Cities that give off a bad vibe

New Orleans — but I love its seedy, spooky, danger, sleaze. I haven’t been in many years, but it was uniquely sinister for sure.

This is completely subjective and in no way a sweeping statement about the area in toto, but when my foot touched the platform at Union Station in Los Angeles I felt a shock and it was like the words HELL CITY overtook my concious mind for a moment. Later in the day I had a first class panic attack, like the kind you get when you've taken acid and you start to get paranoid and it just escalates.

The thing is I wasn't on any drugs or anything at all. Very strange. Union Station is beautiful, I must say.

Most cities in the Midwest. Depressing and desperate, like you could get knifed for a Dollar Store gift card.

San Fran since the techies took over.

DC. Creepy and overly planned. There's none of the spontaneity and strange nooks and crannies of a proper city. Filled with navy blue and khaki wearing, type A sociopaths with reptilian eyes and no souls.

R3 Well to be fair that dollar store gift card buys delicious dollar store pound cake.

Chefchouen in Morocco is supposed to be a spiritual centre, and I was really looking forward to seeing the blue city, but for a friend and me it felt sinister from our arrival until we left. We were creeped out as our guide walked us to the hotel. It felt like people were hiding in the shadows and watching us. We then went out for lunch where it felt like everyone in the restaurant was whispering about us. Instead of wandering around afterwards as we’d planned we just went back to the hotel and stayed in our rooms until dinner (in the hotel). We didn’t step outside again until our guide picked us up the next morning. It was also the worst nights sleep I’ve had in my entire life. I eventually gave up on the bedroom and dragged all the bedding into the bathroom where I finally got a couple hours of hours sleep on the floor.

I would have expected it to be a relief to finally be free from the constant haranguing in the souks of Fez and Marrakech, but the staring from the shadows felt way too close to Patricia Highsmith for our comfort.

Palm Beach, when the Trumps are there

I agree with r1, I've had some strange shit happen in New Orleans

Centrailia, Pennsylvania

El Paso, TX, mostly because you see across the border.

Los Angeles. Despite the sun and the warm weather, you can feel the emptiness and sadness just hanging in the air. Nobody seems to have a soul.

Amarillo is another Texas city that gives off bad vibes besides being terribly unattractive. Just west of town is a huge cattle feedlot along I-40 and I’ve never smelled or seen something that disgusting.

Not a city, but a district - the Jewish Ghetto neighbourhood in Rome. We live in Rome and were just there to buy some snacks and could feel every single person there watching us with suspicion. (We are always dressed like locals but are northern-looking.) I am also creeped out in Pigneto, which is multi-ethnic.

D.C. is a wonderful place to live. There are plenty of nooks and crannies to find and explore.

Springfield MA. A crime-ridden hellhole with no redeeming qualities. The city equivalent of a black cloud.

Eureka, CA. Meth head central.

Papeete, Tahiti. Haunted.

Visiting a crazy town in Mexico called XIlitla. The Place of the castle of Sir Edward James. A crazy house which is an understatement made by a British noble in the jungle of Mexico. You can't make this shit up. He had it built back in the early forties.. The Castle was decorated by the art of the surrealists who built sculptures of their "dream Photographs. Edward James invited them to the jungle to have them design the place. The Local town was basically having a civil war. They were Having a market day and you could just feel the tension in the streets. Every body was on edge and tourists were targets because everybody knew the cartel and the police would be on their best behavior around the tourists.You were followed by the cartel who knew the cops wouldn't shoot at them with tourists around. Once i realized what was going on I was terrified and immediately got in my car and sped away.

Well crap, I’m vacationing in Naples soon. I am too young and hot to die.

Naples is odd. The walk from the train station into town is strewn with rubbish on both sides. Once we got there, people started talking to us, which is very unusual in a city. But what they mainly wanted to say was to beware of pickpockets. They were very warm, friendly people. So go, R20, and enjoy Naples. But beware of pickpockets.

R14

Locust, NC

Bennington, Vermont

Salem, Oregon

Butte, Montana

R2 did you feel that way in the surrounding areas or only LA proper?

Bennington is charming.

Everywhere in Italy they stare. It drove me nuts. In Barolo it was so bad I doubled checked to make sure I didn’t have a toilet paper roll stuck to me.

R25 it is charming I suppose, but there is something about the Green Mountain region as a whole that I find inexplicably creepy. I don't know if it's the topography or just some energetic anomaly--it's difficult to put your finger on. Wallace, Idaho and Ashland, Oregon have the same quality IMO—charming towns, but an underlying vibe that feels off.

I enjoyed Naples and like r21 found it friendly. To be fair I also thought Parisians were quite nice and charming so my travel palate may be different than most.

Since July 2020, Montecito.

[quote]Locust, NC

Honestly, all of NC gives me a bad vibe.

[quote]Bennington, Vermont

Rescue Chick is coming to cuss you out for naming a place in Vermont!

Technically, Montecito is not a city; it's an unincorporated area of Santa Barbara County, but we understand completely.

I hear there's colored folk in Montecito. Gasp!

Came here to list Naples. Not surprised someone beat me to the post.

Tangier. Get out of there ASAP.

Ditto Tijuana.

Allentown, PA

I’ve watched the entire, excellent Italian crime series Gomorrah, and man….it portrays Naples as the miserable murder and drugs-infested shithole to dwarf all shitholes. If you’ve ever romanticized Italy for all of the usual, stereotypical reasons, watch that show and the feelings will die immediately.

I hate most of Pennsylvania for this reason. When I traveled there for work there was a creepiness I couldn’t shake. And the cro magnons in the rural areas? Ick.

Amityville, NY

R24, that day I was at the Union Station only. I had lunch in the area, just a block away. I was there to meet a fellow Rolling Stones fan who took the train from San Diego. We spent the afternoon politely arguing back and forth whether Mick Jagger wore the short sleeve white jumpsuit at the New York City matinée in 1972 or the sleeveless white jumpsuit (it was the latter).

After my friend left to catch his train is when my panic attack started. I would have to say it was just about the most intense panic attack I've had. I've only had two or three in my life. This one took the biscuit. It was visual as well as psychological. As far as I can remember, nothing was going on that would have caused me to start freaking out. It lasted maybe twenty minutes but I was a wreck for the rest of the day. On the train back to Santa Barbara I called my niece in Seattle. It was like a scene out of a Hitchcock movie. I was telling her don't ever visit LA! Oy VEY!

The only other time I've been there was when I was dropped off at LAX eight months later. But that doesn't really count as being in LA.

We have only done this a hundred times, OP

Indianapolis

I've never been there, but I think this place would qualify.

[quote]Union Station is beautiful, I must say.

Ed Grimley! Good to hear from ya...

Denver and Boulder. Denver is like a ghost town with zombies, Boulder is filled with weird cults of various types.

Boston.

R19 I'm intrigued.

"Boulder is filled with weird cults of various types. "

I have rather fond memories of Boulder

Tuscany Valley, CA

A lot of Pennsylvania feels sinister. Centralia has an excuse since it was literally smoldering for 40 or 50 years from the underground coal fire. But a lot of the towns nearby have a grimy look and creepy vibe.

OP’s right about Philly though. A great deal of ignorance fills the air sadly. Hell, the whole damn state of Pennsylvania leaves a lot to be desired.

So many prejudice white folks lives in Montecito as well. Ugh..

Rome - it's dump. I was just there and was so disappointed. Everyone says Milan is awful, but I found Milan and the Milanese much more charming. Rome reminds me of like a nicer Tijuana with old ruins and the people are awful.

For me, a bad vibe translates to a creepy vibe:

Flagstaff, AZ

Tiburon

Ft Lauderdale

Dieppe

Monte Carlo

Istanbul

Piraeus

Bratislava

Roslin, Scotland

Ualapu`e, Molokai; Pahoa, Hawaii Island; Kaneohe, Waialua & Mokuleia, Oahu; Eleele, Kauai

Newark

"So many prejudice white folks lives in Montecito as well"

Really? Do you live there? Tells how terrible it is

A lot in Hawaii, r53. Can you elaborate?

I live there R53. It has many creepy areas, especially on the Big Island and Molokai. I could have gone on and on but it was a long list to begin with.

Palermo. One minute you are in a bustling modern Italian city. Turn a corner and you are in a bombed out ruin. It’s weird, and there is a very tense atmosphere. It’s such a shame, because there is magnificent architecture, and the history of the city is fascinating.

Baltimore

Most seaside ‘resort’ towns in the UK. They have never recovered from losing their former purpose as holiday destinations. Misery and bleakness hang in the air. All have the same formula: pier, promenade, pebble beach fun fair, fudge and druggies. Even the supposedly more upscale ones have a weirdness to them. The best one I’ve been to is Llandudno in north Wales, but maybe I hit it on a good day.

R54 I do and you’d be surprised 😮

Stockton, CA

Michigan

r59 etch a postcard: how I dearly wish I was not here

Brentwood of Los Angeles County. We still haven't found the bastard who decapitated my ex wife.

Drive through Arizona and New Mexico thru the night on I40 and you feel you'll never reach your destination. Sinister for hundreds of miles.

Fall River MA

I used to love Vegas and have been many times, but it wasn't until this last trip when I finally went into the Luxor that I finally felt the dark energy. That place is creepy as hell and like the poster at Union Station in LA, it left me with a major panic attack and sense of paranoia. The rest of my trip was ruined and I never want to go to Vegas again.

Went for a job interview back in the late 1980s in Cincinnati. It had a creepy feel and stank. I think the Ohio River was highly polluted or something. Near the river seemed creepiest overall. I remember the river being brown.

Went back in the 2010's and it was fine. An economic recovery had taken place.

Berlin, Germany. My first impression was from the movie Christiane F where the city felt cold and hostile. I have visited Berlin three times and while nothing bad or negative has happened to me, I never warmed up to the city or even had a significant change in my opinion. Strangely I think Cologne, Germany is lovely even though some bad and negative stuff did happen there.

Italy. Yes, the whole fucking country.

Munich. Miami. Palmerston North, NZ.

I really liked Milan too, R52.

I love Milan. Nowhere will you see such luxury - the highest standards in producing things like carpet, textiles, footwear, bedding, home decor - as in Milan. Rome is a shock to the system, because there is so much breathtaking beauty alongside so much garbage, graffiti, decay.

Smaller cities are clean and well-kept, eg Siena, Bologna, Verona, Brescia, Lucca.

i agree about small-town New Zealand. The houses in that country of perpetual rain are little wooden cracker boxes with corrugated iron roofs. No town planning, not a tree anywhere, no aesthetics at all.

[quote]Rome - it's dump. I was just there and was so disappointed. Everyone says Milan is awful, but I found Milan and the Milanese much more charming. Rome reminds me of like a nicer Tijuana with old ruins and the people are awful.

I agree the people in Rome are miserable and unfriendly no matter how polite you are to them. It’s like they have no personality.

The whole fucking state of Missouri.

Jesus, there are some miserable cunts around here. Stay home, losers!

Weird, i found Naples a really friendly nice place.

OP, that's hilarious. as a philadelphian for the past twenty years all i can say is, sorry. to me it is a boring city at best, the town that never wakes

R68 Same, Berlin seem very hostile

Bangor, Maine

Naples was fine. The Archaologival Museum is one of the best in the world and contains ruins from Pompeii.

Archaeological

Atlanta. Was there on a business trip a few years ago. Downtown is sketchy as hell and midtown was a big heap of nothing with barely any foot traffic.

The “downtown” part of Atlanta. Not Midtown etc but the true old downtown part. Empty yet feels like negative things lurking. Even with a Ritz Carlton and a few other “nice” places it is still sinister-feeling.

R81. Must have been typing just as you were. Eery.

Yes, very eerie.

Downtown Atlanta is just empty and filled with bad or boring architecture. Midtown is pretty lifeless for a place that has been considered an "urban neighborhood" for ages. Most "walking neighborhoods: in Atlanta have rather little to walk to besides restaurants.

Indianapolis is as depressing now as it was 30 years ago. Small towns in many places (the South, rural Pennsylvania, eastern KY, much of West Virginia, etc.) seem creepy because they tend to be inward looking and often peaked in their population and prosperity over 100 years ago. Some of them probably have illegal cottage industries---I wouldn't be surprised if the descendants of moonshiners were drug dealers. Small towns have never been as "nice" or "moral" as people like to portray them.

I’ve been to Rome many times, and have always found the people approachable and helpful. Some basic Italian goes down very well.

Española, New Mexico - in-between Santa Fe and Taos. Sad, dreary little town, partially on an Indian reservation...no jobs, no industry, decay everywhere. Yes, there arr also a lot of Dollar Generals there. "The Lowrider Capital of the World" is also the meth overdose/gang violence capital of the southwest.

Rome has some of the best looking police officers in the world. It’s almost like they are hired for looks and not aptitude.

Meghan Markle loons are ruining DL.

All subjective. I lived in and around DC for years and loved walking the city and found it exciting with the daily motorcades and buzz.

New Orleans does have an atmosphere though.

[quote] In Barolo it was so bad I doubled checked to make sure I didn’t have a toilet paper roll stuck to me.

In Barolo you DID, Miss R26.

Old ruins in Rome

The first time I visited the Colosseum there was a young, bored American guide trying to sell tickets for his tour. His pitch was “Come on the tour, cos otherwise it’s a pile of rocks”.

Italy is spectacular. Especially the smaller cities.

But places like Rome and Naples have a gritty genuine quality that I appreciate. The center of Rome is grand and luxurious.

BTW: violent crime in Naples is a fraction of what there is in US cities. It is US cities that are the shitholes. The sense of hopelessness and desperation you feel in some US cities, you do not feel in Naples.

I don’t think Gettysburg and Johnstown Pennsylvania have specifically been mentioned, but because of the tragedies there they have a disturbing vibe as the dead still walk amongst those towns unaware they have died and other paranormal activity engulf them as well.

Not that anyone lives there anymore, but Dogtown, Massachusetts gave off such bad vibes it was abandoned.

New Orleans...I love that big beautiful whore of a city, definitely dangerous and creepy, but more like the decaying corpse of Greta Garbo. I visit there all the time, and am shocked that I survived, only to return again, and again, and again...

London. I love London for many many reasons . . . but as soon as I'd get ten or twelve steps away from some busy spot, the creepy vibes there scream DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER DANGER.

Hate DC .. hate it. It has absolutely no soul.… despite the fact that there are a ton of black folks. Most of them work on the plantation i.e. the government. The buildings are depressing as hell… And full of the biggest nerd dorks and geeks you’ve ever sent your eyes on. Every year there’s a new rotation of nerds walking the streets. Ugly ugly people everywhere… Personality and looks. Zero fashion sense. The suburbs are tragic as well. Northern Virginia is ugly ugly ugly and expensive and full of douche brod with khakis:

The Plantation? Prince George's County is one of the richest black communities in the country.

R99 A bunch of Black people living in Mitchellville doesn’t make up for the fact that DC is fucking lame

Been everywhere and hands down Lagos is the winner.

[quote] Hate DC .. hate it. It has absolutely no soul.… despite the fact that there are a ton of black folks.

The exact same thing can be said about Atlanta.

People are right to say that Napoli is both safe and friendly. A great city. Most cities have only wealthy people live in their centers -- but in Napoli, poor people live in bassi across the city (centro storico, but also quartiere spagnoli and especially Sanita). Second, most cities are overlit at night (horrible phenomenon) but Napoli remains relatively dark at night. Finally the Camorra (multiple branches) control waste management hence the garbage and strikes.

I totally get the sterility of Washington, D.C. havng wandered around there. Even back in 1996 or so, it was bad. So looks like nothing has changed. lol Speaking of sterility, in Canada we have our share. Places like Ottawa where they roll up the sidewalks at 4:30, pockets of vibrancy around the market but essentially a public servant town and very dry, almost soul destroyingly lonely and bland and in a kind of a 'protected' bubble from the rest of the country. The vibe that I find kind of disturbing is from the people themselves - distant, robotic, etc. Doesn't help that Ottawa is the second coldest capital in the world.

I was in Montevideo, Uruguay around 2000 for several months. I thought it was sad , seedy and creepy.

Thunder Bay Ontario

When I spent the summer in Kigali, where I did a lot of walking along the road, every time I saw a laborer with a machete, especially if they were wearing pink jumpsuits, I had to hold back from audibly gasping. I also learned not to look too closely alongside the roads when bits of cloth or clothing were in the dirt, fearing I might see bones as well. But on the other hand the people were really nice and very friendly.

R20 Naples is simultaneously dirty and grand. It’s full of life and I love every second I’m in the city. But I do think it’s a place where you might want to spend a little extra money for more comfortable accommodations. Watch “The Hand of God” on Netflix to see the city at its most beautiful.

That being said, one of the greatest things about Naples is that it’s so close to Amalfi, and the islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida. Definitely visit the islands while you are there.

Holcomb, Kansas

Dubai

Johannesburg

And a strange dust lands on hands

and on your face

on your fa-a-ace

on your face

on your fa-a-a-a-a-a-ace

R101 I'd agree with Lagos. esp. during military rule. esp. near the meat markets. or on the beach for early morning capital punishment.

Guatemala City might be a close second.

Riyadh

Seattle, WA.

Fargo - sterile, unfriendly and cold. People, architecture, vibe.

Anywhere freezing cold

Gallup, New Mexico

I know this is about cities but I think you can't beat small towns for creepy. My job has taken me to a lot of towns and small cities all over the Upper Midwest. A few I recall where I had unpleasant interactions with locals or just felt an overall vaguely sinister/depressed vibe have been Waterloo, Iowa; Storm Lake, Iowa; Rush City, Minnesota; Sleepy Eye, Minnesota; Superior, Wisconsin; Minot, North Dakota.

Anywhere away from the tourist areas in New Orleans and Memphis. I live in Phoenix. It's highly overrated because of the sunshine. 75% of the city is crime and drug infested.

Agree about Berlin. I was only there once and it was at least ten years ago, but something felt “off.” It was interesting and I would go back in a heartbeat, but I would not want to live there. I felt like WWII and the Berlin Wall aftermath still cast a shadow. It almost felt like they didn’t want to move on, or had collective feeling of guilt. I can’t explain it.

By the way Nigeria’s President called out the people in Ukraine and Poland for being racists, I would have thought Lagos would be wonderful!

R115 I assumed I was the only one. I felt like the city was going to tumble into the sea any moment, which is apparently the prediction for the next earthquake. Mt Rainier looming over everything is somehow ominous instead of majestic. Pikes seafood market, this is your draw? Meh and no.

Frankly the entire Pacific northwest feels creepy. Oregonians are weird, something detached and robotic about them. Somebody mentioned Eureka--by all means go there if you need a reason to kill yourself. Arcata too. The homeless are of the stinkeye persuasion like they're independently wealthy and just slumming it for kicks.

Oh, and I'm a leftie, so this isn't about liberal shitholes. My town is run by conservatives who are letting it go to seed because all they care about is funneling money from the general fund to their pensions.

I think I replied here before- but the seacoast of Maine north of Portland. I truly, fucking HATED that place.

I am an ocean whore and I have to say I do not understand Maine's appeal up there. Very bleak and empty energy.

York and Wells are totally cool. But further up- no thank you.

The coast of California and Oregon have naturally beautiful scenery, it's a shame the towns dotting it even exist. One night on vacation, many years ago, we stopped at a little hotel with unmatched views of the coast; that night a couple of rednecks pounded on our door in the middle of the night, wanting someone who previously stayed in that room. My dad told them he had a gun pointed at the door and was ready to shoot, so they left. Scary.

Ditto here on the Maine coast. Dolores Claiborne come to mind. But uglier and more rundown. For a coastal area, it lacks much beauty. Even Acadia is kinda meh.

Adelaide. Neat, orderly and picturesque with great food and wine.

But the gateway to some of Australia’s worst serial killers and unsolved disappearances.

R127- NO way. Thank you.

I actually bought my first home there last year- and sold it in 60 days.

I absolutely felt horrible there- I think about it DAILY. "What the fuck was that place- Was it ME? Am I missing something?"

Harpswell Maine. Fuck that shit. What a hole. I don't care how much the homes cost.

Never again. I don't even want to set foot in Maine after that experience.

Isn't Maine creepy in general? Isn't that what inspires Stephen King?

R10- Maybe! It's truly a POOR state with ZERO job opportunities. And far more republican than I expected- even with that piece of shit "concerned" governor..

I took the chance because my job is remote- but there was just an extremely trashy, lonely, evil vibe. It felt hopeless. And the ocean never feels hopeless to me.

My perception may be skewed because I am neither a millionaire or poor.

Portland Maine, south? Great area. And I was only 45 minutes north. It felt like death to me.

Its an experience and feeling I will never understand and it was a LONG 3 months getting a mortgage and relocating and very quickly realizing- I hate this place.

McDreamy from that horrible show that never stops actually lives there-

Maybe you have to be rich to supersede the evil there.. I do not know.

The main thing I remember of Naples, Italy from my only visit (in 92) was that it had more graffiti than any place I had ever been to in my life. The whole city was just covered in it and it city looked trashy. I felt unsafe the whole time I was there.

I've never gotten a bad vibe from any city. But driving across the desert in California and Nevada in the evening hours always filled me with fear. Some of it was fear of what I would do if I broke down. But mainly it was the environment of complete barrenness. I remember thinking how I could see why aliens would prefer this environment to hide out in and abduct people. No one would see a thing.

R132- Aliens- I love-

Its humans that scare me.

The desert is something else...

Camden NJ

New Orleans always had an odd vibe, but post-Katrina, it turned into something much darker and scarier. I've been back twice since and it always gives me the creeps.

[quote] Camden, NJ

Always among the top 5 worst places in the U.S. It was so bad I think the state took over the city government.

R131 What about Camden ME? I was only there briefly, but it seemed pretty nice. Multiple celebs own properties there.

Wow R131 - now that is truly a verifiable HATE. To sell a house just after buying it is dramatic. How can you be that sure that quickly? I would have invested more time trying to like it I think. And I already think Maine is creepy and ugly. But avtually buying a house and immediately selling it!? Wow.

Seattle.

Soulless techies who worship dogs and the environment, but hate people (and secretly themselves.)

No joke R137- It was a BAD mistake and one that I still think about 6 months later.

I learned a few things later that explained my bad vibes- but it was a stupid mistake on my part.

Is perception the key to reality? Very much so.

Was it maybe ME and not that place? Very possibly.

But that being said, I fucking hated Harpswell Maine- and Brunswick, for that matter.

Yuck Yuck Yuck

Just a footnote because Naples has been mentioned so often on this thread: You might enjoy the film "Carosello Napoletano" (1954), a lively musical film which lightly traces the history and ethos of Naples. A young Sophia Loren has a small role; and lovers of Dance will also enjoy seeing revered dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine in an extended number.

I had always loved visiting Los Angeles but one time and one experience rattled me. We were parked in an underground garage off Sunset. After doing whatever, we returned to the garage and got on the wrong floor somehow. Our rental car was completely undistinguishable from every other car and we couldn't find it. Then the stairway door wouldn't open and the elevator didn't come. I had a really bad feeling -- it seemed the typical place some random murder would happen. An overreaction, sure, but it freaked me out on some level that I didn't know was there. I've been back a few times, but the feeling of primal fear comes back. Very odd.

R141 I had a similar experience moving to LA and buying my first car in two decades, I went to a mall with a parking garage and completely lost my car. Panicking running from floor to floor, and I didn’t get a security thing on it, which is now how I understand you can find it. I really thought it was stolen and walked the whole length to to bottom until I finally found it taking over 45 minutes. Then I realized after being in that garage, what happens when the earthquake comes and alll those floors pancake, that made me really uneasy, especially about garage buildings there.

Gay, Illinois

The place with the tow story outhouse r143?

Yup, r 143 right off of route 16.

I love the fact that someone took a train from San Diego to Los Angeles just to politely argue about what Mick Jagger wore in 1972.

[quote] I used to love Vegas and have been many times, but it wasn’t until this last trip when I finally went into the Luxor that I finally felt the dark energy. That place is creepy as hell and like the poster at Union Station in LA, it left me with a major panic attack and sense of paranoia. The rest of my trip was ruined and I never want to go to Vegas again.

Aw, I love the Luxor. The over-the-top tackiness of all the Egyptian bling is entertaining, it feels like one of the goa’ould from [italic]Stargate[/italic] might sweep out and start giving commands at any moment. And it has a great spa on the lower levels.

Birmingham, AL has creeped me out every time I’ve passed through it.

R147 My Luxor hate probably wasn't helped by the fact that I'm afraid of heights. There was something very disconcerting about looking up in the shadowy interior and seeing dark silhouettes walk along the walls in the hallway balconies above me. After some googling, I realized today that many people actually have jumped from those balconies and that I was standing in the vicinity where a young woman jumped to her death into the food court (then buffet).

R93 r103 Yeah I don't quite understand the unsafe comments about Naples. I would describe the city as chaotic in many ways ( and yes there are pickpockets like many European cities) but I didn't get the feeling of immense anger, tenseness, and "I'm fucked so fuck the world" attitude I get in a lot of rundown American cities ( or suburbs). And the food was divine.

Knots Landing, CA. My life was shit there!

Moscow

I had exactly the same response to those two places as OP.

But vibe-wise the very worst was in Israel in 1969 on a family holiday, when i was 6. years old - we went to a town called Acre, pronounced Acco by the locals (amazing I even remember that detail). I think it was an Arab/Palestinian town. It had a dreadful cloying sweet smell to it and a horrible feeling of misery, desperation and poverty, (though it wasn't dirty, very tidy in fact) - I can put words to it now, but I guess I just felt these as feelings age 6. I remember I freaked (little Mary) - I was crying and I remember my parents laughing at me, thinking my reaction was funny.

[quote]I’ve been to Rome many times, and have always found the people approachable and helpful. Some basic Italian goes down very well.

You’re probably a cunt just like them and like attracts like.

Berlin has a very raw, sexy vibe with an edge of sinister. I am just so horny in Berlin. It's an extremely sexual city.

Plainfield, WI

Phoenix, Arizona. I've done 3 month work assignments in most of the major cities in this country and Phoenix was the worst.

A lot of these are spot on.

Los Angeles always gives me a crushed dreams vibe that is just hard to shake. Oh - and desperation - it's an awful feeling. I know a lot of people live in LA with normal jobs, but there's just a perception of really awful things happening and people using each other.

New York doesn't have that - except in Wall Street. I feel like walking around Wall Street is like going into a lion's den - thieves, ruthless people, backstabbing, liars - blech.

Gary, IN

Circus Circus casino, circa mid 90's. Closest experience to being inside a Hieronymus Bosch painting w/o drugs.

Bodega Bay, CA

American cities that are prone to boom/bust cycles. Boom brings the worst kind of FOMO suckers to town, who destroy what little is good or unique. The bust. is recognized too late by most to avoid the swamp of bankruptcies and foreclosures. Scavengers devour whatever remains. Seven to fourteen years later the cycle repeats. Most are Sun Belt cities, each time climate change and homelessness compound the level of despair and mediocrity.

Beaver Falls, PA

I’m surprised no one has said Detroit yet. Downtown is fine but a lot of the rundown neighborhoods are very creepy! Especially at night with nobody around!

East St. Louis, Illinois

Most of Washington DC except for the tiny upscale parts of Northwest DC and a small sliver of Capitol Hill. The rest of it is a shit hole and hideous in every way.

Gaza. For those think a place with bad vibes is New Orleans or DC.

People don't seem to get that much of the world is in an alarming state of decline. Twenty years ago, many or most of those American and European places mentioned were thriving. Climate change, mass migration, the GFC of 2008 which led to extensive money printing, massive population growth in the 3rd world and birth rate decline in Europe, ....it's going to take a long time for things to recover (if ever).

To the poster who bought the Maine house and then rapidly resold it, I'm very curious. What made you buy it to begin with? Had you visited that specific area before or were you buying it blind so to speak? I ask because the turn around seems so extreme.

Trenton, New Jersey.

Another vote for Denver / Boulder. It's a place people go or stay who can't make it in a real City. That makes the inhabitants very vicious because they have no choices. Plus the homeless population is out of control with no plan to help them.

DC is fine if you know where to be. As a general rule , stay within a mile of Wisconsin Avenue.

[quote]DC is fine if you know where to be. As a general rule, stay within a mile of Wisconsin Avenue.

Yes! By all means, follow this rule and avoid that nasty Dupont Circle neighborhood, particularly gay ol' 17th Street. Seriously, r170, I lived in DC for many years, and never heard that "general rule." And I hardly ever lived within your one mile safety zone.

R165 last visited DC in the 1980s.

I've seen the LA that R157 experienced---have been there dozens of times for as long as a 2-3 mos at a time. Sunshine and the veneer of niceness didn't fix their unhappy lives. Also, when you hit winter or the June gloom, the dullness of the landscape and dirtiness of many places as well as the monotony of the cheapy stucco covered houses seem more apparent.

LA never gave me bad vibes, but one thing that I always found disconcerting about that city is the negative feelings about it I found from so many people living there, who were not from LA. We owned several companies in the greater LA area and the vast majority of the employees in these companies came to LA from other parts of the country. I was constantly amazed by the sheer number of people I talked with who were desperate to get out, go somewhere else, or in many cases go back where they came from. When I would do site visits people would be desperately begging me for a job transfer. I asked many of them why they wanted to leave LA so badly since they left where they were to go there and without fail they all said "LA is not what it's made out to be" or "the real LA is much different than the LA you hear about". To this day I've never found a city that evokes such negative opinions of it than LA.

Isn't LA the City of Broken Dreams?

[quote] Another vote for Denver / Boulder. It's a place people go or stay who can't make it in a real City. That makes the inhabitants very vicious because they have no choices. Plus the homeless population is out of control with no plan to help them.

I don't see this at all with either one of those cities. Well, the homeless in Denver are out of control, sure. But I didn't sense the vibe.

There ARE weird towns nearby that do have a weird vibe, particularly as you go south towards Colorado Springs or northeast from Denver. Colorado has a lot of weird survivalist/cult types in the boondocks.

I'm not a very woo woo ghosts and spirits kind of person but when I lived in NW PA there were a few times I got a bad or weird vibe and felt almost like some spirit or entity was there, and not happy I was around.

When I lived in Wisconsin, the big cities (Madison, Milwaukee) were OK, but the smaller towns always had a bad or weird vibe. In some ways, what happened in Kenosha didn't surprise me, because it always had that Drop Dead Gorgeous, "the tard's fly is down" kind of weird, wacked out vibe.

Newark NJ. Thread closed.

Vancouver, BC. Soulless, cookie cutter architecture and rampant anti-Asian sentiment. Funny that so many Rich Chinese park their money there.

Creepy Ass, North Dakota. I dunno, just something about it.

Tacoma

Are you sure a driving metaphor is apt when describing Chinese, R178?

@r143, "Gay, Illinois "

Gay Georgia would like a word with you...

LA has changed from being a destination to a place people want to leave. It's heyday seemed to end around 1980. The anti-immigrant sentiment was gaining steam, it was no longer cheap to live there and the sprawl had gotten out of control. It's just accelerated over time. I've noticed that only people over 50 seem compelled to give you a weather report from LA during the winter---although they never mention how gray it is there during that time of year. The need to justify being in LA seems to have ended over the last 20 or so years.

Anywhere in the Deep South

"You're a traveling salesman who has wondered off the beaten path, you enter what appears to be a friendly little town. You soon realize that you have entered.... THE TWILIGHT ZONE"

Baghdad

@r184 *wandered*

R184, most all little towns are just like that, no matter where they are. Small minded people prefer to live in small towns because most of the people in those towns think just like them.

^ True, but as a traveling salesman from Atlanta, I speak from personal experience

R27, Wallace ID is a huge hive of white supremacists. Got snowed in there and it was the scariest two days of my life. They immediately clocked my friend as having Jewish heritage and we got the hell out of that bar and I spotted an Asian woman at another empty bar. We drank there and left. The next morning I went to a used book store and was browsing and mentioned I'd enjoyed that bar and the book guy went off on the Gook Wife. I was putting my pile of books back and my Jewish friend came in. The store phone rang and he told us to get out he was closing. He didn't close tho the open sign stayed on. Oh and at the first bar we said we were from Atlanta and they immediately talked about how many n.....rs were in Atlanta and other slurs I've never heard before or since. Those assholes took a gorgeous old silver mining town nestled in the mountains and poisoned it

R3, that actually *is* happening in my city, (Minneapolis) - and on a cloudy and cold day, it's dreary and depressing. I really miss geography such as palm trees and mountains. And sun. And warm weather.

One that sticks in my memory: St. George, UTAH. Passed through on a long road trip. Town felt religious, sinister, poor, redneck and creepy all at once. I remember my cheap motel and going to the local grocery store. I walked around and saw quite a few Mormon temples. Definitely an eerie place.

Jesus R189 that is scary. I live in Houston and was forced to stop in Jasper driving back from somewhere, probably NO. Creepy as hell and white trash rednecks everywhere. It's where some White guys dragged a Black man for miles some years back. Also home to one of the largest KKK groups. At one point, they drove all non-whites out of town if they dared settle around there.

Idaho is where many of the racist cops from LA retire to. That creep from the OJ Simpson trial, Mark Fuhrman retired to Idaho.

These are the racial demographics of Idaho. Black folk do not like Idaho.

White: 89.97%

Other race: 3.47%

Two or more races: 2.94%

Asian: 1.41%

Native American: 1.35%

Black or African American: 0.69%

Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 0.16%

Surprised Native Americans don't have a bigger population in Idaho.

Fucking fundie Mormons are the scourge of the Western states IMO.

I agree that rural Utah is strange. Even cashiers in gas stations off the highways have the creepy Christopher Walken stare. WTF is that? I was glad I had my 200 lb Great Dane with me while driving through the state at night.

On the same road trip that stranded us Idaho at a stop in Missouri I mentioned to a gas station guy that I loved all of the brick architecture in St Louis, he countered with too many goddamn n words hard r. Then they had so many graphic bloody Abortion is Murder billboards and two churches we passed had popsicle stick crosses making abortion graveyards. I can only imagine the Sunday school class tasked with making those. The other billboards were for the sex shops and strip clubs just over the state line. Weird place

The only place I ever really felt unsafe was Caracas.

Mind you, my two muggings occurred in Havana, Cuba, and Valparaiso, Chile.

And I always add to these threads, Mexican restaurants are the happiest places on earth. Even if their Speedy Gonzalez sucks, you'll leave with a feeling of contentment

I transferred from Houston to St. Louis many years ago. After getting over the newness and architecture I got the impression of decay, desperation and an insular population that wouldn't or couldn't leave. Odd for a city. Weird vibes in that city.

Most of DL bashes Houston but I got back as soon as I could. Whatever else, at least it's a city on the move and full of immigrants from all over.

Colon Panama…..dark evil energy….if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse it will start in Colon!

haha, no r31 because I agree although my reaction is the exact opposite. Vermont has a very distinct feel. I took amtrack to NYC and on the return trip I knew immediately when we passed into Vermont.

Whatever the feel is, it's definitely a comforting feeling to me. I do however feel the same way as the poster who mentioned Vermont about New Hampshire. It genuinely gives me the creeps and I prefer not to go there. For me, it has the exact opposite feeling of Vermont and unsettles me.

I'll second Colon, Panama. You could use the city as a location for a Mad Max/end of civilization movie, and not have to change a damn thing. It does more than give you a "bad vibe". It triggers the feeling of an impending "fight or flight" response. You would think being that it's the port to the Panama Canal they would want to toss in some of that revenue to jazz up the palace for tourist.

Well said R202! Malevolent energy throughout. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough…..felt like you could be disappeared incredibly easily and no one would care or look for you. Was working on a yacht and had to go into the city to resupply (fantastic market at least), and our driver brought two of his cousins as sort of body guards, all three of them hustled us into the car the second we finished shopping and hightailed it out of the city. Collective sigh of relief!

R189 your story doesn't surprise me in the least. The Idaho Panhandle region is white supremacist central—mostly the Sandpoint area on the west side, but the whole region has a history of that. I grew up in Portland but have extended family in Montana and have traveled through that region more times than I can count. Once you leave Spokane and head east, there isn't another major city until you hit Minneapolis. All of the towns and cities between are largely small and isolated.

Wallace is charming in appearance, but there is very much a "stuck in time" feeling about it—also, the whole town is crammed in-between two steep mountainsides, and because of that, there's a limited amount of sunlight that hits it. I have been there many times as a pit stop while traveling through, but it wasn't until a few years go that I actually decided to spend the night. I felt odd the entire time I was there. The hotel I stayed in was old, and the layout rambling—I remember accidentally going through a glass door into a separate hallway that reeked of cigarette smoke and had brown shag carpeting. I initially thought it was part of the hotel, but realized after seeing mailboxes on the wall that it was residential (I am assuming half of the building had been converted to apartments at some point in the '60s or '70s). I could hear movement from people, got creeped out, and went straight back where I came from. It frankly seemed like a security risk to allow hotel guests/residents mutual access between the two spaces, but in a town like Wallace, I don't think these things matter.

The next day, I wandered around the downtown area, which has a lot of old, empty business spaces. There was an abandoned bar called "Sweet's Lounge" that I passed. Peering through the window, it looked like it had shut down in 1980 and not been touched since. There was also an old, closed-up livery stable that has probably been there for 150+ years. I stopped at a couple of antique shops (housed in what were at one time ostensibly bustling department stores), and that was equally strange. In one of them, I went into the basement, which was a large, dirt/stone room with some furniture, outdoor signs, and other miscellany lined around the perimeter. It was poorly-lit (almost too dark to see anything) and, after standing there for a few moments, I had an overwhelming feeling that I was not alone. Whatever the presence was, it scared me so much that I bolted back upstairs.

Before leaving the town, I stopped to see Lana Turner's childhood home (an overgrown shack now, basically). I then decided to venture north of Wallace up Burke Canyon, which was a major mining site between the 19th-20th centuries. After about a 30 minute drive up the canyon, you hit the ghost town of Burke, also sandwiched between two steep mountainsides. There are massive buildings there from its mining days, all of which are now crumbling. It's a very ominous place with a bizarre history. You couldn't pay me to go there at night.

Myrtle Beach, So. Carolina

I guess people process these things differently. LA, St. Louis, and Atlanta have never bothered me except the traffic, and Vancouver not at all. Memphis I'll grant you has a lot of sketchy areas, but a lot of nice ones too, and if you live there any length of time (as I did) you quickly learn where to avoid. I even ended up driving into East St. Louis one time, and while it was clearly economically depressed I didn't get the feel of imminent murder that its rep would indicate.

Vegas outside the strip and Oklahoma City outside May-Penn seem desolate to me, but not necessarily threatening.

You know, conservatives and rednecks aren’t the only ones who are creepy. In Boulder, my example, the hippy dudes who do endurance sports, are into eastern religions and who are always looking for pussy, give the town a really bad vibe. It’s also one of the most closeted gay communities I’ve lived in.

I’m from Portland, so I’m used to hippies, but they are different in Boulder. Many of them are actually from very wealthy families, and move to Boulder to drop out of society. The fake new age shit is annoying. They try to act zen, but are anything but. It is a beautiful little city though. On another note, I took a cruise with my partner about 10 years ago, and was horrified when we stopped in Colon, Panama. Holy shit it was terrifying and I am a large biracial male. I bought a bottle of water from a kid (trying to be nice I wasn’t actually going to drink it because I didn’t trust that it wasn’t tampered with). A gangster looking young adult that was also trying to sell water started screaming in his face in Spanish, pushed him down, then kicked him. I felt really bad, but wasn’t about to step in. Someone told me that many cruise ships don’t stop there anymore because so many tourists were robbed or assaulted.

[quote] Myrtle Beach, So. Carolina

Only spent one afternoon there in the resort area. Still trying to figure out how it ranks on several scales as the highest crime rate city in the country, including violent crime.

Someone upthread mentioned Flagstaff, AZ. There is indeed something off about the place, although most of it is beautiful. We have the great misfortune to reside in Phoenix, and Flagstaff is a popular nearby location for escaping our Waffle Iron summers. One time we got lost and drove around Mormon Lake. Very creepy and isolated - the lake looked like a bottomless portal to Hell. We want out of Phoenix, but there seems to be no decent place left to live when we retire.

Kyiv? I hear it described as a beautiful city. Lt Col Vindman is especially laudatory. I'll take their word for it - but I don't see it in the reporting. I certainly pray it retains all of that beauty once Putin's warmongering is done.

I know it's March, but does the sun ever shine in Ukraine? Bad enough what they are going through.

R210 Visiting Flagstaff I noticed very much of the residential housing, even our hotel, was built right in amongst rather dry looking pine forest. Being from CA I was struck by how easily a wildfire could lay waste to it.

Oak Creek Canyon is a much nicer place to spend time than Flagstaff, although it does get hot in the summer. You can splash in the COLD creek to cool off.

I also noticed how dry Flagstaff was during my visits. I was relieved when I'd left the area.

The creepiness I felt had to do with the inhabitants as being uncomfortable and transient rather than native to the area if that makes any sense. The place had a dark, uneasy feel. I'm sorry, it's difficult to explain.

[quote] Myrtle Beach, So. Carolina

[quote] Only spent one afternoon there in the resort area. Still trying to figure out how it ranks on several scales as the highest crime rate city in the country, including violent crime.

Because so many lowlifes from New York & Pennsylvania flock to Myrtle Beach for vacation, and they bring all their trashiness with them.

Kyiv usually is warm and fairly sunny in March, r211. It rains in May.

How is that any different than any seasonal beach town r215? I think they all have that underlying sense of danger underneath the sun and boardwalk attractions.

I didn't say it was any different, because it's not. Go to any beach town on the Florida coast and you'll find more trashy lowlifes from up north than anyone else.

Resort towns really vary a lot depending on who goes there. If you go from South Jersey into the DelMarVa peninsula, each one is different from the last. Wildwood is blue collar, Cape May is well off and quiet, Rehoboth has 3 different beaches ranging from middle class to well-off and a small gay area but mostly family oriented and then you have Ocean City which draws a younger crowd.

I find Fairfield County kind of creepy. My aunt moved to one of the priciest towns there from a beautiful town in NJ, and I never liked the vibe. I didn’t like visiting, and was glad I didn’t have to, at least not as frequently, when I left NY.

Another vote for Boulder & Denver. Denver has to be one of the ugliest cities I’ve ever seen. It’s a flat waste of space. Boulder is an obnoxious bunch of white affluent faux hippies.

I traveled attending conferences in 22 American cities and most have there plus and minuses, but Baltimore and St. Louis I was warned by hotel personnel not to venture out at night. I loved Italy never had any problems, and spent a month in Australia where the people were overly friendly and somewhat amused at my "accent."

Honestly, all of them now. Nothing feels safe and normal any longer, at least to me.

R218 And yet lowlifes don't seem to spike crime rates in most coastal communities in the same way as they seem to for Myrtle Beach.

Myrtle Beach seemed a perfectly ordinary beach town on the occasions I've been there, but that was forever ago. I guess it could have gone all murder-happy in the last two decades or so?

I don't think people have mentioned Las Vegas enough in this thread. Walk one block in either direction off the strip and it's not a good feeling.

it's an ugly city - full of cheaply made housing and with an uneducated population who move there for the tourism jobs.

I'll never understand the appeal after the age of 35. Weekend parties - ok sure. But anyplace with a lot of drunk straight people from suburbs and smaller cities is not a place I want to be. Loud, aggressive attitudes like they never outlived their frat and sorority days. Just gross.

Straight white middle-aged people are the worst.

R226 Good town for bail bondsmen and air conditioner repair.

You just feel like you are being sized up by predators and you a target, prey. It truly feel as if there are eyes on you from the shadows. Every city looks dirty, neglected. Empty stores everywhere you look. Depressing and unnerving.

And I will just say it: Evil. There is an underlying feeling of evil everywhere.

R228 - you're talking about Vegas?

There’s a side to Las Vegas I guess much of you have never seen, it is a town that is greatly owned and controlled by Mormons. Beyond the casinos there is a very much white bread, mayonnaise and no caffeine middle to middle upper class neighborhoods that could easily be plopped down on the outskirts of SLC. But then to me they, in and of themselves, give off a creepy and disturbing vibe.

R231 - care to mention the names of those suburbs? Summerlin isn't one - and that's just ok.

R228 what city are you talking about?

I only have OTA television because I read 24/7. When old shows like CSI are on I notice how much cities have changed since then. It actually shocked me the first time I noticed it and compared the change. Cities were brighter, cleaner, buildings and homes were painted and well maintained. The world looks like a getto now and I do not understand why we aren't doing something about it. Most of the people I know will not acknowledge it, much less discuss it with me. I feel as if I am in an Alford Hitchcock movie and I dread how it might end .

Garberville, California. Tiny, nestled deep in the redwoods, quiet, and grotesquely, horribly decaying. The people are just creeeeepy. Scary creepy. Low to no brain function creepy. Like zombie hippies who couldn’t be killed even by all the drugs they’ve taken so they somehow shambled as far as Garberville, could get no farther, and now refer to “outsiders” as you would speak of a plague of vermin. My skin crawled the whole time I was there, which was just long enough to check into a motel, disbelieve how awful the room was, try to sleep, and scramble out FAST the next morning.

Anchorage Alaska. I found bloody sheets in the bathroom and someone took a shit in the 3rd floor of the hotel and I had a whore named Robin outside my bedroom window getting indignant over $25 for a bj (she was worth more she claimed.)

Sounds classy r236

It was surreal r237.

[quote]I found bloody sheets in the bathroom and someone took a shit in the 3rd floor of the hotel and I had a whore named Robin outside my bedroom window getting indignant over $25 for a bj (she was worth more she claimed.)

Sounds like the old Milford Plaza!

I thought St. Petersburg had a very dark, oppressive feeling to it. Especially at night. Walking a few blocks from the train station I was struck by the trash on the sidewalks (and a KFC of all things lit up and shining at a distance).

The other thing that really stood out was as we approached Pushkin, what looked like once elegant apartment buildings basically were now tenement slums. Remember barb wire on the roof, clothes could be seen hanging outside to dry. Broken windows.

Calgary. The MAGAts of Canada. They hate all Canadians not from Alberta.

Quite a few cities that are in the desert in California. Palmdale, Victorville, Bakersfield and Adelanto to name a few. I have made stops in all those cities and could not leave quick enough!

I have heard some weird stories about some of those inland desert towns in California. Where they lay on the road until someone stops to help and that person is never heard from again. Some really creepy shit out there

Santa Carla, One thing about living there I never could stomach, all the damn vampires.

Atlantic City NJ

And all this in a country less than a couple of hundred years old. You pussies would live in palpitating panic if you were to visit Europe, Africa or Asia. Its a good thing y'all don't have passports.

More info on the bad vibe hippy types.

@r246, You sound nice. Maybe it's time to put down the vodka and turn in. Sweet dreams

I adore Naples. It feels so raw and uncurated, which can be good or bad depending on preference. People are uber-friendly. Strangers talk to each other so easily and the food is great and unpretentious. I love, for example, that I was ordering a pizza fritta to go from this hole in the wall, and a total stranger next to me sensing my hesitation made some recommendations then completely took over my order for me. Would never happen anywhere else.

Who’s been to the Salton Sea area?

^ That's the area I was talking about @r243. I've heard stories of blood stained suicide hotels and just bizarre crap

R235- I'm going to Google Earth it! Speaking of frightening curses, I was cursed enough to be born in the fetid hell of the South and I live about an hour from Lake Lanier in Georgia. Many murder victims have been dumped in those waters, drownings, one locally well known reporter murdered his girlfriend on his boat, which he was living on at the time. I guess he just killed her then rolled her body right into water without having to leave his bunk, lol. Bodies dumped into this lake aren't found for years sometimes, if ever. The water is dark (brackish, lol) The surrounding woods are absolutely black at night. Even when it is sunny the lake is dark, creepy, uncomfortable. You hear splashing water as if a body is being dropped, except this is all night and the lake empty of people. It isn't stocked with fish large enough to make such large splashes. You hear something crying sometimes. No one is there. Shadows flickering, peeping in and out of the trees. I sat up terrified for two days and nights on my 'fun, relaxing camping trip that my friend guilted me into. I am jaded, lol. I roll my eyes at claims of hauntings. It is the living that scare me, not the dead. Until that camping trip at Lake Lanier. Never will go there again even at gunpoint.

St. Petersburg is ok compared with Moscow, as long as you avoid the druggies trying to steal stuff. Moscow seemed to be filled with thuggish looking people.

Agree about Philly, I lived there briefly and almost went back but there was such a dark vibe to it. I'll add 2 to the list, both feel very sinister to me:

DC Milan

For a bunch of atheists, DL’ers have bought into the whole sinister, malevolent energy hocus pocus,

@r252, I'm from Atlanta, can confirm

The Lake Lanier curse has to do with the town that lies beneath it that was flooded when the Chattahoochee was dammed to create the lake

R255- Layers, dear. Nuance.

^ That's just one of the judgy Fraus that intrude here to wag their crocked little fingers at Gay men. Just ignore 'em like the rest of the world does

^ *crooked*

R424 Similarly, some of the smaller cities along the northern edge of the Inland Empire exude this feeling, with kind of a skittish metallic taste in your mouth, as you drive through in the early evening.

Joan Didion pretty much nailed it as "prickly dread" in her piece Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream, 1966.

^^ R242

Americans for whatever reason tend to think of Ukraine as something of a dump, but the cities are actually very gracious in a grand Eastern European style. Only big city there that really fits the dumpy image is Dnipro.

Wow. Looked at Colón, Panama on google street view. Awfully rundown.

These towns with a zombie-like population, I wonder if they are being poisoned by radiation waste?

radiation waste? Did you hear that from Tucker Carlson?

^ A Russian troll told him

Do you have any stories @R188?

^ Nothing specific, just pulling into small towns and feeling the stares and knowing that it's best to do your business and get out, quick. The worst was Selma Alabama. I had a business appointment that I skipped because I just wanted out of there. Never had a feeling like that and I've never been back

I went by the Salton Sea once, R250, and was so struck by the beauty of that blue off in the distance that I read up on it as part of making plans to go back there some time.

It didn’t take much reading to conclude that no one with property and sanity they wanted to keep should really ever try to stick around there. It sounded like Mad Max for real.

That whole Salton Sea is creepy as fuck. It only exists because of an engineering mistake and it's been a mistake ever since. However it's supposedly loaded with lithium, so it just may come back, big time

[quote] there seems to be no decent place left to live when we retire.

MARY!

Tuckahoe, NY

Is Senoia, Georgia zombie-like?

Watkinsville, GA. I lived fit five years in Athens. I made the mistake of stopping in this nearby town — I could feel the entire town staring at me as a damn Yankee, they have their eyes wide open to “outsiders”. Old South culture can be truly scary.

I'm surprised Dallas, Texas, hasn't made this list yet.

I've heard usually mediocre things about it. I think even on DL.

But it has a great pro sports scene, supposedly a great food and shopping scene, a nice skyline. It's a decent place for gay males, I think. Even a decent gay bathhouse, from what the bathhouse's Google reviews generally say.

Someone earlier said Denver is so ugly. Hmmm...is Dallas similar, maybe worse?

I actually have wanted to visit both Denver and Dallas, for some reasons, in recent years. Both seem gay friendly.

Does Dallas have a creepy vibe in a sense? Seems cosmopolitan enough.

I dislike Dallas but I don't creepy from it. Vapid and materialistic, yes.

I prefer Houston. Very cosmopolitan.

^ I enjoyed my tour of the Grassy Knoll ;-)

Forgotten resort towns. Sharon Springs in the Adirondacks, for example.

IMO one can drive all around the countryside in Western Europe (omit the UK) and never encounter a creepy vibe village whereas in the States it's commonplace. Dark Americans.

^ Maybe you're just more comfortable in Europe then America

To be honest, wherever you go if you're polite, take care of your business and don't cause trouble most people will leave you alone

Munchkinland

Austin Texas

^ Yeah, those little people are definitely creepy

Austin is weird not creepy.

Moscow, Idaho

Miami, in a white collar crime way. Lots of fraud, coke dealing, people who are filthy rich and you don't know why. An acquaintance of mine partied with the fake doctor who ran the business smuggling steroids to MLB players, including A Rod.

Pasadena, CA

R279 I've lived in Europe 25 years. Europe has plenty of creepy towns. The countrysides have evacuated in favor of regional and large cities, too. Creepy and empty towns.

I would think some of those fields in Belgium where all the soldiers were slaughtered must have some bad juju like at Gettysburg.

R94. That feeling of death reminds me of the time I was in Bucharest Romania. The legacy of Ceaușescu seeps into the air. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Oswiecim, Poland

r275, Dallas ain't really creepy - just boring and bland. And provincial. Even WITH the recent influx of tech bros (both Silicon Valley and India)... You need a car to survive here, so you're mostly safe and isolated inside your vehicle. And surprisingly, violent crime is down a bit from what it used to be. Yeah, not creepy - still sucks, though.

*Dallasite

A lot of those who live around the Salton Sea are urban poor from areas like East L.A. who move there to escape gangs and crime. It looks like another country altogether. Thousands still live near the lake in little settlements. I'd rather slit my wrists.

Is it ok to visit, r294? Or at least worth it?

Dallas is the opposite of creepy in my experience. Yes it's a bit featureless and uninspiring but the people were lovely and hospitable. This was decades ago but I have a hard time imagining it got "creepy" with growth and tech. I did have one uncomfortable time when we visited some people in the old, historic section. They lived in a large, elegant but fading house with a pool. While I was there the 'pool' man was working and the conversation about him was so casually racist I was shocked (he was black). There was a sexual component to it that creeped me out. I decided that's the gothic ickiness of the south and happy the visit was a short one.

R238, I thought Sharon Springs was West of Albany NY, in the Mohawk Valley....Are there two Sharon Springs?

I didn’t know Dallas had an old historic section…

Yes sorry about my false localization of Sharon Springs, its been 25 years since I passed through.

R295 I guess if you want to experience depression and squalor. Go in the daytime and don't talk to anyone if you can help it.

[R298] I said 'historic' but I realize I just meant old. This was an extended family that had been living in Dallas since the early 1900s. Some of the them were Jewish and were cotton merchants. Dallas has a surprising history actually.

Jasper, TX is #1. We drove through on way from TX to NY. Stopped at a KFC or McDoanlds, scary, angry white people - and just an all around hostile, paranoid vibe. Which was weird as it’s in the middle of nowhere It should just be another nowhere town in Texas. But it creeped me out so much for some undefinable reason. So I decided to Google it to see what was unique about it, that’s when I realized it’s the town where they dragged the black guy behind a car. It totally made sense. It was the scariest, creepiest, most bizarre, desperate town I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been all over the country to 48 states.

Lots of towns in NE Arkansas have a bad vibe, but it's not anything eerie; just the combo of poverty and a heavy KKK presence.

Birmingham AL

R294, R295 if you want to go to the Salton Sea go during the day. Some people flock there to take really cool nature photos or go kayaking. Since the sea is so high in salt a lot of the tilapia die and decay on the shores of the sea. Therefore, the whole area reeks of dead fish. I’ve been wanting to go but people say do not make a special trip to go out there. I think there’s also a casino on the west side of the sea. I sense it would be a very depressing place.

This man is very brave! He decided to stay overnight in the Salton Sea area. He’s staying in a very small town called Bombay Beach. I don’t know about you but the hotel rooms are very creepy.

R302 see my post above about Jasper. Same experience.

Indianapolis. Fucking CREEPY to the core.

R308 How is it creepy? I've never been but it sounds harmless and benign. Do you get the stinkeye there or something?

Compton

Denver is creepy and ugly af.

R311 Agreed Denver is a waste of space.

"Indianapolis. Fucking CREEPY to the core. "

I have MAGAt relatives there who pride themselves on their Jan. 6th participation, can confirm

My 1990's impression of exurban Dallas, former supermarkets converted into 25000 sq ft adult bookstores, and daylight "streetwalkers". positioned on abandoned office furniture along the roadside, while the traffic goes by at 60 mph.

Gotham City.

Even though they apparently always have fabulous exhibits of rare jewels regularly at the museums.

Sharon Springs is doing a little bit better, thanks to gay men, especially one couple who bought an old hotel. I don't think it will be enough, though.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Jamaica, by far the most dangerous place I've every travelled. Most of the tourists stay in all-inclusive resorts, behind high fences, and guarded. Like idiots, we bicycled around the island. You could feel the rage of the people. I'm surprised we made it out.

^ Yep, Jamaica is a beautiful country as long as you're locked behind razor wire

Centralia, WA

Aspen, CO. There are a lot of weird gays that live there full time. Like the other Colorado mountain towns, they’re all waiting to pounce on any visitors or newbies that want gay sexual relations.

R319, same thing in Cody, WY!

Another vote for Denver. Why do people live there?

Aspen doesn't have a bad vibe, at least not any more than every place where the very wealthy are forced to mingle with the merely rich, as well as the parevenu and wannabes and plain low trash that should have stopped at Breckenridge or Winter Park. Or (shudder) Vail.

I lived in Denver many years and my partner grew up there. It no longer resembles what it was in the past - It is Los Angeles with a Dallas streak and no ocean. Ghastly, soulless and completely transient as it builds out like Phoenix and Las Vegas without reliable water to use in the future.

Ghost towns of 2070.

Any of the cities in Connecticut...looking at New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, New London, etc...

R323 Agreed most of Connecticut is trash.

[R322] hasn’t been to Aspen, judging by her comment.

(R 90) New Orlean smells like piss but has a bit of charm. My son went to Tulane. Would never consider living there.

R322 has never been to LA. The people in Denver are ugly, dress far too casually, and would be laughed out of LA or NYC. I travel there for business, and hate 90% of the people who live there. The hideous airport is in the middle of nowhere. Downtown is boring. The suburbs are full of obnoxious children and conservative SUV driving fraus. People are constantly complaining about traffic and homelessness (neither are that bad). They have no idea what it is like to live in a real city.

Surrey, B.C.

Agree with r328 Surrey is creepy. Even the nice neighbourhoods feel creepy. Another place in the GVA that creeps me out is Maple Ridge. Maybe it’s because of the crackheads.

Salton Sea Hipster Dump Motel From Hell = Bed Bugs

^ Isn't that where the suicide hotel is with the blood-splattered rooms?

I was reading hotel reviews from towns around the Salton sea and it was horrific.

I’ve visited most German towns, and enjoyed them all, but Berlin is a strange place. It’s an interesting place, but there’s just a weird sense that the place is heartless. Even the large park in the centre is fairly dark and seems to keep people secluded. It’s an individualistic, atomised place.

I like the centre of Philadelphia a lot, but the communities around it seem (on first impression) to be depressed and depressing, like the location for Mare of Easttown.

Las Vegas is the place that really freaks me out though. It seems like the type of place where your murder would be caught on a million concealed security cameras, but no-one would do much about it. This is probably very unfair, but it’s my impression. I did actually see the aftermath of a murder and a robbery on the Strip (separate events) during a visit though, so I suppose I didn’t see the place at its best. The strip is just a weird mixture of pristine and seedy. I’m curious what the actual city is like, but I suspect it’s an urban sprawl.

Monaco is a shit-hole, full of daytrippers and bored millionaires living in the type of high-rise apartments which would be worth a fraction of their cost if they were anywhere else. Depressing and overcrowded, with no sense of identity, I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.

R333 There are 5,700 towns in Germany. How many decades did it take for you to visit most of them. And why did you do that?

@r334, I was reading a real estate site and parking spaces in Monaco are a quarter million dollars

I enjoy Monte Carlo but precisely for its fantastic mix of vulgar luxury and seedy desperation. Its the BEST F1 town. Totally ridiculous and the tents are a rat fuck. It was my many nights at Jimmyz that allow me to ID Melania for what she once was.

R335, I should have said I had visited most large cities and many smaller places when living and working in Germany: Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Weimar, Dessau, Halle, Cologne, Bonn, the little towns of Saxon Switzerland, Koblenz, Boppard, Bingen, Magdeburg, Potsdam, Rostock, Wittenberg, Schwerin, Rostock, Lubeck, Hamburg, Hannover, Bremen, Luneburg, Dortmund, Cologne, Baden-Baden, Mainz, Freiburg, Bremen, Osnabrueck.

I could list more of them, but its a pretty boring list of place names, ranging from biggish towns to bumps in the road. I haven’t seem much of Bavaria or Saarland, but I know the rest of the Bundeslaender fairly well.

One more vote for the toxic shithole that is Las Vegas, NV. Ugly, shady, seedy & menacing all the way around. The people and the trappings. No one's on the level there. ALWAYS a scheme, scam or hidden agenda.

Denver, CO (and the surrounding areas) are visually gorgeous. But the drugged-out human zombies who have overrun the downtown areas are completely overwhelming. And these aren't just your run-of-the-mill drug addicts/mentally ill. Those people are in some sort of trance and organized. There's definitely something going on under the surface.

And (to a smaller degree) I found Portland, OR to be a combination of both Vegas & Denver.

IMO what the average person is overlooking is the surge over the last few decades in Covert Testing on "disposable" US citizens, Community Policing, Organized Harassment & Gangstalking. But that's a conversation that no one wants to have.......

R338 I'm just nagging you for your sloppy language of "I’ve visited most German towns". You realize I understand a person didn't visit most of 5,700 towns.

Do you think that the homeless population is being drugged, r339? That actually had never occurred to me, but I guess they would make decent Guinea pigs.

[quote] I know it's March, but does the sun ever shine in Ukraine? Bad enough what they are going through.

R211, I imagine Ukraine gets a lot of sun: it exports 10% of the world’s wheat. A lot of poor people across Europe and the Middle East are going to go hungry because of this war.

R341, most definitely. Among other things. Government-sponsored Covert Testing and Depopulation programs.

[quote] I enjoy Monte Carlo

I prefer the nearby and less pretentious Villefranche-sur-Mer or Menton.

Well then you missed my point. Because Menton is not glittery sleaze central. I enjoy what Monte Carlo is. Corrupt.

R345 Babe, I was just trying to be funny. I'll work on that.

Mainly because we’re not insane, R339

Tampa, Charlotte, Dallas, Woodland Hills, Las Cruces, Bridgeport, Cincinnati, Dubai

I'm too kind to ever suggest that you're insane, r347 . Naive, simple & mildly retarded perhaps but never insane.

[quote]I’ve visited most German towns, and enjoyed them all, but Berlin is a strange place. It’s an interesting place, but there’s just a weird sense that the place is heartless.

Weirdly, I felt exactly the same about Frankfurt. Step off the main station you see people doing hard drugs on the street. This is pretty normal for large termini in huge cities, right? But this was right in the shadow of the old European Central Bank headquarters building and right next to the most popular tourist square and million-dollar riverfront apartments. I remember thinking: "This city is heartless".

[quote] Weirdly, I felt exactly the same about Frankfurt. Step off the main station you see people doing hard drugs on the street.

To be fair, r350, German train stations often tend to be the seediest parts of the big city centres. If you are going to see drunks or addicts anywhere, it is likely to happen in the station or surrounding it. No matter how nice the city, I have found this to be true.

As pointed out earlier St.Louis is a certified shithole. But Indianapolis is plain creepy. Maga people, home of KKK, entire town spins off a war memorial to dead soldiers and sailors and resembles a big white penis. That town has zero soul.

^ Home of Mike Pence and "Mother"

Adelaide

Naples

El Paso

Mecca. I've not been, just seen photos of the town. I'm not talking about the religious sights.

R352 I like a big white penis. Say more.

Did we say San Antonio yet? I did not like the vibe there.

New Madrid, MO. It feels like an opening to hell now. I can't imagine how it felt in 1811.

[quote]Isn't that where the suicide hotel is with the blood-splattered rooms?

Do you mean Amboy, California, R331?

^ Yep, that's the one. Why hasn't Amboy made this list yet?

Cape Girardeau since they opened a Rush Limbaugh museum

By the way, Amboy is in the Mojave Desert but not that close to the Salton Sea.

Probably because Amboy is a ghost town, R359.

Amboy has a population of 5.

5 meth addicts?

That Amboy sounds like a top contender for city with a bad vibe

Not to mention Perth Amboy!

I’ve been to Amboy several times, and it’s a nice place. It’s not fashion fashion fierce fierce werk werk, but there are a lot of fun activities. It’s near an entrance to the Mojave Preserve, which is beautiful. Amboy crater is also nearby (obviously), a great hike. It’s a nice clean place to stop when you’re going the back way through the desert. Note that the Salton Sea is NOT in the Mojave Desert, if that’s what was implied earlier. I believe that’s the Colorado Desert.

Never been to Perth Amboy, but the Mohave is astonishingly beautiful.

So this Roy's is not an actual motel you can rent a room from? Can you eat in the cafe?

Denver by a long shot, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Shreveport Louisiana, Bend Oregon, Beaumont Texas, Burlington Vermont

Budapest is super creepy and sinister. All of those former communist cities, like Budapest, Prague and Berlin, are cold and emotionless. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Maybe it's all the Cold War era ugly concrete architecture R370?

The Bronx, NY and the area of projects just north of Harlem across the bridge from the Bronx. I passed by that area regularly on the train for awhile in the 2000s and the energy changed immediately once you hit the massive red project buildings going north (nothing but identical buildings for awhile) and then didn’t go away until I passed the Bronx. It was a feeling of overwhelming poverty and decay and hopelessness. I hated passing through it.

I haven't been but saw it in a movie and it looks like it would have bad vibes. It was a location for a horror movie too. Not a very good one either. Kennedy Island (?) in NY City? I know it has cable cars going to and from. I think it was originally home to some kind of sanitorium. The creepiness of it struck me.

^^^Roosevelt Island

"I’ve been to Amboy several times, and it’s a nice place."

Pop. 5

Tell me you hate people without telling me you hate people

We were driving from Texas to California and stopped at a Tiger Exxon station for gas. Somewhere in the wilds of far West Texas, the station had an ominous vibe. I told my friend it looked like a set from ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’.

R372 That's about where Anne Hutchinson and her extended family escaping religious persecution in New England and seeking asylum were unfortunately mistaken for a group who had persecuted a Native American tribe who then unceremoniously slaughtered them. Bad juju from mistake identity killings and unsettled dead. They named a parkway after her in remembrance.

Cincinnati has a bad vibe. There’s a negative energy and mindset among the population that’s been in place for a couple centuries of parochial German Catholic influence. Many places are insular, but Cincinnati takes it to another level, one of solipsism where they believe it’s the center of the world and nothing worthwhile exists outside of it. People there who have never lived anywhere else and likely only travelled to Florida will tell you with conviction ‘it’s the best place.’ The paradox is it could be a great place as it has a beautiful geographic setting, great historical and modern architecture, and well established fine and modern arts, but the majority of the population actually doesn’t partake in any of this or do anything to promote these assets. Cincinnati is always late to the party on anything because they spend all their time fighting and looking for reasons to say no, and some other city passes them by or steals the opportunity. It has a pall of insignificance. A city that was once in the top 5 but falls a decade after decade. It eats away at your soul to live there like a ‘City of the Damned’.. Mark Twain is often quoted as having said "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always 20 years behind the times."

R378 Wow I couldn’t have said it better myself. I grew up in Columbus - another boring as hell city.

I read an interesting article about Cincinnati's bizarre subway system that never happened but all the spooky tunnels are still there

R369 Please inform, what's creepy about Bend Oregon? Has it been taken over by millennial foodies and x-sports geeks? I was there for a long weekend 10 years ago and loved it. Considered moving there until I learned that it weirdly has the shortest growing season in the lower 48.

R360 it’s also home to Denise who drove many a womyn to Michfest on the rainbow express 🌈

This might be the Mariest thread to ever Mary on DL.

^ Gossiping about places is almost as fun as gossiping about people

Have they all been named at this point? Can I unsave this thread?

Forks, on the Olympic Peninsula.

R385. Unsave. Then wait 2 weeks tops, for this to be rehashed in a new thread with great enthusiasm yet the OCD brain death of DL's somnambulists.

R378: Cincy is inward looking and provincial, but that isn't necessarily a "bad vibe". I've known quite a few people have liked living there (and some are still there0 even though they concede is pretty conservative. Columbus is tediously boosterish--sort of like Atlanta. They always claim to have the first this or that even when it's easily debunked, and its usually something trivial like the first "super Market" (the term was coined earlier by someone in Cincinnati.

Rockfish, VA

Boulder

Colorado Springs

Overland Park KS - jesus h christ. I’ve never seen so many white people in all my life. It’s like children of the corn.

^ it’s also very upper middle class.

I was in CO Springs and didn't find it creepy. What's creepy about it?

A gang of homeless criminals controls the streets of Olympia, WA

Alot of cities and towns are just ugly and tacky.

R395 Especially so when the legislature is in session.

Beverly Hills, CA. Something about all the mercedez benzes and christian dior just seemed sinister. The diamonds and brazilian waxds had something off about them. Rodeo Drive seem to be lurking with a dark underbelly or emptiness and criminality.

Vibe? Evil spirit is what I call it and I believe certain cities have it.

@r392, " I’ve never seen so many white people in all my life"

Then you've never been to Salt Lake City. The whitest white people who all look related live there

Why the hate for Denver? Aren't the mountains beautiful?

Vancouver, WA aka Vantucky

Collinsport Maine. Very bad vibes.

Attica, NY

R402, Vancouver is full of trailer park trash, but it’s safer than Portland.

R401 Denver is not in the mountains that’s the problem. It’s flat and unbelievably ugly. It looks like a Midwestern dump.

Middletown, OH

Des Moines Iowa. What a cesspool.

Present day New York

Myrtle Beach has been taken over by ghetto blacks. Every weekend in the summer there is at least one deadly stabbing or shooting. The white people migrated to N. Myrtle and the OBX of NC. SC is a shithole.

Vail, Colorado, which is SO white-Republican nouveau riche it's painful. About 50% of the town seems to be stores selling "designer" crap to the Texas housewives that can't afford Nieman Marcus, which is a pity considering the lovely setting. Even Aspen has far more soul to it, you can still see what a nice little mountain town that used to be, before the rich fuckers moved in en masse. But at least the rich fuckers have enough taste to preserve the cute downtown, while Vail is a giant outdoor mall.

Portland, Oregon, which used to be a charming and eccentric little city. But there are a lot of druggies and drifters in the Pacific Northwest (you even still see hitchhikers there), and Portland made the mistake of welcoming them all and encouraging them in attempts at "activism", but didn't provide them with housing. So the streets are full of unsavory people who feel free to harrass anyone who looks like they may have a job, and I bet within ten years all the white liberals who encouraged this process will have moved to the suburbs.

R405 Vancouver is becoming gentrified as we speak. A lot of people have fled Portland and moved across the river. 15–20 years ago, it was largely the black community in NE Portland who were priced out and relocated to Vancouver where it was more affordable. Now that Portland is on an economic/general downward slide with increasingly absurd taxes, rampant drugs/homelessness and crime, Vancouver is becoming an appealing alternative to a lot of people. The ones with the real big bucks go 10 miles east to Camas, which is charming, but also very expensive and populated by rich businesspeople who come barreling down the hill everyday from their lakeside mansions in their Teslas and BMWs.

I lived in Portland in the early 1980s when it was much smaller in population and much simpler. I probably won't visit again since my memories of it would likely be crushed by the reality of it today. Vancouver, WA was a peaceful suburb back then.

[quote]Then you've never been to Salt Lake City. The whitest white people who all look related live there.

They are all married to each other.

If you want to see all white, try North Dakota - not just all white, all blonde.

Mariupol looks unsafe and uncomfortable to live in.

Long Beach should be at the top of the list. The weirdest gay bars exist there, and it’s a weird beach scene because it’s just beach people without the surfing.

San Diego has a bad vibe because you feel you’re at the edge of the earth. It’s all wanderers: tourists, military, perpetually lost hippies.

Australia, Adelaide especially, for that "edge of earth" feeling.

I recently visited Lima, Perú for work. If I can avoid it in the future, I will gladly do so. Yikes!

What’s wrong with Lima, R418?

Lima freaks me out because it's on the edge of a cliff, that looks like it wants to slide into the Pacific any second. Maybe all the tectonic plate shifting, mixed with the Earth's magnetic fields does a number on you if you're not used to the area.

Lima, OH

[quote] Lima freaks me out because it's on the edge of a cliff, that looks like it wants to slide into the Pacific any second

R420, along the wealthy, coastal area, parts of Lima resembles bluffside LA. Similarly, the farther inland you go into the city, the more chaotic the city gets.

r416 About Long Beach, some time ago a foreign driver participating in the LB Grand Prix, when asked how he liked Long Beach, pretty much hit the nail on the head when he responded something like, "I think they closed for the weekend."

Long Beach has a great dog beach, the best in LA County. I used to bring my pup there when I lived in LA. Not too crowded and the water is calm. Doggie heaven!

The area around the dog beach seems cute enough. Looks like a lot of lesbians live in the area.

R424 Long Beach is a dump. It’s where all the gay rejects live.

[quote] Lima, OH

The kids of the William McKinley High School Glee Club of Lima, Ohio respectfully disagree with your assessment that Lima has a " bad vibe."

Naples, Florida is pretty gross, too. Smells like mold and shit.

Why did Long Beach become the gay beach community? It’s the ugliest beach front town and has an industrial port. Gays should know better.

R428, its naval past?

Really, R427? The most expensive houses there are over $25 million.

Long Beach is a great town. There are good restaurants, clubs, and bars. It's had something of a renaissance over the last decade. I prefer it to phony 'posh' beach towns like Newport Beach. Long Beach is grittier and funkier but it has its own soul and nice vibe.

R416, I would almost identify myself as a lost hippie... I also love San Diego. Just too expensive for me, but dang that would be amazing. Plus they have the Padres and a great baseball stadium. Lots of breweries, the ocean. Close to Mexico. I'm in heaven.

R417 For a sunny seaside city, Adelaide has had its fair share of gruesome murders and other heinous crimes.

[R432] , what will you do in Mexico, since it’s so close? Anything within easy driving distance is busted.

Cape Canaveral

My neighbors house

[quote] For a sunny seaside city, Adelaide has had its fair share of gruesome murders

Patrick Macnee, the actor who played Steed in the British series The Avengers, said it was the most beautiful city he had ever visited.

Adelaide = City of Churches (aka rather parochial)

{Votes go to Hobart and Perth for understated elegance and beauty.}

R394 What's creepy about Colorado Springs? Religious freaks who shoot up abortion clinics. How quickly some of you forget. Sadly most of the midwest feels this way. As you drive across the country, all you see are signs for guns, religion, and sex shops. The land is ugly and the people are like zombies. Lesson learned: Never drive across this country. It's ruined.

I took a train across this country and thought it was magnificent, R439. Some ugly areas, for sure, (Houston from the train...yeesh...) but more often then not spectacular.

And the classic American train station blows away its counterpart pretty much anywhere else.

Las Vegas gives off a bad vibe. I believe it just might be the badassvibiest city in the USofA.

I should add Knoxville, Tenn. It's the shitz.

Another vote for DC. I wish Russia would bomb it.

[quote] Never drive across this country. It's ruined.

I moved from Boston to San Jose and drove my car instead of having it shipped., taking the southern route. I needed gas in Oklahoma, and had to leave the interstate by several miles to find some. It was not a city per se, but it was creepy as hell. People stood around just watching me fill up. I felt like I was on the menu.

The rest of the trip was was pretty much wholesome americana the whole way.

Peru, Indiana. Circus City USA. Gives off some serious "Twin Peaks" vibes. Horrible, evil people who feel they have the right to nose into and interfere with the lives of others. Dark, oppressive energy.

R440 I wish that had been my experience. I had high expectations. It was a very depressing trip. Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana were notably awful. I think the conservative stance of spending no money on communities and parks, and allowing private businesses to put billboards on public highways, is at the root of the deterioration of these states, which must have been lovely once.

[quote]And the classic American train station blows away its counterpart pretty much anywhere else.

R440: There's Grand Central, 30th Street Station Philaldelphia, DC Union Station, Cincinnati, Kansas CIty Union Station, Chicago Union Station, Santa Fe Depot in San Diego, L.A. Union Station, some others, but many have been compromised to make shopping malls or hotels or other uses, and the Amtrak service outside of the Northeast Corridor and a few somewhat popular routes seems more underwhelming and less magnificent.

Compared to the European stations that still function above all as stations and offer choice of service and routes and some amenities, the U.S. stations are lacking for me, despite a handful of magnificent buildings. European examples: Antwerp, Madrid, Porto, Milan, Paris Gare du Nord, Helsinki, Lisbon.

Colorado springs is like many other cities with large military bases. Full of uneducated poor military trash types with too many kids and fat wives. Throw in the uneducated focus on the family trash and it’s hell on earth. It’s also flat and brown. I had to spend a month there for Olympic training, and swore that I would never voluntarily return.

I enjoyed my visit to Colorado Springs, but then I went to the Garden of the Gods and the Pike's Peak railway, not the town itself. Seriously, the Garden of the Gods is AWESOME!!!

But I'll take your word that the town itself is a place to pass through.

I've driven across the country more than once. I found Indiana to have very clean houghways in good shape. West Virginia is hell on earth. I felt like I was in the movie "wrong turn" until I got out.

West Virginia has beautiful scenery. Indiana does not.

Agree with Neely Orleans. The French Quarter is spooking and the on the street drinking a bit wacky as well. I found it a bit seedy and there was the crime thing- also the voodoo shops are for real.

452 replies and no mentions of Pittsburgh...so proud. We've come a long way

Fuck you, R445!

Most cities have good and bad parts. The thing about Lagos is that there's no place or time where you can let your guard down and think "I'm safe".

Malmo, Sweden.

Dayton, Ohio.

And I have my reasons.

Memphis - downtown just feels completely deserted with large old buildings boarded up everywhere. Apparently 2nd highest murder rate after Detroit. That said, a few hidden gems to visit and restaurants if you seek them out.

Anyone got an opinion on Marseilles? I've heard it described as the armpit of France.

Malmo...Marseilles... any city in Europe that has attracted lots of men from the Middle East is going to be horrible. But "diversity" is the left's dream.

R458: Memphis in the 90s reminded me of Detroit in the 90s, when it had hit bottom.

Gainesville FL.Dull but rather sinister.A short stay and never to be repeated.

Very funny Mr. Porter @ R454 But I know you really did not want to be buried here. It was only because your gold-digging fat cunt wife/beard didn't want to spend the money to have you laid to rest in New York or Paris where you spent most of your life, avoiding coming back to this dead end white trash town. Did you know the MAGATs here created a festival and marathon celebrating you? Even though you were two things not welcome here: half black and all gay.

Idiot.

This will be an unpopular opinion, but I found Kingston, NY to give off a bad vibe. Sure there are some nice restaurants and shops, but there is a creepy energy to the place.

I am not as psychically intuitive as many, but I find few places to vibe one way or the other. The only city that really pulsed to me is Los Angeles. The word “energy”comes to mind.

Las Vegas doesn’t feel sinister to me, but its people do feel desperate.

Raleigh really depressed me, but I’m not sure why.

[quote] The thing about Lagos is that there's no place or time where you can let your guard down and think "I'm safe".

I worked in Lagos for a few months. I was staying in a hotel outside the city. The company sent a driver to pick me up everyday. He always took what he said was the short route, which meant driving through some of the sketchiest parts of the city. Frequently we'd go through the meat market, piles of raw meat stacked up in the dirt, 13 year old kids running around with machetes and bloodied clothes, goofing off and mugging into car windows. I learned to always wear sunglasses and pretend I was sleeping. A not uncommon news item was the report of official executions at dawn on the beach. Very edgy place, with a surprising number of extremely jovial people.

R463 Cole Porter wasn't half black you idiot.

Agree with R464 Kingston NY was and is kinda creepy…

Niagara Falls NY is depressing, eerie, and CREEPY!

Butte, MT is one weird place—there are definitely creepy vibes there. Lots of rundown Victorian buildings, and the cityscape (essentially a large hillside against an open-pit mine—the Berkeley Pit, which is full of toxic metal-laden water) is littered with mining head frames that stick out of the ground. If you look at the city's history, it's full of vice, violence, and generally dark incidents, mostly related to the mining and wealth that was extracted from the land. There were lynchings of labor organizers, countless industrial-related deaths, red-light districts galore, mob involvement, and massacres of striking miners. Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel "Red Harvest" is based on the insane shit that went on there.

I have family in Montana and have been to Butte many times, and, while I find it to be one of the most fascinating American towns I've ever been to, there is a dark aura about it. There is a monument on the hill for 100+ people who died in a massive mine explosion in the early-1900s, and that's just one story of many. I can't imagine how many people suffered and died from the arduous, dangerous labor that went on there. Also, with any mining town, comes plenty of alcohol, gambling, prostitution, brothels, and general seediness. The town was a melting pot of immigrants in the late-19th and early-20th century, largely the Irish and Chinese. I once read that Butte has the highest number of Irish-Americans per capita of any city in the United States.

Bethesda and Rockville MD. Everyone is cold and reptilian in affect.

Also, pretty much any town in the northern Sierra Nevada. Plumas County, California is creepy as hell.

R471 now I want to visit Butte. It sounds creepily fascinating. The quote about the Irish pop.is surprising. I would have assumed that Boston or some other Mass. City would have taken the lead.

R474 Boston is a major city and obviously massive compared to tiny little Butte (which totals around 35,000 residents), so you'd think that would be the case, but per capita, Butte is more Irish. The town has a very heavy Irish-Catholic history that runs deep, because most of the immigrants that ended up there in the 1800s came from Ireland. There is a massive statue of the Virgin Mary erected on the mountaintop along the continental divide that overlooks the city, if that tells you anything. They have an annual St. Patrick's Day festival that I've heard is insane—the town also has a very loose open container law, allowing public drinking for 18 hours out of the day, so people get sloshed on the streets.

It is also the bluest city/county in Montana, and has been the main (and one of the only) Democratic mainstays in the state, which also goes back to its history—lots of Socialist history and a heavy unionized workforce because of the mining industry there.

Per the LA Times, regarding Butte's Irish roots:

Philly? It’s the most un-ominous city I’ve ever spent time visiting.

Caesarea, Israel. I sat in this Roman amphitheater. There was only a few of us there at the time. The rest of my tour group was off somewhere else. As I sat there, the brutality of the Romans just hit me. I thought of the gladiator fights that took place right in front of where I was sitting.

R471 I Visited Butte briefly for a few hours for a meeting years back (I lived in Bozeman for a year) and was creeped out not only by the pit and the Virgin Mary on the hill, by a massive pile of black waste products from a mine. I had the option to live there and work at the hospital there for a summer and I turned it down—was an easy decision partially because it meant living there most of the week but having to commute to Bozeman once a week and being far from the airport (flew out to see my partner monthly at the time), but also yeah, that place had some bad juju and cities with industrial waste/fallout creep me the hell out.

Fun fact: William A. Clark, a Montana senator and one of the "Copper King" magnates of Butte, MT, was the father of DL fave Huguette Clark, the mysterious heiress who maintained several mansions that sat empty for decades, and who spent her last 20 years living as a recluse at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan. Her father built Columbia Gardens in Butte, the only major amusement park in the state of Montana, which closed in 1973.

This wasn’t a city per se, but driving north to SIoux Falls from KC to visit family on i29, somewhere in Iowa I saw a HIGE tall factory with a candlestick in the middle of NOWHERE near the highway before Council Bluffs and it was very creepy. Later on the route, past some of the cities as I drove north, I was alone on the highway (driving during the late afternoon) and it felt so isolated as I drove north—there was nothing out there at all—and I felt panicky for a little bit as I reflected on how isolated it was and as I imagine if I continued north up to ND and Canada. Just creepy to be driving on a major highway with no one anywhere near me and no towns for long stretches. Sort of an existential bad vibe situation, I guess.

All of southwest Florida smells farty and rotten: it has nothing to do with how expensive the houses are or how exclusive the area is perceived to be. Nothing ever dries, so it just has this pervasive rotting, egg-y, farty smell hanging in the air. I used to endure it when I would dutifully go there to visit my parents. Ugh.

Why would rich people who can afford $30 million homes in Naples, which is southwest Florida, live in a place with a farty smell? You must be trolling, R481.

I agree with r242 RE Bakersfield

R460, the left has a hardon for repressive ideologies like Islam and communism.

Any city that has a majority black population.

(R453) I attended a conference in Pittsburgh, nothing to be ashamed of, a very beautiful city with the three rivers merging at the Point. Wonderful conference building overlooking the river. The many hills reminded me of San Francisco and yes, took the cable ride up to Mt. Washington for the 360 degree views.

Granite City, IL. #2 cancer capital in the US

All of Vermont is great. Burlington the largest city only has 44,000. My favorite town is Brattleboro , pop 12,000. Sitting on the southwest corner of Vermont across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire. A cute quaint little town. They have an annual Strolling of the Heifers Festival and march their Heifers down the main street.

Right now, the leader has to be lawless New York City.

(489) Your right, I live on the Upper East Side which was always considered very safe..not anymore. The only idiots that have sudden memory loss are our elected stooges (especially Republicans) who cannot face the gun epidemic in this country. Their concern is the infamous 2nd Amendment, our lives and safety mean absolutely nothing.

The rich people in Naples, Florida have their heads wedged so far up their puckered, entitled wrankly asses that they are entirely USED to the pervasive farty smell. They've gone NOSE BLIND. -482-

R488 someone told me to avoid Rutland, Vermont, when I was thinking of relocating a few years ago. Googling it, it does look lovely but once had a iffy reputation? OK now?

Mediapolis. It’s a cruel vile pit of trollery.

Tacoma, Washington. It feels like the entire place is under a Native American curse.

The first time I went to Los Vegas I hated it and the second time I succumbed to it’s odd charm and really enjoyed myself. I went to to the Mob and Neon museums, the gambling emporium, and watched people play 21 and blackjack in different casinos. It was February, so chilly and not too crowded. I walked the whole strip. Many places change with your mood or with your current circumstances. I’ve always been creeped out driving through central Pennsylvania, though. It feels as if there are serial killers in the woods. Naples , Italy I loved. It was grungy but beautiful and the people were nice and easy to talk to. It didn’t feel as dangerous at night as our American towns chock full of guns, meth and paranoia. The last place I felt uneasy was Front Royal Virginia. People there are gearing up for Trump’s triumphant return.

[quote]They have an annual Strolling of the Heifers Festival and march their Heifers down the main street.

We have that too, but we call it the Annual BBQ Festival.

Bogotá, Colombia.

I got ridiculously altitude sick there. It reminds me a lot of San Francisco, where we live. Cold and damp (because of its high altitude) in a place associated with warmth and sun (like SF in CA). Ridiculously hilly with concrete everywhere, with a lot of clearly drug-addicted street people (rare in Spanish-speaking Latin America). They enter businesses and panhandle and like in SF, people ignore them and go on with their meal, shopping, etc.

The nice areas are all bland beige and brick condos far out of the way of any of the above.

People are distant and seem bitter and broken. Hard to find authentic Colombian food (which isn't that exciting to begin with) in any somewhat safe neighborhood as people prefer pizza and hot wings.

Speaking of people, I met some nice guys off the apps to spend some time with, but besides them my only interactions were random well-meaning strangers who approached me to remind me to be careful for no apparent reason. My Uber drivers would continuously roll up the windows when I rolled them down for air, even in the relatively "nice" areas.

Even in less aesthetically safe-looking places I've traveled in the Third World, no looming sense of danger like in Bogotá.

R448 Wait - you buried the lede: Olympic training?

Go on…

Berlin, Jerusalem, Hong Kong

Lindsey, CA seems haunted by giant black olives. It may just be my broken heart's lost love, Michael Gates.

Sorry if it has already been posted but I grew up near Lake Lanier in Georgia and it always has a heavy, uncomfortable vibe. We were camping and when it was dark we could hear crying, but no one was there that we could see. You could hear walking in the woods , the crunching of pine needles but no one there. But the most disturbing thing to me was the sounds of a body being dropped into the water. There have been many murders there and many body dumps. I could not wait to leave that place.

Bogota just seemed like an unpleasant sunbelt sprawlburg only with less new stuff.

Many towns in Indiana give off an ugly vibe---I recall feeling oddly uncomfortable in Franklin where I seemed to have the only foreign car on the road and a friend of mine often had bad things happen to his car in the general vicinity of Laporte--he referred to the area as the Laporte triangle.

Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

Atlantic City Nj

Good one, 504. Even in the 90's it gave off a sinister vibe, even veering one block from the boardwalk. However, I must admit the 4th of July fireworks were spectacular.

By now, all of the US gives off a bad vibe.

R482 Old Town Alexandria in Virginia, which is one of the most expensive DC-adjacent neighborhoods, is situated across the Potomac from a sewage treatment plant in Maryland. Particularly in the summer, but even in other times of the year, the town is often suffused in an odiferous sulfur aroma.

The sewage plant is in DC

Thanks, R508

As a Daytonian I am curious what those reasons, are R457. I have heard weird rumors about tunnels under the city, satanism & the occult, a "psychic rift" over west third, aliens at WPAFB. I lived downtown in the Oregon District back in the 90s and would wander around the city and Woodland Cemetery at night nd never had any weird experiences. However, when I moved to a "historic district" on the east side thigs got weird. Now I live in the South Dayton area and its just quiet suburbia.

I visited there briefly in the mid 1970s and there was this very weird district which seemed to be quasi red light/old West.

R466 Raleigh is a nightmare. It's like a mini LA in that you have to wait 4-5 light interchanges to make a left. It's basically divided into 5 or 6 mid-size cities that have all run together. Traffic is hell in the Triangle 24/7. It's home to several high profile schools including Wake Forest, but for a college town, it doesn't have a walking friendly downtown. You can't walk to bar hop, at least not when I was living there. It was the worst period of my life. It's the nightmare of a large metro, which it is, but has nothing to offer. Unless you are a student or working in pharmaceuticals, I see no point in living there. I don't understand the huge growth.

Portland, OR has evil bones, as do Seattle and San Fransisco. Port cities built over tunnels, bad shit happened since their founding. One can gentrify the seediness to a point, but it seeps out the pores.

R512- I hate that airport. I was very uncomfortable waiting for my flight. It was late evening and the airport basically looked deserted. Creepy.

The Triangle area is very unpleasant rather than creepy. A sprawlburg that isn't huge but has all the disadvantages of sprawlburg without any of the quaintness of the old stuff in the component towns. Perfect for suburban-types who don't want to be someplace bigger but don't really know what they're missing.

R515- I felt very anxious there and had to continuously scan my surroundings for ... Something, idk what. I felt constant dread.

Glasgow. It gives Marseille a serious run for its money. Once we got back to our hotel room after dinner, which was not a fleabag hovel by any standards, it was basically the case of "grab a bottle, hunker down, and pray for daylight."

R516 I was there in 2017 or 18, the week the guy shot up the Waffle House in Nashville.. It was the day before that I made my first and only visit to a WH, enthusiastic to try the menu items that A. Bourdain had raved about. Somewhat underwhelming. That summed up my entire trip to the Raleigh, Triangle, Chapel Hill area. But I detected no menace. Downtown Raleigh had a sort of sad case of wannabe hipster-itis. I was glad to move on to Charleston.

R513 I was born and raised in Portland, and while I don't find it to be a creepy city per se (insanity, drugs, and homelessness aside), there is a nasty history there. Old Town/Chinatown especially has always felt slummy and the seediness has been there since the very beginning. I once read a quote that Portland in the late-1800s/early-1900s was regarded as one of the most dangerous port cities in the world because of all of the organized crime that occurred there. When I was a kid, my dad always bought season tickets to the NW Children's Theater, which was housed in a former historic church in NW Portland. I have vivid childhood memories of being terrified of that place whenever we went to see plays there. It always gave me the heebie jeebies.

Astoria, OR (another west coast port city, and the oldest city in the state) has a similar vibe, except it's much smaller. Like Portland, Seattle, and SF, it also has tunnels running beneath it. It was originally built on wooden stilts basically because the land was so marshy, and the whole town burned to the ground in the 1800s. It's also situated on a hill at the mouth of the Columbia where it spills into the Pacific, and some of the streets there rival SF in steepness. I would not want to live there because of the earthquake/tsunami risk. When the "big one" hits, the entire city is going to fall into the ocean and nobody is going to survive it. I will admit that, as it looks today, it is sort of charming, and brimming with Victorian architecture. It too has gentrified and been filled with hipsters, but when I was a kid in the '90s, it was a rundown shithole full of transients and drug addicts, and the buildings and houses there were largely vacant and dilapidated.

Atlanta has neighborhoods that are particularly gloomy. Not surprisingly they tend to be where the "Battle of Atlanta" took place in the SE of the city.. A friend of mine thought there were ghosts there. I just remember looking at houses and thinking those neighborhoods just had a depressing vibe that was difficult to identify.

How about an entire country giving off bad vibes and I certainly mean the US with the gun crazies and daily shootings. No place is safe, not even a church.

Hard agree r521

In her memoir, Patti LuPone claimed the reason she got bad reviews for "As You Like It" at the Guthrie Theater in 1982 was because Saint Paul, Minnesota is the occult capital of the United States!

I am not making this up.

I wasn't making it up either

The NW Children's Theater in Portland is blocks and blocks away (across the overpass) from Old Town/Chinatown. The church it is in wasn't even there when Portland had a reputation as a seedy port city. Your fears were all fantasies born from a fevered imagination.

Cinque Terre

We're safe!

Famagusta in Cyprus. Mostar in Bosnia. They rebuilt the bridge but everywhere you looked there was evidence of shelling.

This thread is more proof that you whores rarely leave the US.

R525 I am aware of that. It was simply an anecdote about a particular place in the city that I was spooked by as a kid. Thanks for the cunty city mapping lesson, though (I guess? Actually, fuck off).

[quote]Glasgow. It gives Marseille a serious run for its money.

Everyone looks battered. Even the kids. How suitable that the opening of World War Z was filmed there.

On the plus side, it has one of the very few fairly decent saunas in the UK.

How’s the haggis at the sauna, R531?

No haggis, but I did bang my ankle on the steel edge of the glass door of the steam room, and got a weird bacterial infection – a rash the size of a small coin that took 6 months to resolve.

And no: you can't have my stuff.

R521, a friend of mine taught English in Japan for several years and made some Japanese friends - but all of them were afraid to come to America to visit because of our gun violence. They really thought they could very well be shot.

(and they were right - it's a miracle we have the level of tourism that we do)

R534, I don’t think it’s just the Japanese who are nervous about visiting America. I was offered a free trip and was in two minds about accepting. Worst-case scenario: getting shot in a supermarket/museum/cinema and then being bankrupted in an American hospital…

[quote]Worst-case scenario: getting shot in a supermarket/museum/cinema and then being bankrupted in an American hospital…

DL's best line of the week.

They ought to put that on our money instead of 'in god we trust'

Buml

Karachi