Let's be a shitty Rust Belt town!!

I'm the town's only surviving corner bar-The Meth Bar.

I'm Buffalo still vibrant in surprising ways but have huge swaths of empty lots. I'm like all other rust belt cities in that I put expressways through beautiful parks and along the waterfront. Too bad because the architecture is world class.

I'm the derelict company housing.

We are Family Dollar, Dollar General, and Wal*Mart. We are the only retail shops, other than gas stations, within a 200-mile radius.

I am no Naperville or Overland Park.

I'm the old man bars that line my remaining business district.

Just give me one more try 🎶

I'm St. Louis. I've lost more than 2/3 of my population since 1950, and if anything, the losses are accelerating at an alarming clip, especially since COVID.

But no one seems to care. Those with money and the ability simply move further west rather than confront the overwhelming problems facing the ENTIRE metropolitan area, not just the city of St. Louis. Today, metro St. Louis is the most sprawled out area in the country.

I'm the number of Oxycontin prescriptions, which is 250 times larger than the actual population of the town.

R8 that's the case with so many rust belt cities.

Detroit may have lost a lot of population but not all of them left the area. Most of them moved to the suburbs during and after "white flight."

I'm the teen moms. Such a great idea to bring new life into the despair and bleakness that surrounds us.

R11 Attention to detail and self-awareness are generational in these areas.

**BEARKING** The Walmart has closed down. It will become a combination flea market/gun show/cornhole emporium. My daughter Chassidee just interviewed there today. There were 700 people in line.

I'm the asbestos in those old derelict buildings.

I’m the athletically gifted movie protagonist. My grit and determination bring a beam of sunshine to this decrepit town til I take off and leave you losers in darkness again.

I’m the complete lack of produce at the supermarket. I do feature the world’s largest selection of Little Debbie snack cakes, though.

I’m Ozempic and nobody has health insurance

I'm the pharmacy on the edge of town.

Not a single person comes inside to pick up their many medications. Most of these fat loads should get out of their car, but they stop to get their diabetes pills and blood pressure meds before hitting Taco Bell.

I'm Denny's, the only restaurant game in town.

The only sitdown restaurant, unless you count the various locations of Subway and Sheetz.

I’m the despair.

I'm the disrepair.

R13. You win the gold star

Im the spooky abandoned shopping mall. Thank the

Speaking of me at R24....from the biggest to the saddest mall in town

I'm the meth lab in the trailer out back!

I am the married men responding to Double List ads and wearing my wife's panties under my work pants

I'm the MAGA yard sign stuck in a lawn overgrown with weeds.

Im the fentanyl dependent at the end of his stash waiting for a suitable car to run in front of to receive some medical attention and possibly another bag.

I’m the broke, toothless MAGAt meth addict listening to “Rich Men North of Richmond” 20 hours a day.

I'm the Mothman!

I'm people of color, we're too smart to live in these shitholes.

I’m people of color, and we found something cheaper and marginally less shitty than what we left. We’ll make it just like our old home but it’ll be our new home.

I'm Gary, Indiana.

I'm the smell of sweaty unwashed balls

I’m a Bruce Springsteen song come to life

I'm the valedictorian gayling of Rust Belt Public High School who can't wait to escape to NY or LA as soon as I turn 18, stat!

I’m the rightwing gays, uncle tomming it up. We want candidates to take power who would love to put us in death camps. It’s fun!

I'm the absolutely moronic ideas to revitalize the downtown, riverfront, giant row of warehouses, abandoned train station. It's usually just a cash grab for the last rich people in town who think something like a shoe manufacturing museum or a shitty display of giant photos of their ancestors in the old canning factory will draw in crowds. Exit thro the gift shop. My daughter made the candles!

R39, I'm the 30something couple with a new baby who was drawn here because the houses were dirt-cheap and it's downtown is being revitalized!

*its^^

I’m the riverfront mural’s.

I'm the $500 rent paid by Section 8.

I'm the art museum. I have a comprehensive collection of local folk art and furnishings, two dozen high-quality Impressionists, a fair range of ancient antiquities, a display of Native American arrowheads, some spectacular quilts and ceramics and usually some Dutch Old Master or famous Abstract work you always thought was someplace much more important.

I have Greek columns out front and a wing designed in 1955 by some famous asshole from Yale.

I'm the Art Deco skyscraper. Past the second floor I've been empty since 1991, but the little automat/smoke shop/cocktail bar is still clinging on to life.

Every now and again they have a flashlight tour of my mosaic-encrusted lobby.

I'm the bronze statue of the humorless bearded fucknut who founded this dump back in 1852. I used to face the Beaux Arts courthouse until they pulled it down for a Arby's in 1975. Then they pulled down the Arby's. Currently it's a vacant lot. Which is pretty much what it looked like in 1852, so I dare say I have no cause to complain.

I'm the good neighborhood. I am named Cholmondeley or Empire Heights or North Millbrook Court. I was platted and planted from the 1890s through the immediate postwar period. If you never saw downtown, you'd think I was paradise - a hundred well-maintained arts & crafts, Tudor, Colonial Revival and Moderne residences set among fully mature trees and spacious gardens.

Currently average house costs are about 1/20th of what you'd pay anywhere with intact industry.

I’m Youngstown, Ohio. Don’t I sound sexy!???

I’m my grandma in Steubenville, Ohio…who we would visit at Christmastime…and she would have my then-55 year old father drive downtown to buy a Whitman Sampler for Mary (the cleaning lady), telling him to be wary of the unemployed factory workers “loitering around” and “looking for trouble.”

I'm the Wal-Mart.

I'm the high school football game which is the biggest event all week.

I’m the 3rd generation sanitation engineer who gets away working 4 hour days and hiding at strip clubs in the afternoon.

R52, I'm his 4th generation daughter hooked on oxycontin-turned-Angel Dust!

I'm the local art galleries and antique shops in the 2 block radius of downtown that has been "revitalized".

I’m the brownfield in need of remediation.

I am Philadelphia. I wonder if I qualify to be on this thread. Certainly my North Broad Street section does with the burnt out Art Deco Tower next to Temple U.

R56, no you're still too rich and relatively intact.

I am the location scout for the next Zombie dystopian future series, overwhelmed by possibilities.

I am the giant mansion with coffered ceilings, owned by a local doctor, who‘s now wrapped in shrink wrap in the attic.

I'm the elegant and empty art deco tower downtown.

I'm the sturdy stone church, deconsecrated, serving as a polyglot creative space. My unskilled "executive director" has embezzled most of the funding for the last 7 years and I will soon burn to the ground so nobody asks questions about my sorry condition and absence of programs.

I'm the treasures in the art museum. The board desperately wants to deacquisition us to use the funds for operating expenses including our big city salaries.

I'm the Italian pizzeria, with small restaurant and bar, and rental space. I'm run by an elderly brother and sister, third generation of the founders. The rental space is very rarely rented. Behind the bar are bottles are Italian liqueurs and bitters dating from the Reagan administration. This is the end of the line. Even the land has depreciated in value.

When you're a secretary in a brewery, it's pretty hard to make believe you're anything else. But there was a little theater group in town... like a drop of rain in the desert.

I'm Richard Florida.

I've made millions going from one medium/large Rust Belt town to another, selling the idea of revitalization so that artists and homosexualists will move into your urban ruins!

I'm the numerous discarded syringes that pave the park across from the wedding-cake-like late nineteenth-century courthouse. Don't walk around me with bare feet!

I'm the ramshackle Richardsonian Romanesque mansion on the remains of the local "Millionaire's Mile" boulevard. Dr. Huey climbing Burgundy colored roses survive in the walled rose garden, and the fountain attributed to Cass Gilbert still works like a dream.

I'm the riverboat casino built on the remains of a dilapidated factory on the riverfront. I bring good paying jobs and tax revenue for the local schools!

I’m the A1 steak sauce on the table at all times

I’m the ranch dressing used to bathe in.

I’m the lead. I’m in the paint, in the water, in the bloodstream of the locals…

I'm the smell of mayonnaise and poverty. Everywhere.

I'm the coal mines that Trump will bring back!

I'm on-line gambling, and I will be the final nail in the coffin R67's hopes and dreams.

I'm the cruising area near the overgrown part of the park.

R71 Since all the trendy cities have to have restaurants with an ampersand in its name, your creation seems to be a perfect one some place should claim:

Mayonnaise & Poverty

I’m the trees that have said, “enough of this shit”.

There is vacant untouched land everywhere, yet there are no signs of trees or saplings. Trees of Heaven find difficulty thriving.

I'm the wheelchair-bound beggar woman parked in the rubble.

I'm the Mafia.

There are still 20 or so guys from back in the day holding on to property in this shithole. Those guys may be 80 or 90 but they still hold a few strings here and there.

If there's a decent looking white dude in town between 30 and 55, he's probably the son or grandson of said old school mobsters, trying to squeeze blood from a stone in nowhereland.

I'm the 16 churches to serve our town population of 1,300

Oh you don't go to church? Don't vote MAGA? You liked Obama and/or Bush? You dance too? You drink wine or liquor over beer? Beer isn't considered drinking.

YOU ARE GOING TO HELL!

Those damn elites, with their indoor plumbing and cars not on cinder blocks! High falutin!

I'm the tap water. Drinking me is ill-advised.

I'm the gays and the hippies, buying up cheap real estate and gentrifying it. We have one small coffee shop or bookstore in town. Sooner or later, though, we will be killed by the MAGAs or run out of town.

I'm the annual festivals held in the allegedly "revitalized" downtown area, organized by the wealthy MAGA types who run what's left of the town. Celebrating an ancient tradition (in which the town's youth has no interest unless forced by family), the birthplace of a forgotten celebrity who's been dead almost one hundred years? Anything to cling to, to hopefully attract the tourism dollars.

I'm Rileigh home from college. I'm going to use the library's dial-up internet for my OnlyFans. Hey it's the only internet in town! :(

I’m the soon to be shuttered post office.

I'm Hillary, taking the votes for granted.

I'm Arlene's This N' That, a secondhand store open on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, which is also the only remaining business on main street.

I’m the thing that doesn’t make any sense at all, like a chamber music series at the town library one Sunday a month or the book club that meets at one of the churches and actually reads literature.

I’m the Army recruiting office.

You know what this town needs? A trolley with a ghost tour!

We're polyester and spandex.

Oh hell, honey @R90 : Even we left! It just wasn't worth our afterlife reliving what happened in this shithole.

I'm the tavern that used to be open 24 hours to accommodate the guys who worked the night shifts and needed a boilermaker after work. Now the place opens at 11. The owners have an incredible collection of scenerama beer signs and antique and vintage liquor swag. Even if the Joe Camel dartboard smells like an ashtray, only 50 were made. This place used to host actual boilermakers in the union who proudly voted for everyone from John to Bill. Now the same men whose bodies were broken by their bosses watch Fox on TVs with the Fox logo screenburned into them

I am Bethlehem, PA. I am surprisingly interesting and pleasant. The abandoned steelworks are like a giant sculpture with a highline style emporium built along it.

I’m the closed schools.

I’m the last gasps of racial integration.

My family lived six miles from US Steel and we had neighbors of every ethnicity - until everyone who could moved away.

[quote] I’m the complete lack of produce at the supermarket. I do feature the world’s largest selection of Little Debbie snack cakes, though.

Hey! What about us?

I'm Rust Belt cock. I've seen better days and I'm a little corroded around the edges, but I can still toss mean hump!

I’m the surprising number of pointy-headed men and women of every age who look exactly like Elon Musk.

There seems to be some confusion as to whether the term refers to a town of some few thousand suffering the effects of a factory closure or a small, weird, architecturally impressive but ominous city toiling under a Midwestern miasma.

The latter frequently has economic, cultural and historic resources based in law, hospitals and universities that the former does not.

I'm the City Council who ALL look like cafeteria lunch ladies!

I loved R100's explanation.

I'm those dead girls from the train tracks.

R3 My small city once thrived on cotton mills. Loads of shotgun houses still remain.

I'm the Great Lakes. You assholes and your shitty sewers and factories and farms have tried to murder us, but we remain. But whose bright idea was it to build multiple nuclear power plants on our shores. You primates need water to survive more than we do

I am the last of the good greasy spoons. I’ve been brought up to code and people bitch about the price increases.

Those gloves are a sign I’ll be moving to a strip mall.

I'm the Dollar Tree store. Across from the Family Dollar.

I'm the the vague, yet visible, outline/suggestion/vision of what the city was at it's peak. I'm generally depressing.

I’m the 5000 square foot home going for 300k. Needs only a little work.

R102, thanks.

I would also say this. Bleak as the small weird city in the US may be, it is 1,000 times preferable to its UK counterpart.

I'm the owners of 6000K square foot home who think they can still get 1.5 million for it.

[quote] I'm Rust Belt cock. I've seen better days and I'm a little corroded around the edges, but I can still toss mean hump!

All the good immigrant cock from years ago has either died off or moved to Texas. Back when the mills were humming....it was a smorgasboard of sizemeat from various European countries.

True, R102. The most depressing small town I have ever been in was Newtown, Wales.

True R110. The most depressing small town I have ever been in was Newtown, Wales.

I'm the posters who don't know how to post to a Let's be thread.

Let's be a prissy rustbelt queen that keep a Let's Be thread on track.

I'm the local craft brewery with a too on-the-nose name. I'm a nod to revitalization and a point of local pride, but all I do is siphon off dollars from other bars and restaurants since the population of people with disposable income hasn't increased at all.

I'm the unenclosed toilet and shower in the basement so Dad can come home from work at the mill/factory/plant/mine and enter the home through the Bilco doors and get cleaned up and cleaned out before coming upstairs for supper.

What the hell is that, R118?

The Pittsburgh Potty was supposedly built so that miners/mill workers/industrial workers could, as R118 said, come home through the basement and clean up before coming upstairs or through the house.

Another apparent explanation is that a lot of these simple toilets were installed in the 1930s ish eras when outhouses were started to be phased out for indoor plumbing. As the city plumbing systems were still evolving the toilets were placed in the basements as it was the lowest point in the house.

R94 What the fuck is a "highline style emporium"?

Sorry R121. I meant high line I like elevated walkway.

I'm the generational poverty.

I'm Jackson, Michigan, where there is a home-based business operating out of a third of the houses on every block

I'm Ned and the VFW is my kingdom.

I’m the flooded mine.

I’m Newark. Do I count?

This, R20

[quote] But while the Pittsburgh potties certainly may have been used that way, that's not the real reason they were installed. As Martin originally told 90.5 WESA, the toilets, usually found in pre-World War II houses, were actually there to prevent sewage backups in the nice part of the home. If there was a sewage backup on your street, it would come into your home through the fixture that's lowest to the ground, he explained.

Got one in my basement, though it’s now enclosed.

To clarify—the basement toilet was in addition to the one in the bathroom upstairs. It wasn’t meant to be used regularly. It was a precaution. Indeed, when my wasteline was clogged, it was the basement that flooded, not the kitchen or bathroom.

I'm Joe Biden. I'm trying to revive these areas through the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

I'm Boston?

So Camden and Trenton, but not Newark or Patterson? Hardly seems fair.

Or Jersey City, which would have to count as “recovered.”

I’m Hudson, NY twenty feet away from the main street, in any direction.

I'm Johnstown, PA.

Smell the stench from this human cesspool!

I'm the fresh air. This place used to smell like pig shit from the Hormel plant, sulfur farts from the paper plant, and death from the rendering plant. Now it just smells like plant plants from all of the overgrown lots.

I'm the small or moderate population of comfortably middle class, even upper middle class, and a few "rich" people who stay in these cities for any number of reasons - a job in local/state government or at the hospital or college, family ties, etc. Given the low cost of living and our income from salaries, investments, family money, or whatever else, we live VERY well, many of us to a degree we couldn't anywhere else (though some of us would do okay in a more expensive city). Some of us live "well" in a very parochial manner, but others much more broadly, i.e., we travel a lot for vacations - domestically and also internationally; take weekend trips to more robust cities for events and just to shop and eat/drink at better places, and while at home busy ourselves with whatever cultural scene and activities we can.

Is Cairo a rust belt town? Imagine what it must be like living in one of the nice homes in that town.

Grew up solidly middle-class in a Western Pennsylvania steel town just as the steel industry there began its long, slow painful death by a thousand cuts, and R137 *totally* described my parents and their friends, many of whom are still there in their late 80s/early 90s.

I'm one of the dozens and dozens of kids who graduated high school, went off to college out of state and never looked back. At the time, it was a nice enough place to grow up, but I would never live there. In fact, I never visited my parents for more than a week (which always included day trips to Pittsburgh or Cleveland where there were museums, good shopping and restaurants and the occasional Broadway show on tour).

Me too R137.

I can just about stand a week back "home" and at least half of that time needs to be in the city. I can take no more than 2 to 3 days in the little podunk town I grew up in, which went solidly for Trump. I can only take so much of the constant Fox News, the lack of any restaurant not a Subway or McD's for miles around, and my sister's Dee Plorable yammerings.

Im the hot downlow dick.

I'm the Mistake on the Lake

R137 Do you live in Rockford, IL by any chance? You have nailed it for this city.

I’m “tragic railroad crossing claims four teens” and the like, supplanted by dreary overdose statistics.

I'm NAFTA

R145 You emptied me!

No, R143, I don't. But I have relatives that are as I described in similar cities, and as a geography buff, I'm just familiar with the dynamic - through reading and through travel/observing; plus having some friends and meeting people who either are as I described or who have family like that.

I'm the red state apologist. It's not that bad really. We're very cultured. No, really.

Callous coastal sophisticates can laugh at us, but driving three hours to shop for exotic apple butters is sexy! I love it here!

I’m where the serial killer dumped all the bodies. There’s a shot of our house in the Netflix documentary!

I am a parish church, erected in the Gothic style to lend dignity to the newly arrived, horribly exploited Catholic mine/factory workers and to remind suspicious local Protestants of the venerable, old-world character of my faith. With the plummeting population I was deconsecrated decades ago and have become a craft brewery. Enjoy an order of quesadillas with your light lager, while you admire the shiny tanks that occupy my former altar!

I’m the merger of St Stanislaus, St Patrick and Our Lady of Mt Carmel parishes. We’re all within half a mile of one another. Our schools and convents closed decades ago. There’s now one Nigerian priest who is pastor of all three.

Newark counts in New Jersey, Ohio, and Delaware!

R137 has never read "WHy the Garden Club couldn't save Youngstown"

It's really not about saving or revitalizing the city, R155, but simply acknowledging the fact that a subset of people live "well" - at least financially - in some of these cities.

A place which has suffered disinvestment because of a low or negative growth rate, but still has plenty of money, will make the local hardware merchant, the local furniture store, and the local gas station franchise owners wealthy. But it's artificial and never lasts but one generation.

I’m the speed trap.

I'm The Big Fish, married to the judge/surgeon/major property owner. I love lording over my Small Pond. Sure I say things like "Main Street was bustling in Daddy's day!" but I mostly find ways literally and figuratively to circumvent the ugliness of the place. My historic house is in perfect condition and I'm well aware that replicating the real estate and my social position as Queen Bee would be impossible elsewhere.

And I'm her friend! I almost didn't get married because my maiden name, Taggart, would be lost. Then I named my son Taggart. It annoys him when I drive he and his friends down Taggart Blvd, past Taggart park and point out the Taggart band shell. All named after great granddaddy!