=isch:1&ei=aT58TdTQL4nxrAG_1djdBQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBIQ_AUoAQ&biw=1098&bih=651

• Detroit, no doubt.

• Another vote for Youngstown, OH. Depressing and symbolic.

• my bedroom?

• R22 you are wrong!

• If you think Detroit is bad you should drive north and check out Flint.

• Wow! That is hard to decide. There are so many god candidates!

• Kipper

• The state of Michigan is pretty much a mess. The remaining people aren''t very nice, but that is understandable. I wouldn''t call it a shithole, but I would say it comes pretty damn close.

• Apache Junction AZ

• R39 That''s a very broad brush with which you are painting. There are many good and nice people in Michigan. Many of them have fallen on very hard times. And yes, there are some real shithole towns. Let''s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

• I''ll second Flint and add Pontiac.%0D\ %0D\ Detroit is just a tragedy, but Flint and Pontiac have always been shitholes.

• Pittsburgh.

  Sienna M.

• Tie: Hazleton, Pa & Centralia, Pa

• Arlington, Texas

• Southwest DC

• I stopped to see Old Shawneetown, Illinois, the one the flood people refuse to insure since there is no levee. The first bank in Illinois is there, a place that gave money to establish Chicago. It is across the street from crumbling brick buildings. One of them, with the bricks mostly missing from the second floor, had an operating bar. The streets were worn down to nineteenth century brick paving. And when I stopped in front of the bank to read the plaque my car was surrounded by feral dogs who would not let me move forward or back for a good ten minutes.

• People who hate women are also people who hate homosexuals.\ \ Queers who degrade and demean women are self-loathing homosexuals.\ \ If you hate women, you hate yourself.\ \ Stop the DL violence against women.\ \ Stop using the c-word on DL.

• Bakersfield, Ca. is stiflingly hot and the people are miserable.\ \ As far as shitholes go, I''d vote for Fort Stockton, Texas, which only exists as the only place within hundreds of miles to pull over and sleep when you''re driving across hellblasted West Texas. It''s truly Hades on earth.\ \ When my partner and I stopped there, we stopped at a Godforsaken motel where the clerk wore a bolo with a turquoise crucifix. The only place open on a Sunday at 7 pm was Pizza Hut (''and you better hurry, ''cause it closes at 9"). Bars? They didn''t have any, at least none that would dare open on a Sunday. When we got back to the motel, she glowered at us and told my partner "Here''s the keys for you AND YOUR BROTHER."\ \ We backed the car in to the cinderblock motel so no one could get in to the trunk. Every station on the TV was showing either home shopping or televangelists. I''m from a small town and can still be charmed by them; this was a place that would have driven any rational person to suicide within a week.

• Benton Harbor should be added to the Michigan cities list.\ \ In fact, no matter what the locals say, pretty much all of Berrien County is depressing. Not one Starbucks in the whole county.

  New Buffalo FIP

• Not one Starbucks, you say? That actually sounds... nice.

• [quote]It''s known for one thing and one thing only--Jesse James'' House. We drove around for 20 minutes and must have asked a dozen people for directions to it, and not one damned person knew what we were talking about.%0D\ %0D\ %0D\ Don''t believe it for a minute. You just know they all said among themselves afterwards ''Hey who sent those two dykes looking for Jesse''s house off on a wild goose in the wrong direction! Ha!'' %0D\ %0D\ They''re stupid in the right direction are local yokels.

• Where are you right now, OP?

• Cairo, Illinois is a nearly abandoned, depressing town on the Mississsippi River. ou always read about it on some urban planning forum.

  http://unemploymentality.com/2009/07/recession-lessons-road-trip-part-iv-cairo-illinois/

• Some parts of Michigan are still beautiful.%0D\ Ithas many top notched universities.

• Kemmerer, Wyoming. Dismal.

• Gary, Indiana.%0D\ I really think that some decay can been seen as beautiful.%0D\ I am inclined to believe those dreary border towns lacking any green are the most depressing.

• Marmet, WV

  OP

• Every Northern shit hole decaying city.

• r31, I had a great time at Slab City. Wouldn''t necessarily want to live there, but the old timers took us in like family, protected us from even perceived harm, housed and fed us. And the parties are ridiculous.

• Fort Worth, TX

• Somewhere near Dick Cheney''s testes.

  WestVillageCrank

• r61 has obviously never been to Fort Worth.

• Maywood, IL

  Tyrone

• oh, honey. its so transparent. All this thread is is just one more insecure uneducated 20something from somewhere in the north trying to compensate for his own small world or lack of top-rate education or legitimate world travel by beginning a thread to bash places in the south and midwest so he can continue to live in his grandiose vision that he is worldly as he day dreams between fixing double decaf latte''s on his second barista shift at some Starbucks in Trenton or New Brunswick.

• r29, the Ricardos lived Westport, not Bridgeport.

• R25 is correct: Barstow, CA. Scary and toxic-sludge adjacent.

• The governor of Wisconsin

• #65, me-OW. We can''t all go to Harvard. Now pull your caftan out of your crack; I know it''s starting to get real hot down there in Fla.

• R61 lived in Fort Worth for 16 years.

• r61 - then you must know that FW has a great downtown area and a lot of cultural events. Bass Hall is pretty amazing,Sundance Square, etc. I don''t even think it qualifies as depressing much less a shithole. Yes, it has a few dreary neighborhoods but what city doesn''t?

• Hello, Thread. Worcester MA here. I own this one. Move over, bitches.

• I''ve spent time in most of the big Midwestern cities. Detroit was awful the last time I was there (2002) and I can only imagine how much worse it is now. St. Louis is nearly as bad.%0D\ %0D\ I don''t know much about the south beyond Texas. I''ve lived for weeks at a time in several different cities in Texas and they were all terrible. Not falling apart terrible, but hot and filled with loud, obnoxious assholes. Everyone said Austin was different, but it really isn''t. It''s just full of loud, obnxious asshole hipsters.

• Worcester ain''t that bad. It has several great colleges, Lake Quinsigamond, proximity to Boston and leafy suburbs. There are far worse places. %0D\ %0D

• San Jose

• In that case don''t bother giving me the directions

  Dionne W.

• Belle Glade FL\ Do a google maps street view search of SW 6th Street & SW Ave C Belle Glade FL\ \ Unbelievable squalor... and it goes on and on for city blocks and blocks and blocks...

• Isn''t Belle Glade where they traced the start of AIDS in America to? Haitian hookers giving it to truckers who brought it north?

• Any border town with Mexico. Just awful.

• [quote]Agree about Bridgeport, Connecticut. It''s almost like you''re in the third world. Many CT residents do not get off I-95 in Bridgeport for any reason whatsoever. If your tank is on empty, you''re about to shit your pants, etc. you just white-knuckle it till you cross into Fairfield. Sections of New Haven and Hartford are just as bad. \ \ \ I used to visit a friend who was a grad student at Yale back in the 90''s. The poor people I''d see on the street in New Haven scared me.

  and I''m from NY

• I actually grew up in Bridgeport. It wasn''t as bad in the 60s. Really went downhill in the late 70s. Too bad. It''s a great location with a lot of potential.

• r77: Damn, did you live there?

• How come Madonna never ''beautified'' Pontiac, with all her $$ ?

• Beautiful downtown Cairo, IL

  http://img507.imageshack.us/i/11cairoildowntowndancyb.jpg/sr=1

• Beautiful downtown New Madrid, MO from the levee.

  http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicv/vfiles10651.jpg

• The most depressing fucking shithole in the continental United States has to be the one attached to Dick Cheney.

• Buffalo NY

• Hartford, CT is pretty much a warzone now outside of the downtown business district, and even there you don''t want to hang out after dark. As soon as all the offices close for business people high-tail it out of downtown to the suburbs.%0D\ %0D\ It''s a real shame because Hartford has neighborhoods that could be beautiful - a lot of gorgeous Victorian homes and the brownstones are comparable to anything in the West Village, seriously. Unfortunately, the crime is epidemic and the state of CT wrote off Hartford decades ago.

• oh, come on Hartford is NOT that bad. It has some pretty nice architecture and urban renewal areas. \ \ Exaggeration is not becoming on a man...

• Baton Rouge, LA.

• I would imagine Gary, Indiana.%0D\ %0D\ Haven''t seen Gary in a long time, but it was a complete shithole going way back.%0D\ %0D\ For the person who listed the entire state of Indiana (is that you Evansville native who hates Indiana and always indicts a whole state?)....%0D\ %0D\ Indiana has some lovely beach towns on Lake Michigan with beautiful beaches such as Michiana Shores, Dunes State Park, New Buffalo....%0D\ %0D\ plus Bloomington, Indiana and nearby artsy towns are nice and picturesque including a Big Ten University - Indiana University which has a lovely campus

• The Slabs? I rememeber the slabs in the movie "Into the Wild". catherine keener''s character and her husband would make a pilgrimmage to the area yearly. They kinda romanticized the place.

• Buffalo NY is a dump

• Beautiful Zug Island, Michigan over looking beautiful Ontario

  http://r19.ord12s03.c.bigcache.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/original/13694079.jpg?st=lc

• Girls, girls, your whole country is a shithole!

• Utica, NY

• Lovely Tonopah, Nevada.

  http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2356459-Looking_down_over_Tonopah_from_the_Mining_Museum-Tonopah.jpg

• What is the primary ethnic group that''s causing the trouble in Bridgeport, Waterbury, New Haven and Valley Forge?

• Cincinnati

• R98 I can''t speak for Valley Forge but in the CT cities, it''s a mix of races. Not one in particular.

  CT guy from the other posts

• Camden, New Jersey across from Philadeplhia. Just laid-off 160 cops in a city whose major industry%0D\ is crime and drug dealing.

• Atlanta

• Uh . . . that would be Dallas.\ \ Even the Lip Gloss And Prada Queens feed off of each other for lack of anything better to do!!!!

• The worst I''ve ever been to is Aberdeen, Washington. It''s Kurt Cobain''s hometown, and as soon as you see it you instantly realize why his music was so depressing.

• \ Buffalo is NOT a dump nor a shit hole.\ Compared to these examples it is Shangri-La.

  Get Real

• \ I second Atlanta. A dumb, fat, whore of a city.

• I''ve never been to Atlanta, but everybody I have ever known who has been there hated it.

• Does it have to be continental U.S.?

  Wasilla

• Yo, Wasilla, you are continental.

  Christopher Walken, THE Continental

• Not according to UPS and FedEx.

  Wasilla

• Any town that''s had a big military presence. They leave a huge, destructive footprint wherever they are and manage to make things even uglier when they''re shut down.

• Rumford, Maine.

• You are correct R71, Fort Worth has some truly lovely neighborhoods, and areas. The problem with them is that they are (for the most part) populated by bigots, rednecks and (gasp) devotees of Fox News. If memory serves me correctly, it is the only of the "large" cities in Texas to vote McCain/Palin. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and El Paso supported Obama.

• [R72] wins it. Worcester MA is the "most depressing f*cking shithole in the continental U.S." Went to college there, and somehow thought that it would have the best of Boston and the Berkshires. Boy, was I wrong. If the world ever needed an enema, they''d put it in through Worcester.

• R72 here. Thanks for the shout-out, R114.

• Augusta "Disgusta" Georgia -- the city with an open-air sewage treatment plant on one end (next to the airport...welcome to Augusta) and a paper mill at the other. Nothing in the world smells as bad as a paper mill.\ \ Throw in a population of Bible-thumping, homophobic, pig-ignorant racists, an economy in the crapper, a downtown as dead as any rust belt city, and summers with the thermometer and the barometer both in the 90s.

• \ Atlanta. Populated by welfare trash acting like Southern aristocracy.

• Hands down, Alamagordo, New Mexico.

• Levittown, PA and surrounding communities.%0D\ %0D\ Absolute FILTH.

• [quote]thermometer and the barometer both in the 90s.%0D\ %0D\ Oh, my!

• Las vegas%0D\ Camden%0D\ Gary

• [quote]You are correct [R71], Fort Worth has some truly lovely neighborhoods, and areas. The problem with them is that they are (for the most part) populated by bigots, rednecks and (gasp) devotees of Fox News.[quote]%0D\ %0D\ Then if that''s the criteria for a depressing shithole, then you can say most of this country is a shithole, including parts of NYC and Boston.%0D\ %0D\ I think the OP was talking more about places like Camden, Detroit and East St Louis.

  r71

• Either Detroit MI or Newark NJ

• LA tops my list. What a soulless, empty, vapid, cultureless cesspool.....

• I find LA to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. \ \ Let''s hope the prediction for an earthquake tomorrow through the 26th is erroneous.

• Disgusta, GA. There is a good reason people call it that. When I was there while stationed at Fort Gordon, I remember reading at least once a week a letter to the editor in the local paper how gays should be sent to prison. I mean seriously. It has to be the most homophobic city I have ever lived in.

• Fox News headquarters.

• Puerto Amboy, New Jersey.

• Clermont-Ferrand, France, makes most of these places look like NYC.

• Any large city in the US has sections that could fit the bill as "the most depressing fucking shithole in the continental US. And any large city in any country on earth has sections that could easily be considered "the most depressing fucking shithole on earth".\ \ But of course, on DL and most any other online chat board a city''s worth is always based on it''s worst areas or attributes, mainly because too many people who frequent these boards are mental cases who thrive on shitting on some one, some thing, or some place else.

• R129, is that good or bad?

• [quote]But of course, on DL and most any other online chat board a city''s worth is always based on it''s worst areas or attributes, mainly because too many people who frequent these boards are mental cases who thrive on shitting on some one, some thing, or some place else.\ \ I think I love you!!

• I''ve said it before and I''ll say it again, Minneapolis is the worst place I''ve ever lived. It''s fallimg apart from the inside out, a few years ago a bridge collapsed, a few weeks ago a major urban gas line burst into flames. There is no money for even basic maintenance of the city. People are working sixty hour weeks just to pay for cheap apartments and running around with broken teeth and cheap shoes because wages are so low. But just as another poster on this thread said about a different city, people are just as happy as can be, freezing their asses off for nine months of the year with huge simles on their faces. Sort of like a sick, not funny at all Mayberry.

• Nine months, R133? You are ridiculous - it''s only chilly in Minneapolis from November thru early March - that''s only 4 and a half months.%0D\ %0D\ It''s in the 50''s today and will be in the 50''s most of the rest of March.%0D\ %0D\ When you exaggerate so wildly, it deflates any argument you might possess and feel.%0D\ %0D\ Washington DC is MUCH WORSE with is horrible, incessant high humidity and heat.%0D\ %0D\ And you seem to be running around with people who have very low level jobs - sorry to hear that. There is a whole world of people not in low level jogs.%0D\ %0D\ Also, as an aside, the bridge is not the responsibility of Minneapolis - it is the responsibility of the State of Minnesota which does inspectio

• The entire state of New Jersey (with a special aromatic mention of Elizabeth).\ \ The only good thing about NJ is it''s on the way to somewhere else.

• I am not a proponent of New Jersey, but it has many beautiful parts and beautiful counties toward the western and middle parts of the state - WHICH YOU APPARENTLY HAVE NEVER SEEN.%0D\ %0D\ Why would you judge an entire state by solely it''s eastern corridor when the rest of the state has many lovely, upscale, garden-like areas?%0D\ %0D\ It makes you appear ignorant and uninformed.

• Beaumont, Tx

• New Jersey does indeed have some beautiful areas. It''s a shame that more people don''t know that.

• [quote]Clermont-Ferrand, France, makes most of these places look like NYC.\ \ [quote][R129], is that good or bad?\ \ After about 30 seconds there and you''d have your answer.\ \ C-F is pretty much the Akron of Europe. It''s the headquarters for Michelin. The city and the whole surrounding area are involved in tires and other car-related manufacturing.\ \ Now, to be fair, if you''re interested in geology, the area around C-F is full of fascinating extinct volcanoes, giving some parts an almost lunar feel to them.\ \ But to live or spend any time in C-F, no thank you.

• I can''t believe more of you didn''t vote for me!

  Florida

• Cheryl''s.

  Look what it''s next door to!

• R140, because it is ignorant and stupid to indict an entire state.%0D\ %0D\ Florida has a good number of very nice, lovely, enjoyable places to live - such as Naples, Florida which is right on the ocean.%0D\ %0D\ If you want to name certain cities in Florida, or couties, or a certain region minus the nice towns/cities within, then go ahead.

• sorry, counties

• After Googling Ohio, I''m starting to believe the posters who said the whole state is a shithole.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViNcnwZx9wk&feature=related

• Oh please, R144, the entire state of Ohio is not a shithole. I left Ohio over 15 years ago, but college towns like Granville, Gambier, and Yellow Springs are lovely.

• Aren''t there a lot of colored people with guns and knives in Beaumont?

• r35, I guess you haven''t been to Cape May.

  Cape May Bureau of Tourism

• Is Datalounge on Saturday night a place?

• Stamford is pretty nasty. For a town founded in 1641 there''s really not much left beyond 1960. They should also use it as a how don''t for urban planning it''s just awful and depressing.

• Tonopah Nevada!! This God forsaken wana be town has nothing ,no jobs a group of people who think tere keeping it together,actually the only thing it has is a road going trough it to Vegas

• R24 that was Crystal Beach, not Galveston. To be fair they'd just had the worst hurricane since 1900. I'd say any of those ugly failing rust belt cities that used to thrive on the steel industry.

• A beach with a big, black seawall.

• R31, I've hung out at Slab City and it's far from depressing. The people are great and the party never ends.

• Silicon Valley -- third world sweat shops in a dusty backwater overgrown by steroids into San Jose.

• Detroit?

• Wilkes-Barre, PA wins this hands down.

• Decatur, AL. Hands down.

• This topic would make a great series on TV. I love looking at squalor.

• Gilette Wyoming.

• Memphis, TN is Detroit's neighbor to the South. Really depressing. I would dare say only about thirty five to maybe forty percent of that city has properly habitable housing. When they had that minor flood, their Mayor did not even give a shit about the lakes, creeks, and estuaries which followed out the very humble neighborhoods. He just let them go and focused on next to nothing short of going on t.v. and speaking of the Downtown area of the city still being open.

• followed=flooded Sorry about that I have a headcold and am drunk on Ny Quil

• The Coachella Valley, followed closely by the Texas Rio Grande valley near McAllen,

  http://www.planetizen.com/node/52088

• Camden, NJ looks like a war-torn third-world shithole. A friend and I took the wrong exit and got lost there late one night. HOLY SHIT! You almost can't believe you're in the United States. Horrifying.

• Sacramento CA

• Detroit wins. Jacksonville, Fl is a close second simply due to the abject TRASH (white, brown, black, you name it) that inhabits that hell hole.

• r156, that must be why W-B gets top-rung acts to come to its various venues. Wilkes-Barre, like much of NE PA, is old, with old-timey dwellings (the kind with porches and shingle-siding); but it is humble, not wretched.

• Cairo, IL Waveland, Miss.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DIJW8lOzJJPE

• Ditto R19

• Tallulah, Louisiana for the win, Bob. I dare any of you to get off I20 late at night and stop at the convenience store across from the wretched Days Inn (run by the nastiest East Indians I've ever met). Migrant workers in mass, broken glass everywhere, spit and shit and anything else gross you can think of. Two fighting cats ran over my foot when I got out of the car. They were like a welcome wagon compared to the rest of the citizens.

  thank God my Dad had pioneer spirit, got us out of there early

• Jacksonville, Florida

  Anonymous

• It is most certainly Wasilla, Alaska, which is on the continent unless one of the underlying earthquake faults splits in just the right place. Hope springs eternal on that one.

• Reno NV without a doubt. Although Tahoe is quite nice.

• A tie between Gary, Indiana & Flint, Michigan. One tied all its hopes & dreams to the steel industry and the other to the auto industry. Both lost. Gary's despair is seemingly made worse by its location. The magnificence & cosmopolitanism of Chicago is just to the north, and the natural beauty of Michigan gems like New Buffalo, Warren Sand Dunes, and St. Joseph are just to the east. I grew up in the Detroit suburbs. Yes, there is a great deal of shithole. But believe it or not, there are some lovely places within the city limits. The Whitney, the Book Cadillac Hotel, the Detroit Athletic Club, the Fisher and Fox Theatres, the Whitcomb Conservatory on Belle Isle, the Palmer Park neighborhood, the Detroit Golf Club. Not to mention the second gay bar I ever ventured inside - Menjo's! It is literally in the hood, but holds a lot of great memories.

• Lawrence, MA

• You people really are peculiarly selective. Detroit truly is awful, but even a place like St. Louis is amazing for contrasts, diversity, and healthy life behind appearances to the casual observer. Shithole? Try Salt Lake CIty. Get your priorities straight.

• I haven't spent much time in the continental US. Born and raised on Long Island, I now live in Manhattan and the Hamptons. Spend my summers all around the Hamptons, Montauk, Block Island, Cape Cod and the Vineyard. I have been up and down the East Coast from Canada to the Keys. I don't think I've been very far west. PA, that's about as far as I've gone. Haven't been as far west as Buffalo. I don't like being away from the ocean. I pretty much don't know the continental US.

• [quote]How come Madonna never 'beautified' Pontiac, with all her $$ ? Because she knows that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

• Waco, Tx. Decrepit and ghostly. Freight and highways take massive industrial loads through the town. Kiryas Joel NY. Orthodox community with mammoth houses for families of 12 kids plus two kosher kitchens. No trees. Unfinished construction everywhere. Most inhabitants live on food stamps. Chester PA. Dungpile between Philly and Wilmington, visible in all its tattered misery from Amtrak. Casino and soccer stadium have not helped. Memphis, earlier posters were right. Poverty and generations of bad urban planning have cut the heart out of the city.

• W&W for R177.

• The most depressing cities I've ever visited are Spartanburg, South Carolina, and South Bend, Indiana. 30 years ago I would have said Chattanooga,Tennessee, too, but Chattanooga has improved drastically in the past 30 years. Now it's quite a nice smaller city. So props to Chattanooga for that. East St. Louis, IL, Camden NJ, and Detroit MI all deserve their bad reputations. The people who have listed Atlanta & Dallas here must not have seen 98% of those cities, since they are both great cities. Atlanta especially is about as pretty and vibrant as can be found in the US. I have found Norfolk-Virginia Beach to be very depressing due to the massive military & religion influences on those cities. There are some nice enough spots there, but over-all the military & religion crap are still depressing.

• r166 - the only reason WB gets acts to come is it is located on the interstate 2 hours from NY and Philly with huge market bases who can get tickets cheaper than in NY and Philly. The dowtown was once a nice college city that went belly up because of drugs, prostitution and an influx of lower economic classes who flock to the depressed cities of PA for government benefits. They also have more meth labs and drug violence than most cities in the rest of PA except North Philly. There are no jobs. Its a crap hole, not humble. And if getting good acts defines an area's success, Atlantic City should be your idea of Oz.

• Braddock, PA (in ruins, but beautifully set on the river) Brownsville, PA (Looks like a scene from The Day After) I disagree with the poster who listed Wilkes-Barre, PA. I find Wilkes-Barre/Kingston area to be quite nice, especially in the spring and summer along the Susquehanna river. Wilkes-Barrie has two of the finest optical laboratories in the entire United States, Luzerne Optical Lab and Balester Optical. Great people there too; Scranton included. And I still love guys up at Parrish.

• El Paso , Texas It's just across the border from the real ultimate s-hole, Juarez, Mex. People are gunned down, beheaded, disappear everyday there, and they say it's now flowing across the border into EP. They're all loco !

  Last%20caucasion%20left%20in%20El%20Paso

• I haven't been all over, so it may not be the worst, but I thought Cheyenne, WY was a pretty depressed and depressing area, full of backwards yee-haw cowboys and evil James Watt types.

  Tarquin

• Coshocton, OH.

• Any "city" in New Hampshire

• Between Marcus Bachmann's asscheeks.

• This thread would make a great TV show, maybe on the Travel Channel?

• St.Louis MO, the most disgusting piece of shit I have ever seen. On my way to New York I thought I would stop in for the night, see a movie, get some dinner etc. When I got off the freeway, Im talking shit everywhere. Garbage in the streets, buildings that were decaying and rotted out. Pot holes in the street, some so big that they had orange cones around them and you had to drive into on coming traffic to pass though. Even the cop cars were broken pieces of shit. I had to take a piss, I just used a empty juice bottle and tossed it out the window ( Maybe the uric acid will kill some of the germs in the street) I met someone in Indiana that had been to Detroit, New Orleans and St. Louis, and St. Louis was 10x as bad as Detroit and N.O. according to him. And yes, in many of the parts enjoy the smell of raw sewage. On my way out I could see a public pool I swear had a dead dog in it. If you want to visit this place, I would suggest getting a bunch of shots, and if you fall down in the street and break the skin, I would get tested just be sure. Happy Travels.

  Bill

• Troy, NY The Upper East Side

• Any place on the Central Coast of California. Overhyped beyond rescue. And really, quite embarrassing. REALLY quite embarrassing.

  Booger

• According to Mr Obama it's the space next to him in bed, occupied by what he terms as, "That uppity black woman."

• San Bernardino, CA, is truly a turd of a city.

• No question, Brooklyn. Why anyone would go there is a mystery. We hate leaving Manhattan to travel there, because it's, well, it's Brooklyn. Sophisticated people never go there, much less live there.

  Ramona%20and%20Mario%20Singer

• Meriden, Connecticut

• Anywhere in Mississippi or Arkansas. I think it's the heat. It makes the people slow and stupid and the air fetid.

• Detroit

• R85. I travel to New Madrid several times a year for work. It is a horribly depressing place to be.

• There are nice areas of Detroit. There are NO nice areas in Gary, Indiana.

• Fresno. Appropriate that the 3-letter code for their airport is FAT

• R189 is correct. The entire metropolitan area is on it's death bed and the clueless people who live there are either too stupid or too lazy to care, including the so-called leadership. And they favorite rejoinder to any criticism is "at least we're not Detroit or Cleveland." Well, idiots, at least Detroit and Cleveland have airports that are major hubs and you can get direct flights to Europe or Asia from them.

• R196 you need to learn about Eureka Springs Ar. Beautiful late 1800's town with a huge gay population. Even has civil unions for gays. Last census of town put it at just over 50% gay. All arts crafts and shops with 3 diversity events a year. We own a vacation home there, an old Victorian and plan to retire there in a few years.

• r193 wins. Thread closed.

• I knew a Fort Worth couple who went to Eureka Springs to get married. I hadn't realized it was a wedding spot before that. At any rate, they were quite pleased with how things went. Most depressing city I've spent any time in was El Paso. It seemed to be dying a slow, sad death.

• Eureka Springs, AR has a population of 2,000. Sounds like hell to me.

• R205 We have seen it with over 15000 tourist a day on weekends though. Funny they have a ton of biker events and I was surprised how well they got along with gays. I just assumed it would not be so. Tons of lesbians visit as well. And there is a gay men's nude resort right in town.

• Is Gary, Indiana somewhere in here? It should be.

• Another vote for New York City.

• Winslow, AZ

• Bakersfield, CA is full of stupid, un-educated, meth addicted, white trash morons. Combined, they may have enough brain-power to go to a Community College and study basket weaving. Remember, it's NOT Bakersfield, but "this here Bakersfield". Their police are corrupt and nearly as unprofessional as the average Joe or Sue with a grade school education. Mostly white trash, un-educated folks living in temporary and mobile housing (trailers). Employment status seldom exceeds Walmart/Target cashier-level skills traits. The women like to paint their nails in layers, and prep their big hair-do with eighties colors. Their ideal boyfriends hold jobs like plumbing, masonry, and cashiers at Walmart, Circle K and Seven Eleven.

• r48 's head.

  Cheryl%2C%20and%20I%20should%20know.

• Miami. The ignorance, mean spiritedness, cultural impoverishment and squalor grate even more because of all the PR saying it is a place where life is beautiful.

• Biggest shithole town in the Western US? Bakersfield, CA. 6th Grade educations, meth, and trailer-trash as far as the eye can see. Wallmart and Target flunkies, whipped guys who fall for stupid floozies, dumb girls who get knocked up hoping to go to LA with a purpose. Welcome to California's dark secret. A place that makes West Virginia's freaks blush. Just when you thought California is glamorous, and those songs about fun in the California Sun gets your feet dancing, don't forget that a lot of weird people come from California. Charles Manson was one. I'm not saying that Bakersfield is full of psychos, but just a bunch of uneducated trailer-trash and meth heads. If California has an anus, this stinky place qualifies as a definite shithole on this list in need of a clean wipe. Bakersfield, CA is California Hillbilly Central. Shit-Hole Station One- CA on this list of shitholes in the United States of America. Even the cops are too stupid to make this town anything more more than a nasty truck-stop. Be warned however, they WILL bust YOU you for ANYTHING they deem. Expect having your vehicle impounded, handcuffs, fines. Many of us think this sort of thing only happens in the deep South. Think again. Be very cautious around Bakersfield CA. Seriously.

  Mattais%20Gonzales%20Pruzinski

• Pittsfield New Hampshire is DISGUSTING. Worcester, Massachusetts Lawrence, Mass. Mississippi.

• r212 said it. Miami Miami Miami. The face eating story this week is just the tip of the iceberg. Full of corruption, drugs and fraud. Most people who end up in Miami have nowhere else to turn, its the last stop. Its an ok destination, but a miserable place to live.

• Burlington Vermont. Home of dredlocked trustafarians who think that a certificate from New England Culinary Institute and their recipe for artisan ale battered free-range shrimp over cruelty free cheddar grits with a side of kiwifruit waffles will put them on the map. Three months later when their bistro closes, they're using their trust fund to start a goat cheese popsicle business. Then there is the white-trash who are both foster parents and registered sex offenders, working part time at Walmart to fund their meth factory. Stay away.

  Ethan%20Allen%27s%20socks

• I'm torn between pretty much anywhere in Missouri and anywhere in Nebraska.

• [quote]Any town that's had a big military presence. They leave a huge, destructive footprint wherever they are and manage to make things even uglier when they're shut down.[/quote] I came here to post about Great Falls, MT. It was once briefly a booming industrial town that has since long been abandoned and is falling apart, kind of like mini Detroit in the middle of Montana (in the flat lands, not the pretty part of the state). Now there's pretty much nothing there but this huge air force base, which has an alarmingly high suicide rate among the people who are stationed there. The main "tourist attraction" is this bar called the Sip and Dip, where tattooed meth addicts dressed as mermaids swim around in a giant glass tank while you get drunk.

• R217. My vote would for Kearney, Nebraska. Too far from Lincoln or Omaha to even give you hope, and the most bigoted and closed-minded people I've ever known (I lived there for three hellish years).

• Gary, IN is a complete wasteland and the worst by percentage. Detroit is also burned out but there's a bigger segment of Detroit still viable. Buffalo also sucks ass.

• Mineral Wells, Tx. My sister and her husband were stationed there in the 60's while he underwent helicopter pilot training prior to being sent to Vietnam. Even then when it was hopping it was a shithole, and it's FAAAAAAAR worse now that the military is long gone. There's this one big monstrosity of an old dilapidated highrise hotel in the middle of town. I think it's been empty now for a few decades. It's the kind of town that would definitely benefit from a huge tornado coming through and wiping the whole town off the face of the earth.

• Portales, New Mexico

• Rockford, Illinois. So many accolades, I don't know where to start. Lets see. Ninth most miserable city in the US. Seventh most violent. Fourth fattest, and number one city to buy cheap property! Still a pretty town in some respects. Nice river that was cleaned up so you don't die of dysentery if you fall in. Lots of pretty, bucolic neighborhoods with gorgeous homes. But money moved to the east side of town and the west side is fucked.

• LAS VEGAS SUCKS.

• I'm afraid New York is now a contender. All the entitled rich people have made it skanky. I once loved the place, not so much these days. I'm hoping the whole financial system collapses so we can all get back to normal. Still voting for Obama. Shalam, y'all.

• Anything along 95 in South Carolina.

• LAWRENCE MASS

• 227 posts and no one voted for Schenectady?

• St. Louis without a doubt. The people are rude the city is filthy. The place is completely segregated. This place is so backwards it's sickening. I wouldn't suggest my worst enemy go to this place.

• Provo, Utah. You just can't believe these idiots. It's like going back to the middle ages, except people then were smarter than these douchebags.

• Datalounge

• It's always amazing when threads like this show up. You have the responses that are obviously well thought out and accurate. Then you have the nitwits who are so sad they actually think that listing cities that in no way fit the description of "depressing fucking shithole" makes them look urbane, cosmopolitan, and just so above it all, to people who wouldn't know them if they spit in their faces. So unfortunately I have to vote for Datalounge to be the most depressing fucking shithole in the continental U.S., for the shear number of losers, posers, nitwits, and fools who reside here.

• There's a lot of different strokes, here. Wilkes-Barre, for instance, is kinda awful, but there is a modicum of culture. Bridgeport CT is one of the most awful, and scary, places (I actually peed there, in the middle of the road, in the middle of the day, rather than continuing to look for a bathroom, since I could see the onramp back to the highway, and some brothas were on approach, carrying paper bags). Camden NJ is horribly frightening to get lost in--day or night. Ditto Chester, PA, which at least will spare you if you buy some drugs. And Worcester is pretty bad in MA terms (though Springfield is arguably as bad). Yet, if you have a Northeast upbringing, these places are not nearly as frightening as the thick aura of isolation and fear in places like West Texas or most of Ohio, or all of Wyoming.

• If Connecticut ever got an enema, Bridgeport would be the point of insertion. Every native Nutmegger knows that you never stop in Bridgeport for any reason, ever. No matter how low on gas you are or how bad you have to pee, you just keep hauling ass on I-95 until you get to Fairfield or Stratford, depending on which direction you are headed.

• the whole coast of Texas from the east side of Houston to Lake Charles Louisiana

• Tampa..also parts of Oakland are pretty scary. (but then I've never been to Detroit)

• We wouldn't dream of hanging out in the shithole known as Panguitch, Utah.

  http://www.panguitch.org

  Orphans%20of%20Darfur

• My daughter says Atchison, KS is the most depressing place she ever visited. Not sure why she got that impression. She had to perform in a church there and it sounds like it was located in the seamy underbelly of Atchison, so maybe she got a glimpse of Atchison that was not representative....

• R238 = Ginny from Billings

• Barstow, California

• The most depressing shithole in the US belongs to Pollyanna Prisspot, School Marm. Fortunately, she's leaving for Luxembourg.

• Not sure if it was posted already, but the salton Sea in southern california. Recently saw a documentary,its a bunch of old wierdo's and crazies thinking the lake will get cleaned up and people will start moving back in. Half of the area's are ghost towns and there are half flooded towns filled with rusted trailers and not much more than a bar. It all looked so post apocalyptic, very depressing.

• I've heard about old towns in New York state, empty and dying. Is it true?

• Sometimes I wonder if anyplace in America is thriving? I blame the 1% and their greed. I blame companies like Bain Capitol or is it Bane Capitol?

• "The most depressing f*cking shithole in the continental U.S." One of the Romney's many toilets.....

• As I have never been to many of the cities that are mentioned, I would have to say Skid Row in Los Angeles. There is nothing more depressing than seeing blocks of homeless people living in the condition they are. It's like leaving LA and entering a slum in India. It's shameful that skid row has existed for existed. I am from California and have heard of skid row all my life, but have never actually seen it. I got lost on my way to Japan Town and ended there. It was eye-opening.

• [quote] It's shameful that skid row has existed for existed. "existed for decades."

  r246

• [quote]I've heard about old towns in New York state, empty and dying. Is it true? Most of New York state has been like this forever. The towns are either depressed or depressING to look at, or both. You must embrace that if you want to enjoy yourself on a self-guided car tour. Then it can be quaint at times. Western New York, holding Rochester-Buffalo (the other major cities in NY...I'm not counting Albany), is part of the rust belt; though they both have one or two pretty and classy suburbs, respectively. Many people there complain about living there, but never leave. Ithaca and towns with SUNY colleges are usually overcrowded, rustic, and have become unreasonably expensive. I'm a Westchester county native, and the area depresses me when I go back to visit. That being said, I've been to every state. I don't think we're particularly the most "breathtaking" country out there overall, but to each their own.

• So basically any placed with a lot of blacks or native Indians is a shithole according to DL? You bunch of racist cocksuckers.

• I agree with the people who have mentioned Wyoming. Before I visited, I had this vision of a beautiful untouched Wild West populated with nice little towns. Well. The eastern half of the state is isolated, backwards, economically depressed, and the people seem inbred and ignorant and resigned. The atmosphere was one of despair. Also, an entry in the category of Places Other People Like But I Find Horrifying: the Florida Panhandle. Lived there for 18 months and couldn't wait to leave. The Gulf Coast is so beautiful in some parts, but the people living in the Panhandle are so rednecky and horrible that they ruin it. We used to drive to Alabama on the weekend just to get out of northwest FL, and that's saying something.

• The thing about Hartford, CT is that from the late 1950's on they did a program of urban renewal that really decimated the city. Luckily just about 50 miles to the east as the crow flies there's Providence - a city that didn't tear down all it's historic properties even though I've noted a push over the past couple years to do so.

  LuciferTheLightBringer

• Jacksonville is HUGE... The largest city by land area in the USA. Thus, it is impossible for it to be a depressing fucking shithole. There are nasty areas absolutely - like in any sprawling city (i.e. Atlanta). But, there are also immaculate areas with some of the most valuable real estate in the nation (the PGA is HQ'd in Jacksonville), excellent resorts, restaurants, pedestrian malls, riding trails, art walks, etc.. The central business district in Jacksonville is quite nice, with a hell of alot of hot eye candy jogging shirtless by the river front every day at lunchtime :) When I think of depressing fucking shitholes, I think of a town where there is literally NOTHING to do, say Hendersonville, NC.

• Gary Indiana is so bad, "Life After People" filmed an episode there to show what happens when a city is abandoned and left to rot. The only other U.S. city profiled was Detroit. What does that tell you?

• Do you feel better now, R241? Invading a thread totally unrelated to me just to mention my name and express your irrational hatred? You are sad and weird.

  PPSM

• Toronto

  Canadian

• Hartford and it's neighbor to the north, Springfield, have both seen better days. But there are still areas of them that are decent.

• [quote]Gary Indiana is so bad, "Life After People" filmed an episode there to show what happens when a city is abandoned and left to rot. The only other U.S. city profiled was Detroit. What does that tell you? Well, according to r249, it tells you that we're a bunch of racist cocksuckers.

• Hartford? Springfield? Worcester? Are you people kidding me? Yes, they're kind of boring and bleak, but they're also in a generally lovely part of New England and surrounded by great towns. Gary Indiana makes Hartford look like Beverly Hills.

• Hartford CT used to be nice many, many years ago. Now it is a very small downtown business district surrounded by a dangerous ghetto on all sides.

• Isn't it really anywhere that Whites have left and coloreds have taken over?

• Well R257, given this is Datalounge, he's half right. :)

• Parts of San Bernardino, CA (now a bankrupt city) look bleak and war-torn. No part of Idaho that I visited had any redeeming qualities. Land of Ruby Ridge massacre. Weird, xenophobic militia types with guns and kooky ideology.

• Agree with those who said Camden, NJ. Also Colorado Springs, because of all the fundie shit. Never been there but Branson, MO sounds awful.

• I got lost at night in Newark, NJ once. I didn't think I would make it out alive. I've been in a few shit neighborhoods in my life, but Newark had me genuinely frightened. That whole place just just be leveled.

• East St. Louis, IL Camden, NJ Gary, IN Detroit, MI In that order.

  So%20sad%20there%20is%20actually%20an%20answer%20to%20this%20post.

• Black ghettos duh

• I think it's in South Carolina.

  current%20in%20South%20Carolina

• Paterson, NJ also not good. Nor the most run-down parts of Baltimore.

• Oakland, southeast dc, Detroit, new Orleans, east la

• Go figure, R266/269 is the troll from the Elizabeth Warren thread...and a racist, too.

• Sioux Falls, SD

• R269 is also the racist troll on the Ann Romney flight thread.

• I did hang out for a week with the 'rents in an unheated, mouse-infested cabin at Panguitch Lake, R237. It was very cold, depressing and rainy, the fish weren't biting, and sanitation was horrendous. The camp owners were fucked up, and I missed the start of school with 'stomach flu' aka dysentery. Thanks for bringing back these really special memories!

  Topped%20only%20by%20severe%20sunburns%20in%20Guaymas

• Camden NJ. Highest murder rate in the country and no police force.

• Los Angeles

• McCOMB, MS #pEtty

• R171 the Central Coast of CA? Either you are fucking retarded or simply referring to that cesspool known as S.F. In that case, agreed, but Monterey to Fort Bragg is amazing aside from the slums of san fran

  buck%20nasty

• "So basically any placed with a lot of blacks or native Indians is a shithole according to DL? You bunch of racist cocksuckers." Show me one black neighborhood with property values that increased-NAME ONE!!! ignorant bastid, keep hiding from the truth.

  dh

• I'd like to throw Clewiston, Fl's shabby hat into the ring.

• Southeast DC has got to be one of the leading contenders.

• Bridgeport, Ct on google earth looks kind of nice.

• Gary, Indiana has had the most mentions for good reason. Once seen, never forgotten.

  THREAD%20CLOSED.

• Roswell New Mexico

• Manhattan. Physically, it's awful. Cramped like a sardine can, terrible, rotting infrastructure, and a diaster waiting to happen (said this before Sandy). Most overpriced place in the world, except the people are incredible.

• Toms River, NJ if you want proof that IQ is sold separately.

• R263, Camden is pretty lively, especially near the waterfront. Neward, on the other hand, I found terrible.

• Anywhere in Kentucky(aka)Rightwing redneck paradise...Yes I live there.

• Well, R249 is more than half right, but I wouldn't point at DL'ers. Try to understand what's happened to cities in America,then you can see why places like Gary,E.St. Louis or Detroit are rotting. Federal gov't policies had a lot to do with it.Private industry had a lot to do with it. And racism. After WW II, federal housing policies rewarded people who wanted to buy in the suburbs. During WW II many jobs and manufacturing operations moved to "green fields." To suburbanize America, publically funded infrastructure was built to accomodate the population. Federal policies incentivized suburban sprawl and the strip malls we take for granted. Shopping malls,free parking, room to spread out, multiplexes, office parks,etc. Life styles changed dramatically. Riots in the 60's accelerated white flight. Businesses left. Insurance rates skyrocketed, The 70's & 80's saw massive disinvestment by banks, lenders, and businesses from cities. With massively eroding tax bases,urban areas became more dependent on state/federal help that wasn't well funded and did nothing more than place a bandaid on a hemmorhage.(We were paying for Vietnam.) In the 70's & 80's local politicians demanded that state & Presidential candidates unveil an "urban policy." Some did, but it was never comprehensive enough. Urban areas became a repository for the poor and the elderly. Those who could afford to leave, did. The infrastructure's been destroyed, schools are horrible, basic city services are poor at best. Local officials are now caretakers. So there are a lot of "shitholes" to pick from.

  History of Urban Planning 101

• Right now? Probably Staten Island.

• Any place where Ann Coulter is standing or sitting.

• Bridgeport is a shithole extraordinaire but it fits with the so very depressing surrounding area north of it and the whole of eastern Connecticut straight up to the northeast corner. Lacks the ocean available in states east with Atlantic coastline and is basically made up of old mill towns. Not close enough to New York or Boston where the creme congregate so that leaves you with slackers trying to be top dog in a small and shallow pond. Their sense of inferiority and defensiveness about the region is maddening and depressing. It is a nice drive through in the fall but nothing compared to the west side of the state. Townies abound in the small villages and the only decent nightlife can be found at nearby casinos. It is such a drive to the better towns like Newport and loaded with republican closet cases. Everyone knows everyone's business and gossiping is their only true form of entertainment. So oppressive and second rate. An overwhelming sense pervades as though you are missing out on something.

• Russell Springs, Kentucky.

  Mrs%20Danvers

• R289 I would suggest Staten Island even before Sandy. Starting in my '80s childhood.

  The%20dump%20is%20visible%20from%20space.

• R133 Cheer up! You might just make it after all! Anyway, in 2001 Gene Weingarten (humor columnist for the Washington Post) chose Battle Mountain, NV as the official "Armpit of the United States."

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A31628-2001Nov28

• Gary Indiana is in such bad shape it was featured in 'Life After People' where they showed how cities slowly decay when people abandon them. I remember they talked about how the lake effect made it worse for the buildings.

• ""We are doing great things!" Gary, Indiana is located on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan and on three major Interstate. At the Crossroads of America, Gary provides the perfect location for a weekend getaway, a family vacation, a business trip, or a night on the town. Relax on the beach or rent a jet ski! Take a long walk under the stars with Chicago's beautiful skyline twinkling across the calm water, or spend the day shopping in our Lake Street Shopping District, filled with boutiques and galleries. Night is near, get dressed up, the Jack Pot is waiting for you at Buffington Harbor!"

  from%20their%20website...

• Camden, NJ and Chester PA. After spending a day in Chester, I'll never complain about Philly again.

  Philadelphian%20who%20lives%20in%20between%20the%20two%20shitholes.

• OKLAHOMA OWNS THIS THREAD.

• And little Ronny Howard even sang about it!

• Utica, NY Gary, Indiana Lawrence, Massachusetts Southeast DC Camden, NJ Stockton, CA basically any city in CT

• I live in Cleveland. I go to Youngstown a few times a year on business. its pretty bad.

• Shaker Heights Ohio and East Cleveland Ohio.

• The worst shithole in the U.S is a thousand times better than the best place in oil rich Venezuela

• Honorable mention to West Haven, CT. Nothing but boarded-up factories and strip malls filled with regional, second-rate steak houses. What gives?

• Gary Indiana or anywhere in "The Region" aka the calumet region of NWI.

  Former%20%22Region%20Rat%22

• The most depressing f*cking shithole in the continental U.S. is Ann Coulter's mouth.

• Memphis, TN owns this thread. Memphis has about 40% livable housing stock and the rest is rotting. Some people have literally set fire to rotting, vacate housing because the city will not do anything about it. Memphis has the highest rime rates in the nation for everything. Memphis has the lowest ranking school system in the state of Tennessee and they have a school budget of a bit under a billion dollars for approximately 110,000 students and only a small part of that budget goes to anything pertaining to the classroom. The average ACT score is 12. Memphis has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. There are third generation welfare recipients within the same family there. Memphis has the highest rate of infant mortality in the US. When there was flooding in Memphis well over a year ago, the Mayor claimed that his downtown was fine (the city was planning to buy Beale Street, which they have since done) while the rest of the creeks and such were flooding out neighborhoods which were rotting. No one ever did anything past the downtown area with this flooding because the Mayor forbid it. Memphis owns this thread. My grandmother used to live there until I moved her the fuck out.

• [quote]Memphis has the highest rime rates in the nation for everything. Well, I don't know about that.

  The Ancient Mariner

• Okay r32 East Cleveland is lower middle bordering on ghetto. Shaker Heights is a middle to upper middle class East Coastish in flavor suburb that has some of the most beautiful Tudor homes I've seen outside of the East Coast. Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights and Pepper Pike contain some of the best private college prep schools in the entire area. I can understand why you wouldn't want to live there but shit hole is dishonest word usage. Detroit now that's a shithole.

• Shamokin, PA. Like a post-WWII Warsaw ghetto.

• I didn't stop in the city, but Amarillo, Texas is surrounded for miles around by the flattest, most desolate landscape you can imagine.

• San Angelo, TX

• Baltimore, MD. Once one leaves the Inner Harbor area, there is nothing but blight.

• Minden, Nebraska

• Needles, CA

• [quote]Baltimore, MD... Once one leaves the Inner Harbor area, there is nothing but blight. And when it's raining, that statue of George Washington can be seen pissing on Baltimore.

• Tulsa Oklahoma Roseanne used to have a funny bit about how most people think SF is the most decadent city in the US, but it's actually Tulsa, for how shamelessly redneck it is.

• I took a cross-country road trip this summer and stayed a night in Oklahoma City. The people I ment were nice, but then I can pass for straight. If I were a flamer, I don't think I would have left my hotel room.

• met*

  R318

• I've been to Tulsa. It wasn't all that terrible, except for being really hot in the summer. They have a couple of pretty nice museums originated by oil barons.

• I agree with r282. I passed through Gary, Ind. in 1975 and I've never forgotten it.

• anywhere that democraps are in control

• R322 needs to take his medications so he can realize that he's on the wrong site.

• Laughlin, NV. Desolate, boring AND 120 degrees in the summertime. Just kill me!

• Johnstown, PA

• Anywhere in Texas. It really is a shithole. And don't tell how lovely Austin is. Between the redneck accent, the stupid cowboy hats and boots, the redneck politics and the dismal, dismal countryside, Texas really is the shithole of America.

• As someone who once considered one day making a 'grand tour' of all 50 US states this thread is very educational...! Personally I haven't seen much outside the major cities on the East & West coasts. Travelling through Camden NJ was a total shock - it looked like f**king Calcutta. LA in the neighborhoods near Venice wasn't much better and I felt nervous in case the car I was in broke down. NYC (Manhattan inparticular) before it's 'Disneyfication' was a total shithole, I don't care how many people romanticize how it was back then; I recall Penn Station permanently smelling of piss, Times Square being filled with panhandlers, prostitutes, pickpockets & hustlers and much of the rest of it being a no-go zone after dark. Surprised to hear how bad St Louis is - why is the infrastructure so f*cked there inparticular?

• Mitt And Ann's bedroom.

• Any big city in New Jersey

• No wonder the guy went wonky

• Newark or Camden NJ. are real winners but I also almost shoot myself in the face once when i was held over for 3 days on some highway just outside of Atlanta. I'd buy a crackhouse in Newark over that.

  Dbagdunker

• Tampa

• It's a tie between Johnstown (a town that time truly forgot), Gary (which looks even more burned out and decrepit, in sheer percentages, than Detroit) and Newark. Honorable mention to the whole Steubenville/Youngstown/Wheeling region. Detroit has a lot of bad stuff going on, but it also has some people in politics and in planning there that have some good ideas, and it's slowly paying off. I would not count out the Motor City just yet.

• [quote] Show me one black neighborhood with property values that increased-NAME ONE!!! ignorant bastid, keep hiding from the truth. R278 - The "truth" is that white people in this country, by and large, have implemented legislation and zoning laws to ensure their separation from whites. You can call it what you want, but let's not even try to pretend it's NOT about race. Black neighborhoods lost value because the zoning and lending laws whites put into place sucked all the value out. People who don't have money and don't have resources can't move next to people that do. Despite every single study ever done pointing to mixed incoming housing as the best thing for all the residents of an area, we continue to concentrate pockets of poverty - which is also normally people of color - and then wonder why people with no resources, no money and no economy in their area fight over basic needs. DUH. This article explains the point I'm making in an apples by apples comparison. If you really don't think laws are racist or classist in the way they are conceived or applied, think again.

  http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-11.htm

• And before anyone asks, I'm as white as a pasty white Irish/German boy can get.

  R334

• It's depressing how racially charged this answer is, but the answers are cities like Bridgeport (as mentioned many times) and Camden and Newark NJ. Terrifying. Camden was going to shut down their public library system due to a lack of public funds!

• I've been to Georgia and California and anywhere I could run.

  Charlene

• There isn't a city in the US (let alone NJ) that's as terrifying as Camden. As shabby as it is, Newark isn't unsafe to work in (at least in the University Heights section), and during lunch I walk around its downtown for take-out and never felt unsafe, despite its shabbiness. And I've had no problem going out to eat or visiting in certain parts of the city at night (the Ironbound, Forest Hill and Weequahic sections). Nor have I ever had a problem going to NJPAC/NJSO, the Pru Center or the Public Library (for a talk) at night. And the city has a more than decent mid-sized museum. Camden on the other hand is a whole other world - despair right down to its very core.

• IOWA LIFE SUCKING SHITHOLE!!!!!

• Anyone ever been to Gary, Indiana?

• I think Stockton, CA, St. Louis, MI, or Detroit, MI are the biggest (and most crime-ridden) shitholes.

• Did you know the Hooterville switchboard doesn't even have a Fargo hole? Let alone a shit hole.

• Fresno. Albuquerque.

  Anonymous

• California. So glad to be out of there

• [quote]California. So glad to be out of there You and me both. Left LA in 2006 and haven't been back since.

• R344 R345 Seriously? You've been to all parts of the state?

• Yes, I have.

  R344

• Ca is crap! I still live in LA. :(

• Nacogdoches,Texas

• Has East Saint Louis made the list?

• r342 one of the funniest green acres episodes

• Boise, Idaho. Hands down.

  been%20everywhere

• The worst in my area is methuen/ Lawrence/Haverhill/Lowell mass out to Fitchburg ect.... Just the pits. Worst accents, personalities, just trashy and depressing. And the area is ugly as fuck

• The Merrimack Valley is lower-middle class, but it isn't as bad as you describe. I grew up in the area and its still a good place live. The urban areas of Lawrence, Lowell and Haverhill can be sketchy in places, but I would much rather live there than in Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, Gary, Compton, Camden or other cities that are far worse.

• Buffalo, NY 10% unemployment

• I live in Andover, which is next door to Lawrence MA. It's bizarre travelling in a nice well kept wealthy town and then the second you cross the border into Lawrence, it's like the air changed or something. A small strip mall and parking lot just off route 495 in Andover is just yards away from the border and has become a favorite spot for druggies to come and shoot up. My Mom works there and despite the fact the area is nice - my mom got mugged during the time when the police force in lawrence was cut by a 1/3rd. Lawrence does have great history and some great spots and at some point will probably improve. But for now is a definite shit-hole.

• West Coast: Modesto East Coast: Sumter/Florence South Carolina Middle Earth: Little Rock Arkansas

• I'm from Little Rock, R357, and am curious to hear about your experiences there. I hate the city now and would never live there again, but I don't think it's by any means the most depressing place. My vote is for Truth Or Consequences, NM.

• any place you happen to be when you're totally depressed

• It's really hard to argue with Camden--aside from the riverfront venue, there is literally nothing about Camden that isn't nightmarish. That being said, Terre Haute, In. comes to my mind. It smells, and lots of things are named after Larry Bird. Indiana, generally, seems like an awful place.

• DISGUSTA, GA wins hands down. It is a smelly, depressing, pathetic shit hole of a town. Hot and humid most of the year. Most of the population is fat and retarded and to make it worse are crazy Bible thumpers. Government is corrupt. The downtown looks like it was hit by a zombie apocolypse. A truly shitty place in every sense.

  Cuddles

• Any DL'ers from the places mentioned here, specifically Camden? I'm going to throw in a vote for Oklahoma City. I got lost there looking for Route 66 history and found the town to be overall depressing and unappealing.

• [quote]DISGUSTA, GA wins hands down. It is a smelly, depressing, pathetic shit hole of a town. Hot and humid most of the year. Most of the population is fat and retarded and to make it worse are crazy Bible thumpers. Government is corrupt. The downtown looks like it was hit by a zombie apocolypse. A truly shitty place in every sense. Particularly since the sewage treatment plant was built right next to the airport -- an open-air sewage treatment plant! Welcome to Augusta!

  http://aug-cdn.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_slideshow_thumb/editorial/images/spotted/19/192399.jpg

  Can%27t%20disagree%20with%20a%20word%20of%20this.