The worst places you have lived

[Richmond Jake]

I did a search and didn't see this topic. Could be interesting....

I was born and raised in Ft. Bragg CA. Small coastal town in Mendocino County about 3-1/2 north of the Golden Gate Bridge (you do know where that is, right?). I thought, at the time, it was horrible. Little did I know what life had before me. :-o

Worst for me? It's a tie.

- Richmond CA. I worked there for about two years. One of the highest murder rates per capita for cities in California. I would dread driving home from night meetings from city hall through the 'hood to my condo on the Bay (but they paid me really, really good). :-c

- North Idaho. Lived there for 2+ years. Hated it. Rednecks, racists, bigots, losers, meth heads, cold weather, icy roads, snow, and California transplants.

Where are the worst places you have lived?

 

[arcplans]

It is still and always will be: Modesto Ca. Although, my folks did say sumter, SC was pretty bad, but can't really knock what i can't remember. Why i hate this town? Well where do i start. Housing is utterly horrible. The nicest neighborhood (pedestrian friendly, beautiful homes)) is riddle with homeless folks. Their attempt at revitalizing the downtown has gone down in flames. Summer heat, winter fog, spring allergies. Culture? Non existent. Why do i stay? Cuz, they pay me to (well..at least through this pay period :lmao: )

 

[Michele Zone]

A trailer. I would sooner live in a tent than repeat that.

It happened to be in Kansas....um, some little town between JC and Manhattan. Anyone? Anyone?

 

[ofos]

A trailer. I would sooner live in a tent than repeat that.

It happened to be in Kansas....um, some little town between JC and Manhattan. Anyone? Anyone?

Thanks for the flashback. I was thinking that I hadn't lived anywhere that fell in the worst category but you managed to bring back a trailer just outside Ft. Eustis, VA.

 

[kjel]

The SRO type place I lived at for a while in Bozeman, Montana. My roommates had decided to pick up and move to Florida without much notice and it took a little time to find someplace else. Some acquaintances took me into their abode in the SRO place. We had a queen size bed, a pull out sofa, a full size refrigerator, a sink, and a microwave. In order for us to all sleep we had to be in at the same time, the sofa pulled out blocked the door of the room so nobody could go in or out. The bathroom was down the hall and shared with 8 other rooms. Thankfully I only had to stay there 3 weeks.

 

[Zoning Goddess]

I was born and raised in Ft. Bragg CA. Small coastal town in Mendocino County about 3-1/2 north of the Golden Gate Bridge (you do know where that is, right?). I thought, at the time, it was horrible. Little did I know what life had before me. :-o?

This is where my oldest friend is screaming "Is he kidding me? They grow half the pot in America there!!"

I spent 15 years in Brooksville FL; pop 7000 when I got there, same when I left. Everybody knew everybody else's business. Break up with someone; the whole town knew. It was a cute little town, but if you needed shoes, it was Payless, or drive to Tampa. I guess it was the worst place I've lived, but not really bad for a town.

 

[JNA]

Snyder, TX - nearly 2 hr drive from anywhere else. 'nuff said.

 

[Bear Up North]

This Bear has been a NW Ohio resident for just about all of his "getting on in years" life. Except for.....

Lived on a beach in the summer of 1966. I hated that. NOT! Time of my life. But that's another story.
Lived in Chicago for a short while. Interesting, especially the cops "on the take". But that's another story.

When I was between marriages (early 1970s) I lived in a trailer park that is between Bowling Green and Toledo. Alcohol was involved. But that's another story.

Because I have no other "locations" (cities, states, countries) to pick from.....

My worst place nomination would be Palmer Street, Toledo. Wife 1 (Cynthia) and I lived in an upstairs duplex unit, a couple buildings from Cherry Street. The building was old...the basement (probably) had rats. We had a great wrap-around porch. We would watch the neighborhood goings-on from our upper perch/porch. Activities included the very-busy drug house across the street, staggering drunks, and the occasional streaker.....:-o.

That first block of Palmer Street is now (I think) a parking lot for Central Catholic High School.

Bear

 

[Cardinal]

I am betting we will hear several comments about military bases. I'll seconf MZ's location. The worst was Fort Riley, Kansas. Heat and chiggers. It got worse from there. Really a shame, since Manhattan is such a nice place.

Ofos, I was stationed at Fort Eustis in the late 80's. Living in the officer's quarters on base was pretty sweet. I spent many night across the parking lot at the officer's club, and weekends down at Cape Hatteras.

 

[Gotta Speakup]

While I was studying for my MCRP, I lived in an apartment on the back side of Boston's Beacon Hill. The apartment was on hte first floor and you could not see the sky from any window because the neighboring buildings were so high.

One night, the dropped ceiling dropped! What a mess!

 

[Michele Zone]

Thanks for the flashback. I was thinking that I hadn't lived anywhere that fell in the worst category but you managed to bring back a trailer just outside Ft. Eustis, VA.

During the six or seven months I lived there, I went and stayed with relatives in Georgia for about six weeks. If you know that I had a "thousand mile rule" (did not want to live within 1000 miles of my relatives), you will understand that was pretty desperate. We got back and the trailer had been overtaken by spiders and other bugs. My oldest son referred to it for many years as "the bug house".

I am betting we will hear several comments about military bases. I'll seconf MZ's location. The worst was Fort Riley, Kansas. Heat and chiggers. It got worse from there. Really a shame, since Manhattan is such a nice place.

I wasn't actually on base. Some little town whose name escapes me. I bet one of the folks from Kansas can name it.

During the Flood of '93, while living in a house in Manhattan, I got to see my old trailer court partly under water. I had lived on the low, flat side of town. Across the main drag it was very hilly. Uphill was mostly houses. But on the side of the main drag where I lived, it was mostly trailers.


EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, I visited relatives in Georgia for several weeks every single year that I lived in Kansas. Always during the spring/summer time. I was allergic to something there and it made me very ill. I loved Manhattan but at some point realized that I could not make a life for myself there. I was too sick, and it wasn't just the trailer (though that was extremely awful).

 

[Rygor]

Thanks for the flashback. I was thinking that I hadn't lived anywhere that fell in the worst category but you managed to bring back a trailer just outside Ft. Eustis, VA.

I lived on Ft. Eustis while in the Army. Stayed in the barracks on post, though. Wasn't too bad.

The worst place I lived, now, that would probably be this house I shared with 4 other roommates for a year after my freshman year of college. This place was a complete dump. None of them ever cleaned anything in the place, so there were ants all over, water all over the bathroom floor constantly (I thought the tub was going to collapse through the kitchen ceiling - it was one of those big old clawfoot tubs), and there were dirty clothes laying in every corner of the place. YUCK.

Worst LOCATION I ever lived would probably be where I was born and lived as a young child - Kankakee, Illinois. It's an old river town of about 30,000 people about 45 minutes south of Chicago. Like a lot of old river towns, it saw a lot of disinvestment and decay after about the 1960's. For the past 10 years or so it's slowly been resurging, though.

 

[arcplans]

I am betting we will hear several comments about military bases.

I actually really enjoyed living on military bases. My father was stationed at Beale AFB just north of Sacramento. It was the sticks, but since the house backed onto a creek, it was awesome fort building/exploring time for a 6 year old.

 

[kjel]

The worst town I have lived in was Livingston, Montana. Although there is nothing specifically wrong with the town itself, I happened to move there during the height of the Church Universal Triumphant, the wackadoo group that stockpiled weapons and built bomb shelters underground.

 

[ofos]

Ofos, I was stationed at Fort Eustis in the late 80's. Living in the officer's quarters on base was pretty sweet. I spent many night across the parking lot at the officer's club, and weekends down at Cape Hatteras.

I lived on Ft. Eustis while in the Army. Stayed in the barracks on post, though. Wasn't too bad.

You notice that I didn't say that Ft. Eustis was the worst place, just the trailer off base. I went there for AIT after basic training in very late 1968 during the Tet offensive. I wasn't an officer, just a poor draftee out of grad school. We were in old WWII barracks that had been condemned but were still being used. In fact, they moved us into new barracks during a visit by General Westmoreland and then back to the old ones as soon as he left. Still, I ended going to two technical schools and leadership school so it delayed my promised trip to sunny, Southeast Asia. That delay and a subsequent troop cutback in Nam ended up meaning that I served out my tour in Germany after a brief stint in Savannah, GA instead. No complaints about that. I was a newlywed when I got drafted but was able to bring my wife to VA for my last 12 week tech school and the trailer was the only place that we could find to rent. Liked the Tidewater area though and spent every weekend either at the beach or at historical sites in the area. Also had a college buddy who was an officer in the Navy in Virginia Beach. He'd call my company HQ and say that he was Lt. and request that I be given off-base privileges so we could go hoist a few. No one ever asked if he was an Army officer and he never volunteered that he was Navy.

 

[Michele Zone]

I finally remembered: The trailer was in Ogden, KS. The town had a map given out as part of their promotional packet (or some such) -- probably by the chamber of commerce or similar. The "banking" option listed on it was an ATM. My vague recollection: One of the big businessmen who owned several establishments had diverse interests like "Billy's Pawn and Gun Shop" (or some such).

 

[rcgplanner]

Worst place I ever lived was an apartment I rented in Rock Hill, SC during my sophomore year of college with 2 of my best friends. The apartment was awful. A week before we were scheduled to move in, my roommates and I went by to see if we could take a look at our new apartment. The office gave us the building and apartment numbers. We peeked in the windows and were greeted with bags of trash, the oven in the middle of the living room and a door which looked like was attacked by an ax. :-c

The office moved us into the apartment next door. Bad idea, for the next 6 months we fought a terrible roach invasion. The complex was also not in the best neighborhood, one night we hear yelling outside, so I peek out my bedroom and see 5 police cars and about 10 officers with guns pulled, yelling at the apArtment under us. Needless to say it was quite harrowing seeing that many weapons pointed towards our apartment.

One day I go out to my car, a piece of crap 1994 Mazda Protege with cheap plastic Walmart hubcaps, and notice that my hubcaps have been ripped off. Seriously, who steals $20.00 hubcaps?! Finally after about 6 months we all said "f this!" and broke our lease.

When we moved out the apartment next store still hadn't been cleaned up.

 

[TOFB]

Trailer Park in Grandville, MI, just off Division. Veloice, 'Skis and the rest of the GR folks know where that is.

 

[illinoisplanner]

I love DeKalb, IL because I have so many friends and fond memories here as it is where I'm at for college right now, and there's a lot of history and a lot of culture and plenty to do. But I don't think I'd ever want to live here year-round or raise a family here. Because it's a big college town and because it's also an old blue collar outlying city, there's lots of drugs, robberies, assaults, a smattering of gang violence, run-down neighborhoods, vandalism, a local government that has basically gutted its planning staff and has no money, and so forth. But there's also a lot of nicer areas and lots of things to do and some really great, down-to-earth people. But the bad things are enough to turn me away from ever living here as a non-student with a family of my own...at least for now. Things could definitely be turned around though, and should that happen, I may re-consider.

 

[Veloise]

Quad Cities, specifically Rock Island, Ill.

It's a go to work, come home, watch TV type of town. (Or it was when I landed there, fresh out of the wonderful univ community of East Lansing.) One Mexican restaurant. A DT pedestrian mall. Nothing to do for young 20-something singles.

A few posts back Maister mentioned the Rock Island arsenal. The QC Bicycle Club held its monthly meetings there. I attempted to attend, once.

Soldier at the gate: you'll have to ride on the bikeway.
Me: It's after dark, and the signs state that the bikeway closes at dusk.
S: Then you'll have to ride on the sidewalk.

30 mph speed limit, four w-i-d-e traffic lanes, 12" curbs lacking curb cuts.

Me: I'll just ride on the street. [not like I'd never done that before.]

Went about 50 feet, and a Jeep pulled up alongside. A soldier thrust his ID out at me (what is that about?). He demanded that I leave the island immediately.

When I related this tale to the bike club newsletter editor, pointing out the irony of holding a club meeting in a locale accessible only by motor vehicle, self-defensiveness kicked in. The following issue of the newsletter was sprinkled with snide remarks about me and my sense of humor. (That soldier did not appear to be joking, viewing me as a threat to national security.)

I can't recall if I ever bothered going on any of their club rides.

 

[Zoning Goddess]

Hmmm... Rj and I have been talking tonight. I really don't like where we live. I like living with RJ, but the town, ugh. That may take a lot of time to resolve.

 

[Richi]

RJ I like Ft. Bragg, CA Havent been there in 10 years, but it was fine then.

Worst place- Travel trailer for 2 months in Cross City, FL. Teaching school in '70. No rental apartments or regular mobile homes. Eventually found a three brhouse to rent. Had to drive to Gainesville onec to get paperclips.

 

[wahday]

I took a year off from college and lived out in California. The first place I rented was a house out in a redwood forest in a place called Ben Lomand (outside of Santa Cruz).

I rented a room in this house form a very odd guy, along with another renter. We shared the kitchen, which is where the trouble started. The house was built on the foundation of a house that burned down because it was used for cooking meth and the owner/landlord bought the property cheap and rebuilt a house on it. That should have been my first clue right there that something wasn't right with the place.

Firstly, the neighbors were VERY secretive and hostile, I guess because they were also cooking meth...It was mostly dirt roads and one day I went for a run and jogged up the wrong road only to find myself shot at. Well, he shot in the air and then stood out in the road with a big a$$ rifle, so I turned around and never went for a run again...

Then, the true colors of our landlord began to show. The guy was a serious alcoholic and on a few occasions returned late at night and chowed on his cereal, only to wake the next morning and accuse ME of eating it. Seriously. We even got in a shouting match about it (and I don't shout very much). It just weirder from there. I lived there maybe three months and then got the hell out, surfing on a friend's couch til I could find something in Santa Cruz.

It was all very creepy. I couldn't tell if the redwoods were making the townspeople crazy, some type of mystical energy vortex (as many locals like to believe), or if something about the haphazard development patterns promoted isolation and cultivated insanity, but the place was seriously messed up...

 

[Richmond Jake]

wahday, that story could and does take place in just about any place in the San Lorenzo Valley from Felton to Boulder Creek. Look at the bright side, you could have been in Zayante or Lompico. Those whack-job folks make their valley neighbors appear normal. :lmao:

 

[Zoning Goddess]

Worst place- Travel trailer for 2 months in Cross City, FL. Teaching school in '70. No rental apartments or regular mobile homes. Eventually found a three brhouse to rent. Had to drive to Gainesville onec to get paperclips.

Poor guy. I drive thru Cross City when I travel from the panhandle down to central FL. It really is in the middle of nowhere. (Although close to a pretty stretch of the Suwannee).

Nowadays you could just run down to the Wal-Mart in Chiefland for your paper clips.

 

[Mastiff]

North Philly... 'nuff said.

 

[ofos]

Just dredged up another one. One room apt. in Flint, MI, near the GM V8 engine plant.

 

[TexanOkie]

Austin. For a laundry list of reasons:

1. No sense of community. It's one of those places that touts how great it is and claims being friendly when it really is all superficial and exterior. It is so hard to build a social support network in this town centered on something besides amateur music and cannabis. I work for a suburb 16 miles from downtown and I've come across way too many people in central Austin who have no idea where it is. This sort of lack of knowledge/shared sense of place I don't think can be found very many places. To top it off, they're snooty about it in a way you don't really see outside of New Yorkers never leaving Manhattan, Clevelanders never crossing the Cuyahoga, suburban Detroiters never setting foot anywhere between 8 Mile and downtown.

2. There are two freeways to get downtown, I-35 and Loop 1 ("Mopac") and both bottleneck (shortly) after being intersected by US 290 and US 183. Traffic is a nightmare for so small (relatively) a metro area (~1.6 mil). It has taken me 3 hours to get across town (from TX-45 to Kyle) before.

3. U of Texas students, as a whole, are dumb. Like don't-know-how-to-order-off-of-a-menu dumb. That being said, I've met a lot of nice, intelligent people who have gone to school there and who are current students. As a whole, the description applies. And, outside of the state history museum and mediocre art museums and symphony, there's no culture in Austin outside of UT, unless you're thinking of pot and/or amateur music. Once you're out of your youth, Austin doesn't have much to offer.

4. Upward economic mobility is practically non-existent. You'll progress to a certain point and then hit a ceiling. Some friends have expressed comments akin to "Austin is where dreams go to die." It also traps you in town and makes it hard to get out. Very few employers seem to respect work experience received here unless you're state government employees, and even then... it's Texas.

5. There is no good urbanism here. I realize this is not an Austin-specific problem. I just find it that much more aggravating when people adamantly claim non-NIMBY status then kill any good project in their neighborhoods.

6. Incredibly pretentious. I'm talking rivaling the Bay Area, here. Combine the uptight liberal attitudes seen in San Francisco (nothing personal, Bay Area residents and natives) and combine it with the Texan arrogance.

7. The primary culture here is a mixture of "Stuff White People Like" hipsters, hippies, and cowboys. It might sound intriguing, but really just amounts to activist hippies with western clothing and accents.

There are good things about Austin, too. It's pretty well integrated, racially (I wish I could say the same socio-economically), the area around the city is one of the few truly pretty scenic regions of Texas, the weather is generally pleasant 10 months of the year and sunny all year, an active downtown, the cost of living is relatively low compared to the rest of the country (but not Texas, unfortunately), you're within 3 hours of 3 of the biggest cities in the US and two of the largest metro areas, so whatever your sports/music/culture interests, if there's nothing in Austin you're pretty close to just anything you might want. But still... if I wind up here for the rest of my life, I'll probably wind up pretty miserable. I just want everyone to know that Austin doesn't fall anywhere near all the hype surrounding it. It'd probably be a fair college town, where you live for 4-5 years for undergrad, but afterward leave for bigger and better things. But as an end destination unto itself, it's falls way below the bar they've set and paid for others to set for themselves.

 

[Dan]

I can't say that I've lived in any truly bad places, but I do think Austin is overrated. I like the "weirdness" (it seems like an oddball like me can fit in, even though I do feel out of place sometimes), energy that comes from being one of the nation's leading destinations for the creative class, "live and let live" mindset, and flavor of Texas culture that isn't overbearing.

However, like TexanOkie, I agree that Austin has TERRIBLE urbanism. The population of Austin was about 135,000 in 1950. Most of the city developed in the automotive era. Neighborhoods that are considered "urban" by Austin standards, like Hyde Park, seem to have the same density and feel of a 1920s-1950s inner ring suburb anywhere else. Small houses (800'²) in Hyde Park sell for $300K and up only because they're close to an intersection with a coffee house, a few restaurants, a hipster gelateria, and an indie grocery store; the extent of commercial development for the neighborhood.

In Austin, areas like this are considered "urban living".

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...=FhaWxp1iFDSCBp4DV1gqhw&cbp=12,126.81,,0,2.43
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...d=H4yZH0v1BAyXmzrGR2yhHQ&cbp=12,66.89,,0,5.16
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=barto...8pelhtZUHSJXwhJisNwjTQ&cbp=12,308.69,,0,14.81

In those "urban" areas, sidewalks are the rare exception on side streets, not the norm. I never lived in another city where sidewalks were so uncommon.

The Drag, cross the street from UT (featured in an earlier thread), is about as urban as it gets in Austin outside of downtown.

I think the lack of urbanity, and the high cost of the areas that pass for "urban", could be Austin's downfall. Nobody moves to Austin intending to live in a cul-de-sac in Cedar Park or Round Rock, 15 miles from the nearest live music venue or organic free-range fair-trade coffeehouse, but if you don't have the dough, that's going to be your Austin experience. You might as well live in suburban Dallas. Young creatives and professionals increasingly want to live in walkable urban environments, and if they can't do it in Austin, they'll go to someplace that has it.

I do lead a bit of the "Stuff White People Like" lifestyle. Here, though, you get the feeling that people follow SWPL as a guide for living, not as a field guide for spotting middle to upper-middle class liberal educated professionals. The hipsters here make those in Williamsburg seem like amateurs; they're dominated by Dov Charney/American Apparel model types and Suicide Girl wannabes. Seriously, it seems like half of Austin has more ink than the Sunday Times. Hey, live and let live; I guess I'd take hipsters over guidos.

There seems to be a strong "planning culture" in Austin -- people talk about the built environment quite a bit, and planning-related issues get extensive coverage in the weekly alternative newspaper. Still, the passion many Austinites have for good planning isn't reflected in the built environment.

I work for a suburb 16 miles from downtown and I've come across way too many people in central Austin who have no idea where it is. This sort of lack of knowledge/shared sense of place I don't think can be found very many places. To top it off, they're snooty about it in a way you don't really see outside of New Yorkers never leaving Manhattan, Clevelanders never crossing the Cuyahoga, suburban Detroiters never setting foot anywhere between 8 Mile and downtown.

I shared the same thing with TO in a conversation this weekend. Not only is there the North Austin/South Austin rivalry, but there's the widespread belief that you're not a REAL Autinite if you live or regularly travel north of Anderson Lane, south of US 290, west of Mopac or east of I-35. It reminds me of the "I never step foot off of Manhattan, and I'm proud of it!" mindset portrayed on Sex and the City and practiced in reality by so many from New York City.

At my high school reunion, I heard a lot of "You live in AUSTIN?" comments from classmates, as if I told them I lived in Paris or London. If only they knew. Again, I'm not saying that Austin is a terrible place. Just overrated.

 

[wahday]

There seems to be a strong "planning culture" in Austin -- people talk about the built environment quite a bit, and planning-related issues get extensive coverage in the weekly alternative newspaper. Still, the passion many Austinites have for good planning isn't reflected in the built environment.

Well said! and describes Albuquerque and maybe a lot of western cities as well. I find people here to be pretty darn well informed about planning related issues, but somehow this does not seem to have any notable impact on what actually gets built by developers. What's the deal with that?

I lived in Austin last in 1994. I visited last in 2004. Wow! what a difference. And I did get the impression that every new housing development built since I left fit your description perfectly:

You might as well live in suburban Dallas.

Ouch! But so true. I found this surprising for exactly the reasons you describe. Austin established a lot of cache with a particular young, hip demographic willing and enthused about spending disposable income and communing with their fellow residents. And I'm not just talking about the college students (though they are a large part of it). Why, then, is there so much development that seems to appeal to a totally different demographic (not urbane, suburban, not socially oriented or desiring of common space/town centers/congregating)? I find it a little perplexing as I think you are correct - people desiring the lifestyle that Austin has gained a reputation for are now going to be attracted to a different center and will bypass Austin altogether.

Another way of looking at it relates to TexanOkie's observations:

Once you're out of your youth, Austin doesn't have much to offer.

Its no surprise that college kids age. And its also no surprise that a lot grads stay in Austin afterwards (at least it used to be). In fact, my little cadre of friends are largely still there, but have families and own homes. So, could there have been a way for Austin to build out in a way that embraced the interests and needs of these aging folks (who were already sold on living there) to provide for their next stage of life? ie. Not isolationist suburban style developments?

OT: my wife orders off a menu pretty well for a UT grad...

And that does raise the issue of one thing Austin does (or at least used to do) very well - restaurants. There is a LOT of great food to eat in Austin! At least there used to be...

 

[Super Amputee Cat]

Hated it. Rednecks, racists, bigots, losers, meth heads, cold weather, icy roads, snow, and California transplants.

Gee how could I top that one?

Edit: My worst place? Where I live now. Richards Road in Toledo. I swear this street has the highest per capita number of assholes driving on it of any major thoroghfare in the City. I'm talking about ignorant pricks that drive without mufflers, blare rap music at 180 db, race motorcycles at 100MPH, squeal tires, or a combination of all these. God how I wish one of these ****ers would just smash into an oak tree doing 60 or so.

I only live a mile from a rails-to-trails but dread going there for fear of being run over by some prick texting.

 

[Zoning Goddess]

I swear this street has the highest per capita number of assholes driving on it of any major thoroghfare in the City. I'm talking about ignorant pricks that drive without mufflers, blare rap music at 180 db, race motorcycles at 100MPH, squeal tires, or a combination of all these. God how I wish one of these ****ers would just smash into an oak tree doing 60 or so.

I lived with my mom for almost 2 years going thru a divorce, she was in a very affluent gated community, and unfortunately lived near the gate. Every night, all night, people who lived there drove in with the rap and s*hit playing to shake the houses. Som epeople have an odd reliance on gated communities, thinking they're so safe. Her neighborhood had more registered sex offenders than mine. And the music from the cars. Sheesh. Good thing I didn't have a gun.

 

[ofos]

I lived with my mom for almost 2 years going thru a divorce, she was in a very affluent gated community, and unfortunately lived near the gate. Every night, all night, people who lived there drove in with the rap and s*hit playing to shake the houses. Som epeople have an odd reliance on gated communities, thinking they're so safe. Her neighborhood had more registered sex offenders than mine. And the music from the cars. Sheesh. Good thing I didn't have a gun.

A former co-worker, also from Florida, grew up in a very affluent gated community. Some place starting with Palm and ending with Beach. One night there was gunfire followed by a body flying over the wall and landing in their back yard. Seems that some drug dealers had a little internal problem that they resolved by offing one of their own and disposing of his body over the wall. Kind of like using a leaf blower to move your trash to your neighbors yard.

 

[Dan]

And that does raise the issue of one thing Austin does (or at least used to do) very well - restaurants. There is a LOT of great food to eat in Austin! At least there used to be...

Austin has plenty of great restaurants ... east of Mopac, south of Anderson Lane, west of I-35 (and a bit to the east), and north of US 290. Outside of that area, it's dominated by chains, and mom-and-pop Mexican and barbecue. That's not to say there's nothing outside of what so many consider to be the REAL Austin, but the diversity seems to drop off dramatically past a certain boundary. The Peruvian-French fusion and organic free range fair trade restaurants gives way to Cheddar's, Chili's, Happy Lucky Jade China Panda Dragon Star, and La Chingadera #2 like that (snaps fingers).

Back to the worst place I ever lived, though. Orlando. (Sorry ZG.) It wasn't horrible, but there was absolutely no sense of community, it seemed so much more transitory than anyplace else I've lived, it was hard to meet people, and it seemed to offer all of the disadvantages of Florida (humidity, no topography, dysfunctionality, placeless sprawl, rednecks) with none of the advantages (ocean, beaches, tropical feel, availability of international/Latin flavored culture). I lived in a part of town that was middle-class but where it seemed like everybody worked in construction, and I'd hear Nextel beeps more time in one day then I'd hear in three or four months anywhere else.

 

[Dave F]

In Austin, areas like this are considered "urban living".

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...=FhaWxp1iFDSCBp4DV1gqhw&cbp=12,126.81,,0,2.43
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...d=H4yZH0v1BAyXmzrGR2yhHQ&cbp=12,66.89,,0,5.16
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=barto...8pelhtZUHSJXwhJisNwjTQ&cbp=12,308.69,,0,14.81


Hilarious! While I really do like the independent business culture in those areas and other parts of central Austin, the fact that those are considered major neighborhood commercial centers is really funny. Too bad very few locals (including transplants) are in on the joke!




Hey, live and let live; I guess I'd take hipsters over guidos.


Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a guido or two in Austin. Maybe they would bring some decent Italian food with them!

As usual, great post, Dan

 

[hilldweller]

The hipster culture on the whole really aggravates me, I can totally relate to TO's sentiments about them. I can dig the whole "live-and-let-live" vibe and would much prefer hipsters as neighbors as opposed to say, a bunch of meathead guidos, but the pretentiousness at the "look at me and my tats attitude" wears thin with me. Basically, it's a bunch of twenty-somethings from upper and middle class upbringings all trying to appear as edgy and bohemian as possible, but with this totally cynical attitude about life in general (i.e. "work sucks, we're too cool for that so we just drink 40s on our stoop and chill all day").

 

[southsideamy]

Worst Place I've ever lived: One room apartment (actually, top floor of an old house) in downtown Lansing, Michigan. I was about 10 blocks from the capitol. Woman murdered and then dumped at house across the street, loud music, a residential neighborhood with a (gasp!) ONE WAY, two lane street, crack whores everywhere, prostitutes at the corner, the local gas stations and Quality Dairys had bullet proof glass. No air conditioning. Good thing I was young and stupid because I was not scared at all.

It wasn't all terrible, though -- I was walking distance to work in Old Town (cool art/hipster/gay district) and Elderly Instruments (amazing music store), I could see the fireworks from the minor league ballpark almost every night in the summer, and there was a gigantic front porch that was fun to sit out on and read books.

 

[Dan]

Hilarious! While I really do like the independent business culture in those areas and other parts of central Austin, the fact that those are considered major neighborhood commercial centers is really funny.

So true. Austin has more than its fair share of "funky", but it seems that Austinites genuinely believe that funky suburban is equivalent to urban.

Hate to break the bad news, but ...

Manor Road isn't urban.

North Loop isn't urban.

Hyde Park isn't urban.

North Lamar isn't urban.

North Lamar by 6th Street is barely urban. (6th Street west of downtown is getting there, but still ...)

South Lamar isn't urban.

Clarksville/West End isn't urban.

Burnet Road isn't urban.

West 35th St/Kerbey Lane isn't urban.

South 1st St isn't urban.

Barton Springs Road isn't urban.

South Congress is barely urban.

These are considered major commercial centers in what's considered the "real" Austin.

What's urban in Austin? Downtown, the 6th Street entertainment district (really, part of downtown) and The Drag. Maybe The Triangle, if you include a heavily NU-influenced lifestyle center. That's it. Mueller is a NU development, but its retail component is what I call "kinder, gentler sprawl": solidly vehicle-oriented with decent architecture and site planning for such a project.

Again, Austinites ... funky suburban ≠ urban. Indie record stores, coffeehouses, organic ethnic restaurants, consignment stores, mid-century home furnishing stores and tattoo parlors in aging shopping plazas and strip malls with hip or retro signage surrounded by tract houses with funky and ironic lawn art are still suburban in their form. Maybe Austin's built environment is the ultimate ironic hipster statement; drink some ironic PBR or Lone Star, get some ironic tats, and park your Scion XB in the driveway of your ironic ranch house in your ironic suburban neighborhood. Old hippies also like to have space for a productive garden.

Also again, Austin's not a terrible place. It just isn't what people think it is.

 

[Suburb Repairman]

Moderator note:

Austin discussion split to separate thread.

SR

Moderator note:

(Dan) You beat me by just a few minutes in copying the Austin posts to a new thread.

 

[PlannerGirl]

Worst place I have lived

Hey we were stationed at Ft Eustis sorry Useless for damn near 12 years (waits for folks to faint) We liked it pretty well. Went back a couple of years ago to visit and the whole are I lived in is just..GONE8-!

But the worse place I have ever lived is easy

ALABAMA

The heart of backward old South with the worst of what it was (and still is there) racism, hate, bigotry, narrow minded hell hole of a place. There is a level of hell reserved for this state.

The people were only friendly if you were related or you and your daddy had played ball for X or Y school.

Education was looked down on and openly discouraged at every turn8-!

The environmental destruction was devastating and came with a use it up mind set very entrenched for the long haul.

I better stop now or I would go on all day:-#

 

[WSU MUP Student]

The worse place I ever lived was Jacksonville, NC. I think I recall reading that it has the highest guy:girl ratio in the lower 48... not exactly the most happening place for a single guy in his 20s! The town had an absolutely barren downtown which seemed to have emptied out when they rerouted or expanded US-17 and NC-24 and even today they continue to expand and build a new limited access bypass around the downtown. This is a shame because the downtown has a rive running through it and would be a great place for boaters to come up out of the intercoastal. And for an area with so many people (about 70,000 with the base population), forget about any form of urbanism. Another major con was that this town was truly out in the middle of nowhere. Any other city of a decent size (Greenville or Wilmington) was a minimum of an hour away. And because the military bases take up so much space and employ so many people, it again takes about an hour at least to get out of that type of element and find some diversity. If there was a statistic measuring the city with the highest number of tattoo parlors, pawn shops, and strip clubs per capita, Jacksonville, NC would win!

I lived on the base (mainly because I refused to sit in morning traffic coming in the gate each day when I could just walk to work instead) and the very best part about the area, in my opinion, was the beaches. Going to the beach on base was usually pretty good if you could go during the week because it was never crowded and they always kept them nice and clean. Even outside of the bases, there were plenty of nice beaches in the area... but that hardly makes up for all the negatives.

I never really thought of the city as dangerous (I last lived there in 2005) but I still check the newspaper out online daily and am absolutely astonished by the number of murders and violent crimes there. I think there have already been about 20 this year so far which seems amazing to me for a city of that size and no real metro area around it. So I guess there is another negative mark for the city of Jacksonville, NC.

 

[gicarto]

Fort Dodge, IA (a lot of social problems for a small city)

New Orleans (Still love to visit, just not a good place to live unless you are from there)

 

[Maister]

29 Palms, CA. 120+ degree Death Valley summer temperatures coupled with all the charms/amenities one would expect to find in a military outpost town.

 

[Dan]

The worse place I ever lived was Jacksonville, NC.

Been to Jacksonville. It's really, really awful.

I'm too lazy to find and link to it, but a while abck I started a thread asking why military towns, for the most part, were generally so awful. Any military town I've been in -- El Paso, Kileen, Jacksonville, Havelock, Alamogordo, and Clovis to name a few -- have been uniformly bad. Sign clutter an order of magnitude worse than the most visually polluted civilian towns, no urbanism, low-end commercial, and a generally run-down appearance seem the norm. However, the bases themselves are usually quite nice.

 

[WSU MUP Student]

29 Palms, CA. 120+ degree Death Valley summer temperatures coupled with all the charms/amenities one would expect to find in a military outpost town.

I spent some time out at 29 Palms visiting friends who were stationed there and always had a blast... of course, I was never there for longer than 10 days and always had a Jeep to go play with in the desert so that could have helped explained why my friends were so astonished that I was always willing to visit them there. But yeah, I don't think I would have actually living there.

 

[giff57]

Fort Dodge, IA (a lot of social problems for a small city)

That and my ex-wife lives there

 

[jmello]

North Philly... 'nuff said.

For neighborhoods: that's at the top of my list too. Got mugged at gun point (to my head) my first month there. The area was filled with hustlers, beggars and thiefs who never let you rest. Not to mention the litter, abandoned cars and extreme racial tension. The poverty was often too much to bear. Summer in Philly is also absolutely miserable, with 90% humidity, smog and no ocean breeze. Believe it or not I do miss the "realness" of the place. There's something to be said for that.

For housing: I lived in a small 1BR cottage with my ex-girlfriend for a short time after Philly. Her grandparents owned it and it was decorated/equipped as such. It was in the middle of nowhere and I was completely dependent on her family for everything. I had to borrow a car from her uncle. I felt indebted to her and as a result got absolutely no time to myself. It was terrible.

 

[mendelman]

Moderator note:

Moved the thread to the Cities and Places forum because this is a more appropriate location than the FAC

 

[Hceux]

For housing: an apartment that I lived in between downtown and the university. The location was fantastic as the apt was close to the university, the waterfront, and the downtown area (which actually has two grocery stores!). But, the apt itself was out of date as the 80+ year old landlady was too cheap to spend a cent on anything. She would sit in the dark between dusk and bedtime everyday! And, the other good thing about this apt was it was cheap despite its location and neighbourhood. It helped me save up a trip to England and Scotland!

For neighbourhood: I cannot think of a neighbourhood that I have lived in that was bad. I guess the worst would go to Gosport, ON, for its jumbled-up appearance of homes despite being almost surrounded by water as it was almost an island.

For community: I'd have to say it's a tie between Brighton, ON, and Barry's Bay, ON because of its "small town" problems: everyone knows of everyone else's business. Anonymity wasn't an option.

However, if I were to vote for the worst possible town that someone could ask me to live in, then it would be these ones:
- Trenton, ON: welfare town, very high teen pregnancy, stinky pulp n paper smell, dying downtown and retail cores, etc.
- Milton, ON: for its size (60,000+ ppl), it has a teeny weeny downtown area, consists of mostly subdivisions, no synchronized street lights on the main drags in the town, and a terrible street layout.

 

[teofilo]

Page, Arizona. If you've ever wondered what a town would look like if it were designed and built by the Bureau of Reclamation, this is the place for you.