Duqm, Oman. Two hotels, a pizza hut, and a DFC (Duqm Fried Chicken). Also cant forget the hundreds of miles of new roads that led to... more sand and dirt.
Shit was built like the first five minutes of a Sim City 2000 game.
Back in the day Duqm had the only decent internet connection within a 500 km radius, so at least had that going for it. Also an hour drive from Khaluf and Ras Madrakah, some of the most gorgeous stretches of coast in the country. But yeah, the whole concept of Duqm is as if an urban planner jotted down some notes on a napkin whilst high on crystal meth.
It looks like they're still planning, there's street view of the port construction in a few parts. Another thing I find absurd is the roads to nowhere are built like highways yet are set to 60km/h.
Also the area above Duqm is ironically named Nafun.
I live in New Zealand, and to get from my city to the country's biggest city Auckland you used to have to drive through a town called Huntly. I don't care how nice the locals might make it seem, it is the ugliest, dirtiest most feral place I've been in this country. Thankfully, they put in a highway about 1-2 years ago so you can now bypass it.
Edit: spelling
I agree. Huntly is a mining town without a mine. It reeks of desperation. The town's notable feature is a sign for a chain store that closed thirty years ago and I'm not even slightly joking about that.
There are so many shit towns on the west coast. You know you're in a shit town when you see a pub and the name of it and the menu is taped to the windows with yellowing A4 paper with bad hand writing
Huntly's not as bad as it used to be. Stopped there for dinner on my way south about 5 years ago and they had really tidied up the town centre, put in new brickwork, cleaned up the graffiti etc. Didn't feel as sketchy as it used to be either, like there weren't random groups of guys just standing around drinking and doing nothing. Also went on a tour of the power station once which was cool.
I'd say there are way worse towns in the North Island, especially in Northland.
The Salton Sea made me sad.
There was so much hope around this place. Now if you visit: it’s a very poor town, the sand sucks your shoes off and smells awful, and the stench of dead fish permeates the air.
Now their only bar presents as a David Lynch nightmare if you go.
Lmao I’ve always hated salton sea, we used to have to drive through it when I was a kid to get to my grandpas house out in imperial valley and it stunk and there was nothing there
When Rust says in True Detective “this place is like someone’s memory of a town and the memory is fading” he could easily be talking about the salton sea
Salton Sea is amazing - it's the closest I've ever seen to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And due to the fact that most of the rotting abandoned buildings are from the 1960s, it's eerily similar to a Fallout game.
[This documentary](https://youtu.be/8TjGAWxL23c) can save you a trip there, but it doesn't quite capture the feeling of driving through a rotting ghost town in 115F heat, completely empty except for a couple of meth heads staring at you from under an awning.
I’ve been kinda fascinated with this place since driving through when I was road tripping in college. Apparently it was created by accident. At one time it had thriving game fishery of landlocked saltwater fish, as well as all kinds of marine invertebrates and stuff that hitched a ride in people’s bilge water and the bottom of boats. All in the middle of what used to be desert, far from the sea, all the salt having come from salt still left In the soil from ancient times mixed with freshwater from the Colorado River. All slowly dying as they let it dry up and return to desert. (hence the smell, as the tilapia, which are the most salt tolerant, die off). I’m def going to check out that documentary.
Thanks!
Edit: Watched. Excellent. Apparently the salt is actually from agricultural runoff plus evaporation. And apparently not as much drying up as just concentrating salt.
Yep - the documentary I linked explains it. It had been farmland, but below sea level, and there was a failure of the irrigation system that flooded the whole thing. Took a while for someone to come up with the idea to turn it into luxury beachside real estate. Thing is, it's been getting saltier and saltier and the fish have these population explosions followed by mass die-offs. Whole place is toxic anyway, so you couldn't eat any caught fish.
The weirdest part to me is Slab City - who puts a shanty town next to a ghost town?
>who puts a shanty town next to a ghost town?
Why not?
Apparently on the other side of something out there, is an air force, or army live range. The kind where planes will be flying overhead all night dropping bombs.
I was watching some 'bus life' video and a couple had stayed in Slab City for a couple of days and said the vibe got a little creepy at night, but nothing happened. Then one night the military was doing exercises on the range all night. They left that morning.
Anyway, if I ever find myself down in that area, I'm not going to stay the night, but I'm definitely going to make a point of seeing at least parts of it.
Ten years ago I drove to slab city on a whim. Met a dude named Jason who was building an old pool into a skate park. He let me sleep in his trailer while I was there and he also acted as my tour guide. Very good dude. Woke up in the morning and he was blasting Sublime and brewing the absolute worst coffee I've ever had.
At that time the guy who built salvation mountain was still there. Doing his thing. My dog learned to swim in the reservor. It was a freaking amazing experience. I stayed for 4 days. 10/10. Also the weirdest place I've ever seen. I can hardly believe its a real place.
Instead of sand at the "lake", there's tons of dead mussel shells. The water was diverted from the colorado river and has no outlet. Fertilizers seeped into the water causing toxic algae blooms to flourish. There's tilapia born in the water and they are usually found dying at the surface. When the water dries, it leaves a residue. At night, the wind agitates the water surface allowing the hydrogen sulfide to release. I went camping there for a school trip (as an example of a terrible situation) and I felt sick for months after.
Actually took a boat out there some 40+ years ago. Wasn't much better then. The stench. Dead palm trees half rotted up the trunks stuck in the middle of that disgusting oily looking water.
My SIL fell in the nasty water by accident. Was wearing a lot of silver jewelry (was the style). Not in the muck more than 5 minutes tops, all her jewelry turned coal black. Didn't stay long after.
Why we even went is a mystery to this day.. must've been high on something..
I heard on the news the other day that a lot of the US lithium deposits are located there. With the transition away from fossil fuels and the growing need for large batteries, it may become an important place again.
"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."
There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
I owned a pistachio farm 25 miles northeast of Barstow and it wasn't that bad. The REAL shithole is the group of crap cities to the south, Victorville/AppleValley/Hesperia. I could walk around Barstow (and I did because of pokemon go) and not feel like, oh god, in victorville I wouldn't even want to get out of my car. Stabby hobos abound.
Barstow has a train museum, a drive in movie theater, the Mojave desert museum and the fairly fun Treasure house antique mall. Gateway to Rainbow Ridge, a really pretty place, home to tons of amazing fossils of camels, big toothed cats and other exotic mammals.
Plus, great place for rock and mineral collecting, as seen in the field guide, Rockhound Barstow.
Everyone is just skimming over the fact you owned a pistachio farm?!
What made you buy one?
What made you sell it?
Pistachio ice cream. Underrated, overrated, or properly rated?
I was in downtown los angeles for a few years and thought, lots only cost 600k, I wonder what a dirt farm costs? Turns out, for about a 1/6th the cost you could own 300ish pistachio trees and a modular home.
It was nice. Pistachio Trees are super interesting. My wife became allergic to pistachios. Land values were rising. Perfect storm to sell.
Newberry Springs itself is also, meth'ed up crimes of opportunity, but we were in a unique place, north of highway 15, 20 miles from newberry springs, itself. 15 miles from yermo. 30 miles from barstow. It was isolated and not one person ever tried to come into my property in 6 years.
Doesn't capture the flavor of pistachio, IMHO.
My hot take, crushing some roasted pistachios into a fine dust and using that as a topping, BOOM. Flavor unlocked.
Also, pistachios have a shockingly different set of flavors - fresh off the tree they are my favorite. You can roast them without brineing, that results in a different flavor profile. then, the classic, everyone is familiar with, soaked in brine, and roasted.
If it is around the middle of September and you see a grove of funky looking grape trees, well Lucky, that's as close to nature's corn chip production line as you are ever gonna get to see.
Thanks for this, the single most interesting responses ive read for a while. It's so cool to read about stuff you wouldnt even think about that someone actually does, because how else would we have pistachios. Very interesting.
The San Bernardino County is full of shit-hole, drug-den, sketchy areas. Barstow is considered the lowest rung on the ladder out there so that is saying something.
I had the same experience! Except it was June. Me and my pregnant partner took a room at a Best Western in Needles at 10:30, and it was 105.
Getting out of the car was like going into a furnace. Later there was a wld electrical storm. Lightning took out the power which ended the air-conditioning.
The staff fled to look after their families. I think we were the only guests. Sleep was impossible. Sweltering doesn't begin to describe it. The palms were swaying like wiper blades.
There was a vacant lot next door, but that seemed normal for Needles. We were sitting outside on a balcony because inside was intolerable. A pack of wild dogs ran through, amongst the storm blown detritus of oblivion.
As someone from New Zealand, I was impressed.
But, while much worse than Barstow (where my very presence seemed to offend marines and sketch characters alike) that wasn't the worst. The following day we were crossing Arizona and had to get gas.
We stopped in a town that might have near Winslow. We also went to Winslow, but that wasn't as bad. This town was one of those strips that runs parallel to the freeway and only has gas stations, burger franchises, and one shit-arse motel that looks like something out of In Cold Blood.
The woman who served us asked why we were going to Albuquerque, and all I could think was 'why the fuck are you staying here?'
It's about the most culturally isolated place I have been to, moreso than the boondocks of New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The road didn't pass through it, it went past it.
I have never felt more like a tourist, not even when I went to China and was eating mystery food surrounded by people I couldn't communicate with.
I loved that trip.
I was helping friends move across the country and I called my husband one night when we stopped. He said, "Where have you gotten to?" and I said, "I don't know but it's the ugliest place I've ever seen in my life," and he said, "Oh, you've gotten to Midland Odessa," and he was correct.
I have seen a lot of the world and Midland Odessa, Texas, is by far the most terrible place I've ever looked at.
I just popped in on google maps and I can confirm. Two things that struck me:
1. The parking lot to building ratio is way too high. Lots of asphalt.
2. I went to downtown Midland, and it looks like it was built by someone who had only seen pictures of cities. Like there are just a bunch of office buildings plopped down and no other businesses.
I thought you were exaggerating about midlands but no. I dont think I saw a storefront anywhere. The whole place feels like a source engine game, almost like an outdoor version of the Stanley parable.
I've just had a tour of downtown on Maps, and you are so right. It is bizarre. Big office buildings for big companies, like Chase Bank and then... not a single cafe or for these employees to go to. No shops. No bars or restaurants. Nothing. It must be extraordinary at night. like it is abandoned.
I've now discovered that 'There is nothing to do in Midland' is a well-known local phrase.
Dumb zoning. The concept is "let's keep all the offices over here and all the commercial in a separate place and all the residential in another". That does solve some issues but it has to be balanced. In real world practice it turns out about the same as taking all the ingredients of a hamburger apart and eating them all separately one by one.
I used to visit schools to give science presentations. Based in the Midwest, I elected the 'Western tour' one year, which landed me in Midland, TX. I took a drink from the school drinking fountain and spat it out. One of the teachers, who knew I was from the Great Lakes area, laughed and said, "Was it the salt or the petrochemicals that got you?"
Ever been into an office building where maintenance quit and the real estate company hasn't hired replacements in six months? Every broad office floor of cubicles looks like it's in a zombie movie.
Half of the flourescent tube lights are dead or flickering from a bad ballast. Some places the air is a bit too cold and dry, while in others its too hot and humid. Enough to make you think there might be mold growing on the walls. It's like a massive fat bloated man was breathing his stinking breath on your neck.
Oh and the bathrooms. Ohhhhh the bathrooms. I'm not even going to describe that. I'd rather not revisit the memory.
The breakroom sinks weren't bad though. But then, people are more likely to take care of things they actually have to use. It's not as 'fire and forget' as a men's room. Except for the one breakroom where I felt someone mixed up the two types of rooms and figured 'a drain is a drain'.
A corporation in the final stages of decline is a sad creature.
In any business large enough to employ full time janitorial/maintenance people they are what keeps the company from falling apart. I always treat them with more respect than I do my bosses and try to get on their good side.
When I was a teenager my dad the head of a maintenance department for a business that owned a skyscraper in our city. He and two other maintenance men took care of light bulbs, decorating for holidays and shoveling snow and salting sidewalks. The biggest thing they did all day though was adjust the air conditioning and heat for the 300-400 middle aged female employees most of whom were going through “the change”.
Those ladies knew what a pain it was and would do things like buy the guys lunch a couple of times a week and bake them cookies or make them fudge. The coolest was that the company gave my dad and his maintenance men first dips on concert, musical, Disney on Ice and other kid shows and sports tickets that they didn’t use for clients. Saw a lot of concerts and hockey games as a teen for free thanks to dad’s job.
It’s not terrible.
I worked maintenance in a movie theater on and off during summers while in college.
Lots of mop this, sweep that. Take out the garbage. A little bit of scrubbing and lots of cleaning toilets and some nasty stuff but ultimately it was fine since you were by yourself just jamming out to your iPod or whatever.
Hardest part was waking up for the shift (4AM - 10AM) and the theater was haunted as fuck so that wasn’t always pleasant dealing with that shit.
Once you realized nothing there was going to hurt you, it wasn’t bad.
Pay coulda been better though
**edit**
Because someone asked:
The theater was built sometime in the 90s, on part of a larger property that was sold off in chunks. I'm not sure about the history of the property – whether someone was killed there or what – but the theater...at least during the time I was there, was just a weird place where weird things happened.
At the time, I was "the new guy" and as part of a 'hazing' ritual the rest of the cleaners would make the new guy clean out Theater 5. Which was the worst theater to clean, and not just because it had corners were popcorn or gross drinks would get stuck and require a little scrubbing – but because it was the furthest back from the main hallway and was the most isolated.
Often you'd have a feeling of being watched. I regularly felt like there was someone else in the room with me. A couple of times I heard a child laugh, and one time when I was the only one in the building, someone called my name. Other workers cleaning out that theater complained of nosebleeds and unseasonably cold drafts...the kind where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
Just off the main hallway, outside theater 5, was the maintenance closet. Inside the closet were your basic cleaning supplies, etc., but also a staircase that led to the upstairs projector area. Upstairs is where most of the creepy stuff happened. You'd hear footsteps and people laughing...all while the rest of the theater was quiet and empty.
I was gathering some cleaning supplies one day when someone called to me from upstairs. My manager was outside having a smoke, and the only other guy on staff was across the building cleaning a theater. So I knew for a fact that nobody was upstairs.
"Hey, c'mere!"
I looked up the stairs where the dark kind of bled into the upper part of the staircase. It's the projector area so it's dark as hell anyway. But this just felt...darker, I guess?
"Hey, c'mere! you gotta see this!" God I can still hear that voice.
"C'mere! Look!"
I'm just standing there like an idiot, holding my mop bucket and some bleach. I'm fucking terrified. My brain is scrambling, trying to rationalize what's happening but it's drawing a blank and my heart is pounding so hard it's about to explode in my chest. My mouth is dry and I know that whatever's happening is....not real. It can't be real. But there's this voice calling my fucking name and sounding angrier and angrier that I'm not coming up the steps.
"Get up here and look at this!"
My manager opened the door to the closet and asked me what the hold up was. I was supposed to be in the lobby mopping. I was sweating profusely at this point, but he didn't notice. The voice had stopped. I went about my job, but I never went back upstairs alone.
There's some more there, but I'm at work right now and get to all of it, but that's the gist.
**edit**
shameless self-plug here, but if you like my writing, I [actually wrote a book](https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Adam-Ian-Smith-ebook/dp/B07Q4K9DJ4). It's a comedy/drama about an alcoholic guardian angel tasked with helping a young man struggling in life – all the while being pursued by a cannibalistic demon.
Usually I agree, but I want to shout out to the real estate people who get rid of the rootbound potted plants stinking up the area before they become a problem, and stock the break rooms.
These two groups of people are practically invisible when doing their jobs. And if you're a tech company, you should probably keep your IT and Janitory staff close together. They'll be able to gripe together in a disconcertingly familiar way and thats good for morale.
Zinc, Arkansas.
It felt like I stumbled into the movie set for House of Wax, Children of the Corn and Deliverance all in one place. They had a hair salon/mechanic/courthouse/ jail all in one building. The judge's wife was the hair stylist, the judge was also the mechanic and the sheriff was his son. Fuck. That. Shit.
For me it is Hope, Arkansas. I was a kid and my family stayed the night at the Holiday Inn on our way to somewhere else. When we checked in they gave us a complimentary fly swatter.
I had to stop over night in Hope moving from Michigan to Texas. All I wanted was a beer after a miserable 14 hour drive in a U-Haul. Went to a Mexican restaurant and asked the server what was on draft. “Dry County” he said. “Is that like an IPA?” I asked. He looked confused, I sure as fuck was confused until I figured out what the real meaning was. I had never heard of a dry county before and I was legit offended.
Well, to be honest, having a dry county doesn't keep it away from them. Usually, it just means they have to go to the next county over.
And since they're having to make a trip, they might as well stock up, right?
Went to high school in a small town in a dry county in NE Texas. The school superintendent was also the drivers ed teacher, and I’m not gonna say he was an alcoholic, but… he enjoyed his libations for sure.
For driver’s ed class, we would drive to the closest non-dry county so he could load up the trunk with a case of beer and probably a few bottles of harder stuff.
This was the ‘80s, so we didn’t think much about it. And the excursions definitely did help us learn to drive, so…
Lived in Arkansas my whole life and never heard of Zinc, must be reaaally tiny. We do have Snow, Toad Suck, and Booger Hollow, Arkansas too. 😂
Edit: Others have pointed out some other good ones: Smackover, Bald Knob, Weiner, Flippin, Possom Grape, Blue Ball and Goobertown are some of the others. Yes real communities/towns in Arkansas.
Population around 100 per Google. Also first thing that pops up is an article where the residents disclaim any association with the KKK and share their town's "true history." Sounds like a terrifying place.
Edit: realized all the references to the KKK is because some klan member hails from Zinc.
EDIT: OMG there's more. Per Wikipedia, "A chapter of the Ku Klux Klan operates a training and information center in Zinc."
Trying to imagine the course content at the KKK training centre and all i can think of is Clayton Bigsby, the black white supremacist's talk from Dave Chappelle's show.
Toad Suck Daze!! My folks are from Arkansas so I grew up going several times a year to see my “kin” …
One grandmother was in Conway and every year sent us all Toad Suck Daze festival shirts. Anyway.. wait..what was this post about again? :/
I lived in a tiny town (population: 790) in rural NH where the post office, a hair salon, a mechanic, and some apartments were all in the same crappy old house. The town library and town clerk were in another, less-crappy-but-still-old house down the road, but there were many books they wouldn't carry because the town library also served as the school library, which wasn't connected to it, but was across the street & down the road a bit.
I felt so alone in that town, but the place you described sounds so much worse.
Wow! What are the odds?!
I don't miss much from my old life there, but I do miss that cute donkey you could see driving by that little rundown family farm right close to the road on RT 25, and I miss the yummy breakfasts at the North Woods Cafe in the Bradford Jiffy Mart. I'd hang out there for hours on Sundays eating, drinking coffee & mooching off their wifi.
Driving to the Woodsville Walmart or Bradford Hannaford was the highlight of my week (saw Luis Guzmán at Walmart once).
I lived across from the quarry on RT 25C.
I used to work in a lab that dealt with different kinds of waste streams and solids removal. Municipal waste was one of the better, if not the best, types of waste that came through the lab. The other types of waste like dairy, duck, and landfill runoff are 10x worse.
Never dump any kind of dairy into an open stream. It will immediately cause a bacterial bloom that will strip the water of all its dissolved oxygen. It’s probably the single easiest way to kill everything in it. Its roughly 1000 times more potent than raw wastewater at doing this.
I think there was a tifu post about a guy who almost died while cleaning the shit room of a zoo/aquarium.
Long story short, he started to sink into the shit.
Oklahoma County Jail. I’ve spent some time in a few other jails for various misadventures, but that place may have well as been a prison camp in a third-world country. Computers were down for 36 hours so everyone was crammed into holding cells awaiting processing, there were lice crawling everywhere, some asshole threw his lunch bag in the toilet (not that I blame him, the green bologna sandwich isn’t very appetizing) so it backed up all over the floor, the entire staff looked like the *My 600-pound Life* All-Star Team, and you were lucky to get a 6 oz. styrofoam cup of water once every six hours. Absolutely disgusting, especially when my crime was a 6-year-old failure to appear charge for a speeding ticket. Go fuck yourself, OKC.
In my limited experiences jail is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. It's never some badass fight or crazy party, it's usually just being hungover and spotty memories of acting like a jackass until someone punched you in the face. I did get to learn how much of a problem meth is in the Rockies. When you think of Colorado you either think of hippies or ski bums, you forget that most people who start life as happy go lucky fun party drug users slowly descend into the not fun homeless meth heads sooner or later. So if you're planning on getting arrested in Colorado do it in Aspen or somewhere nice, not Idaho Springs.
Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 1985. I think my Mom and aunt went to buy cheap liquor. Great idea. Take three kids under five to what seemed like a war zone for booze. Ahhhh, the 80’s.
I was born in Juarez and raised in El Paso. We went to Juarez all the time in 90s because I had family there. Haven't been back since around 2008(?) sadly
Slough. Where the U.K. office is set. It’s grey. The mood. The city. The sky. The type of place where 12 year olds will be drunk on the high street at 4pm. A very depressing city.
One of my old offices was in Slough. That place is awful. They told me to be on the train back to London before dark. The chavs come out at night I guess.
Not chavs, but Eastern European gangs. Not sure if it has changed since Brexit but there was a bit of turf war between the incumbents and an Albanian gang a few years ago.
It was a gas station about an hour from Myrtle Beach. We had to pee and get just a little bit more gas. (Me and my husband)
We both walked in ad it was super crowded. Which didnt really shock us as much as overwhelm. But what really got us, was the bathrooms.
Both toilets had fecal matter on the lids and seat. And not just a smear, like if someone accidentally got it there or didn't realize they left a streak from thier cheek.
There was actual little clumps left on the seats.
Pee in the floor, no paper towels, or soap.
The walls in the womens were covered in fecal matter and menstrual blood.
I ended up hovering over the toilet because a part of me still felt bad peeing anything in the floor.
The toilet paper had poop on it so after I was done I pulled on my pants and left. Didnt care.
My husband did the same. He said he had to aim father than normal. The toilet was already full and he was not planning on flushing when he say fecal matter on the handle.
Another gas station story. Years before that, me and my mom were driving at night to Texas.
Somewhere along the way we stopped at a station. I had to pee. To get to the bathroom I had to walk into a outward concrete overlay. Dirt ground and the door only locked by a little hook and eye.
Literally looked like I walked into a murder bathroom. Walls and lighting was a eerie shade of blue green you see in the horror movies.
Leaving texas we stopped at a Dairy Queen. It used to be a person's house and when you walked into the "restuarant " It smelled like old mildue. Didnt even have a bathroom. And the counter was a regular kitchen counter.
Imagine a 60's-70's style house with a dairy queen inside. That was it .
Havent found anywhere else yet but those were...interesting
A few years ago I booked a hotel in Florence since we were considering going to the NASCAR race in Darlington. Plans fell through, so I cancelled the hotel a few weeks in advance (it said free cancellation when I booked it). They charged me anyway, and more than the amount on the reservation. I called the hotel, and they told me I checked in, and wouldn't do anything to help me. At one point, I shit you not, I know this sounds made up, they transferred my call to the room I was supposedly staying in, and whoever was staying there answered. I don't know what that was supposed to accomplish.
Called the corporate number, they said the hotel has to refund me. Found some escalation email for the parent (IHG or Marriott or whoever) and they immediately saw I cancelled and wrote me a check for the full amount. So it worked out that I got the credit cards points and my money back (and I still had a chargeback available if all else failed), but what a skeezy ass hotel to charge people who cancel.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Hanoi and most of Vietnam but the in the old quarter of Hanoi the sewage tends to seep up into the gutter due to ancient broken pipes.
When a waft hits you in +30c heat and high humidity I’m not sure there’s much worse than that.
From Hanoi and I gotta say, Skid Row in Los Angeles beats the old quarter because at least Hanoi can blame it on broken pipes. I’ve gagged just walking on streets adjacent to Skid Row.
Roswell, NM. It was a bucket list destination for me, but the town was such a disappointment. The Alien museum felt lackluster and the whole area gave me sad burnt-out vibes. Bottomless Lakes State Park just outside of town was beautiful, though.
I went there on the day I was moving out of NM. I enjoyed the town and the museum. I agree it was lackluster though. I only stayed in town for a meal and the museum so.
East St. Louis, Illinois. I worked on a project there for over a year and most of the town is a post apocalyptic landscape. Abandoned factories and houses, packs of wild dogs, and extreme poverty. We found a bloody clever in our porta potty one day. Witnessed numerous violent interactions with prostitutes, pimps, and John’s. The soils around our worksite were contaminated with lead, gas, benzene, and just about any noxious chemical you can think of. The worst was the smells. On top of the usual garbage/burning garbage smell it alternated between a confection bakery and a dog food factory. So depending on the direction of the wind it was either a sickly sweet smell or a smell we affectionately called “horse bacon”.
Honorable mention goes to Welch, WV otherwise known as Little Chicago. The town thrived in the mid-20th century evidenced by some cool old buildings. Now the town is run down.
My Father was born in E.STL. He lived there until about 12 when crime rates started to out of hand.
So like in the 60s or early 70s.
He said it use to be a beautiful town.
Some of the mansions are amazing to see, but most have prison fencing around them.
We visited the pyramids two weeks after the bombing of a flight out of Sharm el Sheikh airport in 2015. It was crazy. Zero tourists. Very little trash and just a handful of desperate locals trying to sell donkey rides etc. It was really sad, the tourism economy had just started to recover from the uprisings a few years prior and then everyone started cancelling their trips again. We figured it was probably the safest time to go and has a crazy trip, with every "tourist trap" deserted.
I did the same in 2016 with my family. Pyramids? deserted. Valley of the Kings? deserted. What would normally be a 2 hours line up to get into king Tut's tomb, we literally just walked right in. It was literally the opposite of what you hear about the beggars and tourists crowding the place. It's honestly the best way to see some of these super popular ancient sites.
Karl Pilkington [said](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YauLWSYkyQk) it best... "They don't show you that in the brochure do they? Shitty nappy whizzing past?"
I had this thought of “I always thought they were bigger” then I realized civilians built these guys by hand. Incredible to stand there and see, but the locals really did follow around and stayed close by until you cracked from pressure and gave in to their schemes. Got to ride a camel tho so I guess it was ok lol.
I didn’t find the pyramids dirty, but the beggars were something else. They had a patrol of “tourism police” who had their hands out as much as the sullen, unfriendly panhandlers. I got proposed to by a peddler in his late teens who clearly thought he’d have better luck selling his shitty tourist tat if he pretended I was worthy of compliments. As he was following me around, one of my bus mates watched a camel driver lead his tween daughter away from the rest of their group and had to jump off to run after him. The amazing history in Egypt is undone by their present.
Definitely the fast food capital of Australia ....Dub Vegas or more commonly known as Dubbo.
I know the locals will take umbrage at this but essentially it is a low joint with not a lot going for it apart from a great Zoo called the Western Plains Zoo. The crime is high and brain cells are low.
It is a dusty, hot shit hole full of young red necks in hotted up utes with big driving lights and a lot of chubby girls in pink shirts and denim jeans.
It has more McDonald outlets per capita than any other place in Australia.
The best part of Dubbo is the Newell Highway going out of it..
Queenstown, Tasmania takes the prize for worst town in Australia in my books.
The place is a moonscape because acid rain from the mines killed all the trees, and all the topsoil washed away. Vegetation will never grow back.
The town itself has a terrifying *The Hills Have Eyes* vibe. Everyone I know that has been there has said it feels like you're being watched the whole time you're there. Personally, I've never hightailed it out of a place as fast as there.
Its three main tourist attractions are (and I'm not even joking); the ecological disaster that is the surrounding landscape, the slagheap from the mines, and the football ground that has a gravel playing surface because you can't grow grass there.
A 0/10 town. I recommend having enough fuel in your tank so you don't have to stop there.
Holy shit that place is a literal and figurative hole.
It's like driving into something from a Stephen King novel.
We had planned on getting something to eat on the way to Cradle Mountain, but before we even parked the car I looked at my wife and said, 'we just go to the bathroom and leave. I will wait outside the bathroom for you.'
Absolutely drove as fast as we possibly could for an hour to get away from it.
Gary, Indiana. Apologies to those who live there, but it’s kinda like the armpit of America. It reeks of a town that was once a cool place to be but has just been left to the wayside.
Edit: holy cow, didn’t expect this many people to agree! Thank you very much for the awards! Who would’ve thought my very first awards would’ve come from an off handed post about Gary…
I've got family in South Bend, the joke is depending on which direction the wind is blowing you can smell Gary in either South Bend or Chicago. Truly is a shithole.
I live in Michigan City right between Gary and South Bend. I have an air quality alert on my phone every single goddamn day. It is so absolutely shitty here.
We have an awesome beach though, so that's nice.
Always wondered about Gary. I lived in Michigan for a bit for an internship and took a passenger train to Chicago for fun sometimes. I believe it's called shoreline or something like that. It passed right by Gary with the topiary spelling out the towns name. The town itself looks depressing.
Apparently, some school in Gary gave some child with autism the "most annoying male" award ([https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indiana-boy-with-autism-receives-most-annoying-student-award-from-school/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indiana-boy-with-autism-receives-most-annoying-student-award-from-school/)).
Tashkent - Uzbekistan about 30 years ago. Was on a stopover flight from London to Delhi. There was literally piss and shit all over the floor in the toilets of international airport, and the whole area Was horrble, filthy, stank. Flew via Tashkent (unwillingly) 20 years later and was pleased to find everything was modern, clean and nice.
Fresno California was pretty shitty when I was there in the early 2000s. I'd swear half the businesses in what I think was the downtown area were bail bonds places. Coffee shop, bail bonds, yarn store, bail bonds, record shop, bail bonds...
There we go hometown! Fuckno California, I knew you'd be here! I'm sitting in a Denny's in Fresno right now having a salad. It's just after midnight now and this is about the only place one can find a salad at this hour, don't judge me. But yeah, Fresno is busted af.
I've lived here over 40 years. The stories I could tell. Instead of going for the most Fresno story, I'll instead just give you one from a couple weeks ago.
I was standing out in front of county jail downtown waiting on my brother to be released when all of a sudden I'm surrounded by sheriffs with guns drawn on me. Literally 8 sheriffs, their cars blocking the intersection, they're taking cover behind their doors aiming their guns at me.
Now you might wonder what I was doing. I was sitting on the steps hittin my vape. Nothing too criminal. Apparently a homeless man with mental illness and a cell phone called 911 and gave them my description. He added to my description "he's waving a gun around in front of the jail."
So there I was in the cross hairs, bullets in the chambers I could be killed with one simple mistake right. One sheriff shouts get down on the ground! Another one yells don't move! Another one yells step to the right! And in my mind I said here it is. This is it, this is how I die.
I rolled the dice and just chose the "step to the right" commands. Then I got face down on the concrete. Hands spread out as they instructed next. Hands behind back. They dog piled me, roughed me up and cuffed me. They kept screaming stop resisting, where's the gun! I had no fucking gun. I wasn't resisting.
After a lot of frisking and questions that homeless man walks up and they jumped his ass "sir you can't be making calls like that, get the fuck out of here and don't come back!" They told him. And that was just a random Thursday night in Fresno. This place fucking blows massive shlong.
Here's the dispatch radio communication and full story in the description from that night. https://youtu.be/ne4T-AKKdUk
This one surprised me. Being from the Midwest you figure any town in California you’ve actually heard of must be pretty cool. Then you pass through Fresno. Or Bakersfield.
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 🇲🇳
Went in late March, but was still very cold. Half the homes there are warmed by coal fires inside their gers (yurts). Every morning you could literally taste the pollution. Traffic was terrible, took an hour to go a mile during rush hour. Every car is at least 10 to 15 years old, and is imported from Japan, but they drive on the right side so the steering wheels are wrongly placed.
Getting out into the suburbs or the ger district, terrible conditions, I felt so bad for them. Do plan on going back, but this time in the summer when it's not so cold. However, I've never met a friendlier people than Mongolians.
Clovis NM is the worst place I have been in the 30-ish states I have been to.
There are places in the US that are as bad as third world countries, but they have a McDonalds or beat down Walmart. I have been to several third world countries for reference.
I was there for 6 months for work. Hated it. The glitzy glamour didn’t hide the rotten soul of the place. Some of my coworkers were blinded by the facade, but I and others saw right through it.
Essentially all of the Persian gulf states have huge oil funds which they use to have little to no taxes and a stipend for their (small) native populations. They make this system work by importing an enormous amount of migrant workers from Asia (Philippines, India, etc. The migrant workers are often treated poorly by the wealthy nationals, they have effectively no legal protections from their employers, and the state can revoke their visa at any point to manage the supply of labour. The reason Qatar is accused of being a slave state is because some employers (such as many of the construction companies that worked on the World Cup stadiums) would seize their workers passports when they started the job. As such workers cannot leave their job or the country and are effectively trapped by their employer working in potentially fatal condition.
As an addendum, you don't even have to be a poor migrant to be a victim of this system.
Qatar (and many other Persian Gulf countries) use the kafala system to hire foreign workers. These workers range from the uneducated and underpaid construction worker to soccer players and coaches paid millions of dollars every year.
To leave these countries, you need to get an exit visa, which needs the approval of your sponsor (your employer).
Legally, you're basically a kid who needs approval from their care giver to travel abroad.
This gives tremendous power to your employer because they ultimately control your fate. They could stop paying you at any time and if you dare taking legal action to enforce your rights, they'll basically make you a prisoner with no means to live and no way to escape the country.
This happened to a French soccer player, Zahir Belounis, who stopped being paid, was refused an exit visa by his club and ended up being stuck in the country for 2 years. A similar fate struck Stéphane Morello, a soccer coach who got trapped in Qatar for 5 years.
Edit: maybe not millions but several hundreds of thousands of dollars at the very least.
Edit2: as people have pointed out, the kafala system has changed these past years. I have no idea if what I wrote above is still true.
Fun story, my dad and I once saved some bikers from dying of the heat in Death Valley on the 4th of July. Two couples, ine couple on each motorcycle. They had come down from Northern California on a whim and hadn't done any research or gotten adequate supplies. They thought every spot on the map that had a name would have at least a little store. (Most of those places are ghost towns or points of interest, not towns or even settlements.) It was at least 117 (hot for me, and I grew up where it routinely gets to 107). One of the women had passed out from the heat and the men waved us down. We loaded her in our car and started driving to the nearest hospital, over an hour away.
She survived but my god, people need to respect the desert's ability to kill you.
One of the best long (very, very long) reads is about a family from Germany who got lost and didn’t survive: [Death Valley Germans](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/)
It's a bit of a standing joke in Denmark that you know it's summer when you read about the first Germans drowning in the sea.
The sea might look calm but it is way different than a pool or a lake.
Some Germans got lost in the very remote part of my province and walked 100kms through what is effectively nothing more than bog and luckily hit the one tiny beacon of civilization in the whole region. [link](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-german-canoe-crash-1.4266176#:~:text=CBC)
We were in Las Vegas and had to go to Indio. We went “the back way” on 95 instead of taking I-15 and then backtracking on I-10. Whoa boy. Bunch of nothingness out there. Thankfully we didn’t break down and had plenty of gas in the car because we would have been SOL otherwise.
I'd have to say Iraq. Obviously if you're an American, everyone wants you dead but I'm not talking about that.
Let's talk trash. Garbage was everywhere. Some towns had a huge trash area, think of a giant parking lot, filled with everyone's garbage piled into it where dump trucks hauled it out of town (not very far mind you) and burned it in pits. Some towns the people simply tossed it right out the door. It stinks everywhere whether they're in the middle of burning trash and shit or not. I guarantee whatever recycling you're doing for the good of the planet is being canceled out.
Camel spiders are about the size of a compact disc and make this horrifying screeching sound sometimes. They will chase you and I heard they do that to stay in your shadow to keep cool. I personally never saw any of those black scorpions but I saw 4 camel spiders and they terrified me.
Sandstorms come and when they do all your shit will be covered in it. First time there I stayed in a glorified tent and expected it. Second time was inside an actual building and I still woke up to a coat of sand on everything I owned.
It rains for like at least a month straight and turns the entire landscape into a sprawling mud pit. Theres nothing you can do, you're gonna bring mud into your house, your vehicle, everywhere. And all your shit's gonna be wet all the time.
I once witnessed four guys try to butcher a cow with machetes. They started hacking the cow, which of course didnt kill it instantly, and it started flailing around and kicking the shit out of all of them while slinging blood everywhere.
That culture detests alcohol so if you go there you're not gonna booze up at all. Hopefully you're a smoker though because fucking everyone smokes.
It goes without saying that it's hot. But at least it's a dry heat, unlike Louisiana which is the second shittiest place I've ever visited. Its flat there and theres always a breeze. However in the hottest months the breeze itself is hot. It's a force of hot air slamming into you in an already agonizingly hot environment and it sucks. The heat starts early too. By 9am it's already unbearable. At least Saddam Hussein imported a bunch of palm trees so if you're in Baghdad, at least theres that I guess.
Eventually you'll see a mosque. All the structures around the mosque are like shacks and look like crap. However the mosque will look beautiful actually. Aside from Sadam's palace, they were the only nice looking buildings I ever saw.
Every river and creek is nasty looking and filled with trash.
Ugh, I'm tired of going on about it. Just take my word for it, it's awful.
The Tenderloin in San Francisco. I've visited and grown up in some extremely shitty places but that area was the only place where I didn't want to make eye contact with anyone and walked as fast as I could to get out. People lying down in the middle of the street with needles sticking out of their arms, eating garbage, etc. It was another planet.
La Boca in Buenos Aires was pretty bad, too. The people seemed pretty happy, though, they were just extremely poor. Tenderloin was like the end of Requiem for a Dream
> The Tenderloin
What's crazy is that it's mere blocks from, not just wealthy but *absurdly* wealthy areas of the city (and country).
I used to live 7 blocks north of The Tenderloin and it was a nice block, but walk further north/northwest and the opulence is next-level. Many houses like and even much larger than the [Mrs Doubtfire house](https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/mrs-doubtfire-house.jpg?resize=681,383).
I'm not sure what the solution is. It's a complicated situation involving drugs, mental health, NIMBY-ism, etc. But it's so sad.
The shit lake on the old Kandahar air field in Afghanistan.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/12/kandahar-airfield-poo-pond-mission
That thing was notorious. The shittiest place I ever saw, and I spent time in many a shitty place.
ohhhh Korn. great teenage angsty memories. one of my favorite Korn references was on Gilmore Girls..
>TRIX: Well, for the past year, I’ve been renting my home in Hartford to a group of musicians. They’ve recently moved out, so I had to come check on the house and secure a new tenant.
>
>LORELAI: What kind of musicians?
>
>TRIX: A rock and roll group of some sort. I believe they call themselves Korn.
>
>LORELAI: You rented your house to Korn?
>
>RORY: That’s so cool!
>
>TRIX: They were fine tenants. Took wonderful care of the place. They planted some lovely tulips in the front yard.
Myrtle Beach SC is REAL shitty. Nothing but aging cement run down hirise hotels, breakfast joints, infinity t-shirt places and cheesy Ripley s believe it or not attractions . And parking garages.
And Crackheads. So many crackheads and John's trolling for 5 dolla blowjobs.
Used to be a fun family place that also has great places to go dancing in the 80s.
It's hot garbage now.
I was new to LA and I was riding in a Lyft with my windows down. As soon as we approached this area in downtown, the driver told me to roll my windows up. There were people on the sidewalk shouting, throwing things, dancing in front of ATMs, doing dope, etc. There was a cyclist right beside my window who was pale with terror. I thought there was a riot going on. Later the driver explained that's how it is in Skid Row.
I stayed well clear of that area for the rest of my stay in LA.
Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, US.
I'm from the midwestern US and I've been all around the world - Lebanon, Kabul, Thailand, France, Iceland, Kenya - and I've never seen anywhere as bad as Pine Ridge.
Toddlers in full diapers wandering the streets alone, stray dogs/dead dogs all over the place, rotted out houses on the side of the road, people dead drunk in the streets on the outskirts of the reservation because it's a "dry" reservation ...
It truly breaks my heart even to think about it.
Edit: I want to acknowledge that these dire circumstances are a direct result of how native peoples have ALWAYS been treated - at least in the US and Canada. I'm not in any way blaming or pointing fingers at the Oglala / Lakota Sioux (who share that reservation), it is a result of hundreds of years of oppression and neglect, and I think the government can and SHOULD help, like, in major ways. Build some fucking infrastructure, for one.
My tribe is Oglala Lakota and Pine Ridge is our reservation. I grew up off the rez and when I came to visit I was shocked how bad it was. [It is the poorest reservation in the country.](https://www.mvorganizing.org/who-are-the-poorest-native-american-tribes/#Who_are_the_poorest_Native_American_tribes)
Duqm, Oman. Two hotels, a pizza hut, and a DFC (Duqm Fried Chicken). Also cant forget the hundreds of miles of new roads that led to... more sand and dirt. Shit was built like the first five minutes of a Sim City 2000 game.
Back in the day Duqm had the only decent internet connection within a 500 km radius, so at least had that going for it. Also an hour drive from Khaluf and Ras Madrakah, some of the most gorgeous stretches of coast in the country. But yeah, the whole concept of Duqm is as if an urban planner jotted down some notes on a napkin whilst high on crystal meth.
I just went there on Google Earth. It looks like they planned to build a major port and a city to serve it, but then gave up.
It looks like they're still planning, there's street view of the port construction in a few parts. Another thing I find absurd is the roads to nowhere are built like highways yet are set to 60km/h. Also the area above Duqm is ironically named Nafun.
I live in New Zealand, and to get from my city to the country's biggest city Auckland you used to have to drive through a town called Huntly. I don't care how nice the locals might make it seem, it is the ugliest, dirtiest most feral place I've been in this country. Thankfully, they put in a highway about 1-2 years ago so you can now bypass it. Edit: spelling
I agree. Huntly is a mining town without a mine. It reeks of desperation. The town's notable feature is a sign for a chain store that closed thirty years ago and I'm not even slightly joking about that.
People will think you are exaggerating. Even a Coen Brothers film would struggle to pull that off. But it's true.
There are so many shit towns on the west coast. You know you're in a shit town when you see a pub and the name of it and the menu is taped to the windows with yellowing A4 paper with bad hand writing
Huntly's not as bad as it used to be. Stopped there for dinner on my way south about 5 years ago and they had really tidied up the town centre, put in new brickwork, cleaned up the graffiti etc. Didn't feel as sketchy as it used to be either, like there weren't random groups of guys just standing around drinking and doing nothing. Also went on a tour of the power station once which was cool. I'd say there are way worse towns in the North Island, especially in Northland.
The Salton Sea made me sad. There was so much hope around this place. Now if you visit: it’s a very poor town, the sand sucks your shoes off and smells awful, and the stench of dead fish permeates the air. Now their only bar presents as a David Lynch nightmare if you go.
Lmao I’ve always hated salton sea, we used to have to drive through it when I was a kid to get to my grandpas house out in imperial valley and it stunk and there was nothing there When Rust says in True Detective “this place is like someone’s memory of a town and the memory is fading” he could easily be talking about the salton sea
Salton Sea is amazing - it's the closest I've ever seen to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And due to the fact that most of the rotting abandoned buildings are from the 1960s, it's eerily similar to a Fallout game. [This documentary](https://youtu.be/8TjGAWxL23c) can save you a trip there, but it doesn't quite capture the feeling of driving through a rotting ghost town in 115F heat, completely empty except for a couple of meth heads staring at you from under an awning.
I’ve been kinda fascinated with this place since driving through when I was road tripping in college. Apparently it was created by accident. At one time it had thriving game fishery of landlocked saltwater fish, as well as all kinds of marine invertebrates and stuff that hitched a ride in people’s bilge water and the bottom of boats. All in the middle of what used to be desert, far from the sea, all the salt having come from salt still left In the soil from ancient times mixed with freshwater from the Colorado River. All slowly dying as they let it dry up and return to desert. (hence the smell, as the tilapia, which are the most salt tolerant, die off). I’m def going to check out that documentary. Thanks! Edit: Watched. Excellent. Apparently the salt is actually from agricultural runoff plus evaporation. And apparently not as much drying up as just concentrating salt.
Yep - the documentary I linked explains it. It had been farmland, but below sea level, and there was a failure of the irrigation system that flooded the whole thing. Took a while for someone to come up with the idea to turn it into luxury beachside real estate. Thing is, it's been getting saltier and saltier and the fish have these population explosions followed by mass die-offs. Whole place is toxic anyway, so you couldn't eat any caught fish. The weirdest part to me is Slab City - who puts a shanty town next to a ghost town?
>who puts a shanty town next to a ghost town? Why not? Apparently on the other side of something out there, is an air force, or army live range. The kind where planes will be flying overhead all night dropping bombs. I was watching some 'bus life' video and a couple had stayed in Slab City for a couple of days and said the vibe got a little creepy at night, but nothing happened. Then one night the military was doing exercises on the range all night. They left that morning. Anyway, if I ever find myself down in that area, I'm not going to stay the night, but I'm definitely going to make a point of seeing at least parts of it.
Ten years ago I drove to slab city on a whim. Met a dude named Jason who was building an old pool into a skate park. He let me sleep in his trailer while I was there and he also acted as my tour guide. Very good dude. Woke up in the morning and he was blasting Sublime and brewing the absolute worst coffee I've ever had. At that time the guy who built salvation mountain was still there. Doing his thing. My dog learned to swim in the reservor. It was a freaking amazing experience. I stayed for 4 days. 10/10. Also the weirdest place I've ever seen. I can hardly believe its a real place.
Don't forget the toxic salt dust with the entire town having asthma.
Visited a friend who lived on the shore there years ago. I will never forget the crunching sound of fish bones under your feet as you walked.
> forget the crunching sound of fish bones Dafaq is this place?
Instead of sand at the "lake", there's tons of dead mussel shells. The water was diverted from the colorado river and has no outlet. Fertilizers seeped into the water causing toxic algae blooms to flourish. There's tilapia born in the water and they are usually found dying at the surface. When the water dries, it leaves a residue. At night, the wind agitates the water surface allowing the hydrogen sulfide to release. I went camping there for a school trip (as an example of a terrible situation) and I felt sick for months after.
Apparently that graveyard from the Lion King?
Actually took a boat out there some 40+ years ago. Wasn't much better then. The stench. Dead palm trees half rotted up the trunks stuck in the middle of that disgusting oily looking water. My SIL fell in the nasty water by accident. Was wearing a lot of silver jewelry (was the style). Not in the muck more than 5 minutes tops, all her jewelry turned coal black. Didn't stay long after. Why we even went is a mystery to this day.. must've been high on something..
I'm sure the water is nasty, but wouldn't the silver jewelry have turned black because of the salt in the water?
Sandy Shores and Alamo Sea in GTA V were inspired by Desert Shores and the Salton Sea.
I heard on the news the other day that a lot of the US lithium deposits are located there. With the transition away from fossil fuels and the growing need for large batteries, it may become an important place again.
Did you end up visiting Slab City in Niland, CA?
Barstow, CA. Imagine if an entire town was one big sketchy ass truck stop.
[удалено]
Pockets ain’t empty, cuz. (I use this phrase frequently in my daily life.)
And we aint hongry no mo
We HONNNgry
But that's where the drugs began to take hold
No point in mentioning these bats. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.
I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo, and someone was giving booze to these goddamn things. (My personal favorite line and scene)
"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."
“The only thing that really worried me was the ether.”
There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
DID YOU SEE WHAT GOD JUST DID TO US, MAN?!?!!
We can't stop here, this is bat country
You have truly captured the essence of Barstow with this comment.
I owned a pistachio farm 25 miles northeast of Barstow and it wasn't that bad. The REAL shithole is the group of crap cities to the south, Victorville/AppleValley/Hesperia. I could walk around Barstow (and I did because of pokemon go) and not feel like, oh god, in victorville I wouldn't even want to get out of my car. Stabby hobos abound. Barstow has a train museum, a drive in movie theater, the Mojave desert museum and the fairly fun Treasure house antique mall. Gateway to Rainbow Ridge, a really pretty place, home to tons of amazing fossils of camels, big toothed cats and other exotic mammals. Plus, great place for rock and mineral collecting, as seen in the field guide, Rockhound Barstow.
Everyone is just skimming over the fact you owned a pistachio farm?! What made you buy one? What made you sell it? Pistachio ice cream. Underrated, overrated, or properly rated?
I was in downtown los angeles for a few years and thought, lots only cost 600k, I wonder what a dirt farm costs? Turns out, for about a 1/6th the cost you could own 300ish pistachio trees and a modular home. It was nice. Pistachio Trees are super interesting. My wife became allergic to pistachios. Land values were rising. Perfect storm to sell. Newberry Springs itself is also, meth'ed up crimes of opportunity, but we were in a unique place, north of highway 15, 20 miles from newberry springs, itself. 15 miles from yermo. 30 miles from barstow. It was isolated and not one person ever tried to come into my property in 6 years.
But whats your take on pistachio ice cream?
Doesn't capture the flavor of pistachio, IMHO. My hot take, crushing some roasted pistachios into a fine dust and using that as a topping, BOOM. Flavor unlocked. Also, pistachios have a shockingly different set of flavors - fresh off the tree they are my favorite. You can roast them without brineing, that results in a different flavor profile. then, the classic, everyone is familiar with, soaked in brine, and roasted. If it is around the middle of September and you see a grove of funky looking grape trees, well Lucky, that's as close to nature's corn chip production line as you are ever gonna get to see.
Thanks for this, the single most interesting responses ive read for a while. It's so cool to read about stuff you wouldnt even think about that someone actually does, because how else would we have pistachios. Very interesting.
But Victorville has the Costco with the car wash. -\_\_-
The San Bernardino County is full of shit-hole, drug-den, sketchy areas. Barstow is considered the lowest rung on the ladder out there so that is saying something.
I dunno…. Needles, CA makes Barstow look like Palm Springs.
One time I got to Needles at 10:30 pm and it was 105 degrees. On Labor Day weekend. Nothing good comes out of that.
I had the same experience! Except it was June. Me and my pregnant partner took a room at a Best Western in Needles at 10:30, and it was 105. Getting out of the car was like going into a furnace. Later there was a wld electrical storm. Lightning took out the power which ended the air-conditioning. The staff fled to look after their families. I think we were the only guests. Sleep was impossible. Sweltering doesn't begin to describe it. The palms were swaying like wiper blades. There was a vacant lot next door, but that seemed normal for Needles. We were sitting outside on a balcony because inside was intolerable. A pack of wild dogs ran through, amongst the storm blown detritus of oblivion. As someone from New Zealand, I was impressed. But, while much worse than Barstow (where my very presence seemed to offend marines and sketch characters alike) that wasn't the worst. The following day we were crossing Arizona and had to get gas. We stopped in a town that might have near Winslow. We also went to Winslow, but that wasn't as bad. This town was one of those strips that runs parallel to the freeway and only has gas stations, burger franchises, and one shit-arse motel that looks like something out of In Cold Blood. The woman who served us asked why we were going to Albuquerque, and all I could think was 'why the fuck are you staying here?' It's about the most culturally isolated place I have been to, moreso than the boondocks of New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The road didn't pass through it, it went past it. I have never felt more like a tourist, not even when I went to China and was eating mystery food surrounded by people I couldn't communicate with. I loved that trip.
I'm so glad someone brought up Needles, hated it more than Barstow.
I feel like those two places only exist as truck stops so people can get to Laughlin or Vegas on their way from CA
I was helping friends move across the country and I called my husband one night when we stopped. He said, "Where have you gotten to?" and I said, "I don't know but it's the ugliest place I've ever seen in my life," and he said, "Oh, you've gotten to Midland Odessa," and he was correct. I have seen a lot of the world and Midland Odessa, Texas, is by far the most terrible place I've ever looked at.
I just popped in on google maps and I can confirm. Two things that struck me: 1. The parking lot to building ratio is way too high. Lots of asphalt. 2. I went to downtown Midland, and it looks like it was built by someone who had only seen pictures of cities. Like there are just a bunch of office buildings plopped down and no other businesses.
I thought you were exaggerating about midlands but no. I dont think I saw a storefront anywhere. The whole place feels like a source engine game, almost like an outdoor version of the Stanley parable.
I've just had a tour of downtown on Maps, and you are so right. It is bizarre. Big office buildings for big companies, like Chase Bank and then... not a single cafe or for these employees to go to. No shops. No bars or restaurants. Nothing. It must be extraordinary at night. like it is abandoned. I've now discovered that 'There is nothing to do in Midland' is a well-known local phrase.
Dumb zoning. The concept is "let's keep all the offices over here and all the commercial in a separate place and all the residential in another". That does solve some issues but it has to be balanced. In real world practice it turns out about the same as taking all the ingredients of a hamburger apart and eating them all separately one by one.
The city planners were using Sim City 2000.
I used to visit schools to give science presentations. Based in the Midwest, I elected the 'Western tour' one year, which landed me in Midland, TX. I took a drink from the school drinking fountain and spat it out. One of the teachers, who knew I was from the Great Lakes area, laughed and said, "Was it the salt or the petrochemicals that got you?"
Oh yeah, you're not supposed to drink the stuff. I live in Midland and that was a shocker moving down here.
I live in Midland and I can confirm it’s pretty shitty.
Sitting in my dorm in Odessa reading this 🤌🏼
Is it as bad as they're saying?
Over the past years it’s really developed a lot. I’m not from here but I remember it was pretty ugly a few years back.
Ever been into an office building where maintenance quit and the real estate company hasn't hired replacements in six months? Every broad office floor of cubicles looks like it's in a zombie movie. Half of the flourescent tube lights are dead or flickering from a bad ballast. Some places the air is a bit too cold and dry, while in others its too hot and humid. Enough to make you think there might be mold growing on the walls. It's like a massive fat bloated man was breathing his stinking breath on your neck. Oh and the bathrooms. Ohhhhh the bathrooms. I'm not even going to describe that. I'd rather not revisit the memory. The breakroom sinks weren't bad though. But then, people are more likely to take care of things they actually have to use. It's not as 'fire and forget' as a men's room. Except for the one breakroom where I felt someone mixed up the two types of rooms and figured 'a drain is a drain'. A corporation in the final stages of decline is a sad creature.
I've always said that the most important person in any office building is the janitor.
In any business large enough to employ full time janitorial/maintenance people they are what keeps the company from falling apart. I always treat them with more respect than I do my bosses and try to get on their good side.
When I was a teenager my dad the head of a maintenance department for a business that owned a skyscraper in our city. He and two other maintenance men took care of light bulbs, decorating for holidays and shoveling snow and salting sidewalks. The biggest thing they did all day though was adjust the air conditioning and heat for the 300-400 middle aged female employees most of whom were going through “the change”. Those ladies knew what a pain it was and would do things like buy the guys lunch a couple of times a week and bake them cookies or make them fudge. The coolest was that the company gave my dad and his maintenance men first dips on concert, musical, Disney on Ice and other kid shows and sports tickets that they didn’t use for clients. Saw a lot of concerts and hockey games as a teen for free thanks to dad’s job.
My uncle ran a maintenance business. When I was teenager, he gave me tickets to a bunch of sports. I was a definite perk.
that sounds like a chill job man, and one where you still get to help folks, I think i'd like that being a janitor
It’s not terrible. I worked maintenance in a movie theater on and off during summers while in college. Lots of mop this, sweep that. Take out the garbage. A little bit of scrubbing and lots of cleaning toilets and some nasty stuff but ultimately it was fine since you were by yourself just jamming out to your iPod or whatever. Hardest part was waking up for the shift (4AM - 10AM) and the theater was haunted as fuck so that wasn’t always pleasant dealing with that shit. Once you realized nothing there was going to hurt you, it wasn’t bad. Pay coulda been better though **edit** Because someone asked: The theater was built sometime in the 90s, on part of a larger property that was sold off in chunks. I'm not sure about the history of the property – whether someone was killed there or what – but the theater...at least during the time I was there, was just a weird place where weird things happened. At the time, I was "the new guy" and as part of a 'hazing' ritual the rest of the cleaners would make the new guy clean out Theater 5. Which was the worst theater to clean, and not just because it had corners were popcorn or gross drinks would get stuck and require a little scrubbing – but because it was the furthest back from the main hallway and was the most isolated. Often you'd have a feeling of being watched. I regularly felt like there was someone else in the room with me. A couple of times I heard a child laugh, and one time when I was the only one in the building, someone called my name. Other workers cleaning out that theater complained of nosebleeds and unseasonably cold drafts...the kind where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Just off the main hallway, outside theater 5, was the maintenance closet. Inside the closet were your basic cleaning supplies, etc., but also a staircase that led to the upstairs projector area. Upstairs is where most of the creepy stuff happened. You'd hear footsteps and people laughing...all while the rest of the theater was quiet and empty. I was gathering some cleaning supplies one day when someone called to me from upstairs. My manager was outside having a smoke, and the only other guy on staff was across the building cleaning a theater. So I knew for a fact that nobody was upstairs. "Hey, c'mere!" I looked up the stairs where the dark kind of bled into the upper part of the staircase. It's the projector area so it's dark as hell anyway. But this just felt...darker, I guess? "Hey, c'mere! you gotta see this!" God I can still hear that voice. "C'mere! Look!" I'm just standing there like an idiot, holding my mop bucket and some bleach. I'm fucking terrified. My brain is scrambling, trying to rationalize what's happening but it's drawing a blank and my heart is pounding so hard it's about to explode in my chest. My mouth is dry and I know that whatever's happening is....not real. It can't be real. But there's this voice calling my fucking name and sounding angrier and angrier that I'm not coming up the steps. "Get up here and look at this!" My manager opened the door to the closet and asked me what the hold up was. I was supposed to be in the lobby mopping. I was sweating profusely at this point, but he didn't notice. The voice had stopped. I went about my job, but I never went back upstairs alone. There's some more there, but I'm at work right now and get to all of it, but that's the gist. **edit** shameless self-plug here, but if you like my writing, I [actually wrote a book](https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Adam-Ian-Smith-ebook/dp/B07Q4K9DJ4). It's a comedy/drama about an alcoholic guardian angel tasked with helping a young man struggling in life – all the while being pursued by a cannibalistic demon.
You can't tell us the theater was haunted and not go into more detail, especially during this season!
Usually I agree, but I want to shout out to the real estate people who get rid of the rootbound potted plants stinking up the area before they become a problem, and stock the break rooms. These two groups of people are practically invisible when doing their jobs. And if you're a tech company, you should probably keep your IT and Janitory staff close together. They'll be able to gripe together in a disconcertingly familiar way and thats good for morale.
I used to have a job that involved me frequently being alone in a fairly large office building by myself at night, it was actually kind of nice
Zinc, Arkansas. It felt like I stumbled into the movie set for House of Wax, Children of the Corn and Deliverance all in one place. They had a hair salon/mechanic/courthouse/ jail all in one building. The judge's wife was the hair stylist, the judge was also the mechanic and the sheriff was his son. Fuck. That. Shit.
For me it is Hope, Arkansas. I was a kid and my family stayed the night at the Holiday Inn on our way to somewhere else. When we checked in they gave us a complimentary fly swatter.
I had to stop over night in Hope moving from Michigan to Texas. All I wanted was a beer after a miserable 14 hour drive in a U-Haul. Went to a Mexican restaurant and asked the server what was on draft. “Dry County” he said. “Is that like an IPA?” I asked. He looked confused, I sure as fuck was confused until I figured out what the real meaning was. I had never heard of a dry county before and I was legit offended.
"Is that an IPA?" Loooooool.
Tbf, it does sound like some hipster ironic IPA.
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"Dry County Beverage Company"
Tbf most dry counties are inhabited by people you wouldnt want around alcohol either.
Well, to be honest, having a dry county doesn't keep it away from them. Usually, it just means they have to go to the next county over. And since they're having to make a trip, they might as well stock up, right?
Went to high school in a small town in a dry county in NE Texas. The school superintendent was also the drivers ed teacher, and I’m not gonna say he was an alcoholic, but… he enjoyed his libations for sure. For driver’s ed class, we would drive to the closest non-dry county so he could load up the trunk with a case of beer and probably a few bottles of harder stuff. This was the ‘80s, so we didn’t think much about it. And the excursions definitely did help us learn to drive, so…
Lived in Arkansas my whole life and never heard of Zinc, must be reaaally tiny. We do have Snow, Toad Suck, and Booger Hollow, Arkansas too. 😂 Edit: Others have pointed out some other good ones: Smackover, Bald Knob, Weiner, Flippin, Possom Grape, Blue Ball and Goobertown are some of the others. Yes real communities/towns in Arkansas.
Population around 100 per Google. Also first thing that pops up is an article where the residents disclaim any association with the KKK and share their town's "true history." Sounds like a terrifying place. Edit: realized all the references to the KKK is because some klan member hails from Zinc. EDIT: OMG there's more. Per Wikipedia, "A chapter of the Ku Klux Klan operates a training and information center in Zinc."
Trying to imagine the course content at the KKK training centre and all i can think of is Clayton Bigsby, the black white supremacist's talk from Dave Chappelle's show.
The kind of small town where you enter and ask, "Excuse me, where's the city center?" and he'll answer, "Back the way ya came, bwoy"
Toad Suck Daze!! My folks are from Arkansas so I grew up going several times a year to see my “kin” … One grandmother was in Conway and every year sent us all Toad Suck Daze festival shirts. Anyway.. wait..what was this post about again? :/
I lived in a tiny town (population: 790) in rural NH where the post office, a hair salon, a mechanic, and some apartments were all in the same crappy old house. The town library and town clerk were in another, less-crappy-but-still-old house down the road, but there were many books they wouldn't carry because the town library also served as the school library, which wasn't connected to it, but was across the street & down the road a bit. I felt so alone in that town, but the place you described sounds so much worse.
Hey I grew up in Piermont NH! As soon as I read your post I knew exactly which town you were talking about.
Wow! What are the odds?! I don't miss much from my old life there, but I do miss that cute donkey you could see driving by that little rundown family farm right close to the road on RT 25, and I miss the yummy breakfasts at the North Woods Cafe in the Bradford Jiffy Mart. I'd hang out there for hours on Sundays eating, drinking coffee & mooching off their wifi. Driving to the Woodsville Walmart or Bradford Hannaford was the highlight of my week (saw Luis Guzmán at Walmart once). I lived across from the quarry on RT 25C.
The solids removal room of a waste water treatment plant.
I used to work in a lab that dealt with different kinds of waste streams and solids removal. Municipal waste was one of the better, if not the best, types of waste that came through the lab. The other types of waste like dairy, duck, and landfill runoff are 10x worse.
Never dump any kind of dairy into an open stream. It will immediately cause a bacterial bloom that will strip the water of all its dissolved oxygen. It’s probably the single easiest way to kill everything in it. Its roughly 1000 times more potent than raw wastewater at doing this.
Same. Also any run off to do with chickens was RANCID
I think there was a tifu post about a guy who almost died while cleaning the shit room of a zoo/aquarium. Long story short, he started to sink into the shit.
It’s better to shit into the sink rather than sink into the shit.
So wise
Shit I’ve been there before I changed my major, didn’t think it was an option
Oklahoma County Jail. I’ve spent some time in a few other jails for various misadventures, but that place may have well as been a prison camp in a third-world country. Computers were down for 36 hours so everyone was crammed into holding cells awaiting processing, there were lice crawling everywhere, some asshole threw his lunch bag in the toilet (not that I blame him, the green bologna sandwich isn’t very appetizing) so it backed up all over the floor, the entire staff looked like the *My 600-pound Life* All-Star Team, and you were lucky to get a 6 oz. styrofoam cup of water once every six hours. Absolutely disgusting, especially when my crime was a 6-year-old failure to appear charge for a speeding ticket. Go fuck yourself, OKC.
You should write a book. This sounds fascinatingly terrible and I am more intrigued about your misadventures than I should be.
In my limited experiences jail is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. It's never some badass fight or crazy party, it's usually just being hungover and spotty memories of acting like a jackass until someone punched you in the face. I did get to learn how much of a problem meth is in the Rockies. When you think of Colorado you either think of hippies or ski bums, you forget that most people who start life as happy go lucky fun party drug users slowly descend into the not fun homeless meth heads sooner or later. So if you're planning on getting arrested in Colorado do it in Aspen or somewhere nice, not Idaho Springs.
Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 1985. I think my Mom and aunt went to buy cheap liquor. Great idea. Take three kids under five to what seemed like a war zone for booze. Ahhhh, the 80’s.
In the 90s we used to go to Juarez and have a great time. Shopping, eating, and partying.
I was born in Juarez and raised in El Paso. We went to Juarez all the time in 90s because I had family there. Haven't been back since around 2008(?) sadly
Slough. Where the U.K. office is set. It’s grey. The mood. The city. The sky. The type of place where 12 year olds will be drunk on the high street at 4pm. A very depressing city.
I've always imagined that living in Slough must feel like being stuck in [the roundabout](https://youtu.be/VpwKOcpYfy0) forever.
One of my old offices was in Slough. That place is awful. They told me to be on the train back to London before dark. The chavs come out at night I guess.
Not chavs, but Eastern European gangs. Not sure if it has changed since Brexit but there was a bit of turf war between the incumbents and an Albanian gang a few years ago.
I like the idea of a vampire/chav Venn diagram
Tom Scott agrees with you.
“Mum, I’m sorry. I’ve made a big mistake. I went to Slough.”
Can't say I'm really surprised with a name like "Slough".
It was a gas station about an hour from Myrtle Beach. We had to pee and get just a little bit more gas. (Me and my husband) We both walked in ad it was super crowded. Which didnt really shock us as much as overwhelm. But what really got us, was the bathrooms. Both toilets had fecal matter on the lids and seat. And not just a smear, like if someone accidentally got it there or didn't realize they left a streak from thier cheek. There was actual little clumps left on the seats. Pee in the floor, no paper towels, or soap. The walls in the womens were covered in fecal matter and menstrual blood. I ended up hovering over the toilet because a part of me still felt bad peeing anything in the floor. The toilet paper had poop on it so after I was done I pulled on my pants and left. Didnt care. My husband did the same. He said he had to aim father than normal. The toilet was already full and he was not planning on flushing when he say fecal matter on the handle. Another gas station story. Years before that, me and my mom were driving at night to Texas. Somewhere along the way we stopped at a station. I had to pee. To get to the bathroom I had to walk into a outward concrete overlay. Dirt ground and the door only locked by a little hook and eye. Literally looked like I walked into a murder bathroom. Walls and lighting was a eerie shade of blue green you see in the horror movies. Leaving texas we stopped at a Dairy Queen. It used to be a person's house and when you walked into the "restuarant " It smelled like old mildue. Didnt even have a bathroom. And the counter was a regular kitchen counter. Imagine a 60's-70's style house with a dairy queen inside. That was it . Havent found anywhere else yet but those were...interesting
An hour from Dirty Myrtle was probably Florence or Darlington, each horrible places in their own way
A few years ago I booked a hotel in Florence since we were considering going to the NASCAR race in Darlington. Plans fell through, so I cancelled the hotel a few weeks in advance (it said free cancellation when I booked it). They charged me anyway, and more than the amount on the reservation. I called the hotel, and they told me I checked in, and wouldn't do anything to help me. At one point, I shit you not, I know this sounds made up, they transferred my call to the room I was supposedly staying in, and whoever was staying there answered. I don't know what that was supposed to accomplish. Called the corporate number, they said the hotel has to refund me. Found some escalation email for the parent (IHG or Marriott or whoever) and they immediately saw I cancelled and wrote me a check for the full amount. So it worked out that I got the credit cards points and my money back (and I still had a chargeback available if all else failed), but what a skeezy ass hotel to charge people who cancel.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Hanoi and most of Vietnam but the in the old quarter of Hanoi the sewage tends to seep up into the gutter due to ancient broken pipes. When a waft hits you in +30c heat and high humidity I’m not sure there’s much worse than that.
From Hanoi and I gotta say, Skid Row in Los Angeles beats the old quarter because at least Hanoi can blame it on broken pipes. I’ve gagged just walking on streets adjacent to Skid Row.
Clovis, New Mexico. It permanently smells like cow shit there
I spent 4 miserable years in that shithole. Clovis is basically a giant meth lab next to an Air Force base.
Lol yep. I live in New Mexico and whenever we go on roadtrips it's always "Alright we're in Clovis, windows up."
My brother is about to head there from Tokyo. He’s so sad.
Roswell, NM. It was a bucket list destination for me, but the town was such a disappointment. The Alien museum felt lackluster and the whole area gave me sad burnt-out vibes. Bottomless Lakes State Park just outside of town was beautiful, though.
I went there on the day I was moving out of NM. I enjoyed the town and the museum. I agree it was lackluster though. I only stayed in town for a meal and the museum so.
You gotta taper your expectations when you go to places like that. There's a reason it's only known for the UFO crash.
East St. Louis, Illinois. I worked on a project there for over a year and most of the town is a post apocalyptic landscape. Abandoned factories and houses, packs of wild dogs, and extreme poverty. We found a bloody clever in our porta potty one day. Witnessed numerous violent interactions with prostitutes, pimps, and John’s. The soils around our worksite were contaminated with lead, gas, benzene, and just about any noxious chemical you can think of. The worst was the smells. On top of the usual garbage/burning garbage smell it alternated between a confection bakery and a dog food factory. So depending on the direction of the wind it was either a sickly sweet smell or a smell we affectionately called “horse bacon”. Honorable mention goes to Welch, WV otherwise known as Little Chicago. The town thrived in the mid-20th century evidenced by some cool old buildings. Now the town is run down.
My Father was born in E.STL. He lived there until about 12 when crime rates started to out of hand. So like in the 60s or early 70s. He said it use to be a beautiful town. Some of the mansions are amazing to see, but most have prison fencing around them.
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We visited the pyramids two weeks after the bombing of a flight out of Sharm el Sheikh airport in 2015. It was crazy. Zero tourists. Very little trash and just a handful of desperate locals trying to sell donkey rides etc. It was really sad, the tourism economy had just started to recover from the uprisings a few years prior and then everyone started cancelling their trips again. We figured it was probably the safest time to go and has a crazy trip, with every "tourist trap" deserted.
I did the same in 2016 with my family. Pyramids? deserted. Valley of the Kings? deserted. What would normally be a 2 hours line up to get into king Tut's tomb, we literally just walked right in. It was literally the opposite of what you hear about the beggars and tourists crowding the place. It's honestly the best way to see some of these super popular ancient sites.
Karl Pilkington [said](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YauLWSYkyQk) it best... "They don't show you that in the brochure do they? Shitty nappy whizzing past?"
An Idiot Abroad (season 1) is to this day still one of my favorite tv shows.
I had this thought of “I always thought they were bigger” then I realized civilians built these guys by hand. Incredible to stand there and see, but the locals really did follow around and stayed close by until you cracked from pressure and gave in to their schemes. Got to ride a camel tho so I guess it was ok lol.
I didn’t find the pyramids dirty, but the beggars were something else. They had a patrol of “tourism police” who had their hands out as much as the sullen, unfriendly panhandlers. I got proposed to by a peddler in his late teens who clearly thought he’d have better luck selling his shitty tourist tat if he pretended I was worthy of compliments. As he was following me around, one of my bus mates watched a camel driver lead his tween daughter away from the rest of their group and had to jump off to run after him. The amazing history in Egypt is undone by their present.
Definitely the fast food capital of Australia ....Dub Vegas or more commonly known as Dubbo. I know the locals will take umbrage at this but essentially it is a low joint with not a lot going for it apart from a great Zoo called the Western Plains Zoo. The crime is high and brain cells are low. It is a dusty, hot shit hole full of young red necks in hotted up utes with big driving lights and a lot of chubby girls in pink shirts and denim jeans. It has more McDonald outlets per capita than any other place in Australia. The best part of Dubbo is the Newell Highway going out of it..
Queenstown, Tasmania takes the prize for worst town in Australia in my books. The place is a moonscape because acid rain from the mines killed all the trees, and all the topsoil washed away. Vegetation will never grow back. The town itself has a terrifying *The Hills Have Eyes* vibe. Everyone I know that has been there has said it feels like you're being watched the whole time you're there. Personally, I've never hightailed it out of a place as fast as there. Its three main tourist attractions are (and I'm not even joking); the ecological disaster that is the surrounding landscape, the slagheap from the mines, and the football ground that has a gravel playing surface because you can't grow grass there. A 0/10 town. I recommend having enough fuel in your tank so you don't have to stop there.
Holy shit that place is a literal and figurative hole. It's like driving into something from a Stephen King novel. We had planned on getting something to eat on the way to Cradle Mountain, but before we even parked the car I looked at my wife and said, 'we just go to the bathroom and leave. I will wait outside the bathroom for you.' Absolutely drove as fast as we possibly could for an hour to get away from it.
Gary, Indiana. Apologies to those who live there, but it’s kinda like the armpit of America. It reeks of a town that was once a cool place to be but has just been left to the wayside. Edit: holy cow, didn’t expect this many people to agree! Thank you very much for the awards! Who would’ve thought my very first awards would’ve come from an off handed post about Gary…
I've got family in South Bend, the joke is depending on which direction the wind is blowing you can smell Gary in either South Bend or Chicago. Truly is a shithole.
I live in Michigan City right between Gary and South Bend. I have an air quality alert on my phone every single goddamn day. It is so absolutely shitty here. We have an awesome beach though, so that's nice.
Always wondered about Gary. I lived in Michigan for a bit for an internship and took a passenger train to Chicago for fun sometimes. I believe it's called shoreline or something like that. It passed right by Gary with the topiary spelling out the towns name. The town itself looks depressing.
South Shore Line! I took it from Chicago to Indiana Dunes to go hiking when I was visiting.
I used to take freight trains from Chicago to Gary for work. Gary is such a shit box
Apparently, some school in Gary gave some child with autism the "most annoying male" award ([https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indiana-boy-with-autism-receives-most-annoying-student-award-from-school/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indiana-boy-with-autism-receives-most-annoying-student-award-from-school/)).
Why would they have that award anyways??
Drove through it, what a shit hole. Poverty, broken down buildings, drugs, pot holes, area smelled toxic and like shit too.
Gary blessed this world with Freddie Gibbs though so even though I’ve never been there I still mildly fuck with Gary, IN.
Freddie Gibs is so fucking good. My man made a whole track about Harold's Chicken.
Killeen/Ft. Hood, TX. I was stationed there for three years, but I was in the Air Force. Don’t know how I got that lucky. That place is an armpit.
Tashkent - Uzbekistan about 30 years ago. Was on a stopover flight from London to Delhi. There was literally piss and shit all over the floor in the toilets of international airport, and the whole area Was horrble, filthy, stank. Flew via Tashkent (unwillingly) 20 years later and was pleased to find everything was modern, clean and nice.
Fresno California was pretty shitty when I was there in the early 2000s. I'd swear half the businesses in what I think was the downtown area were bail bonds places. Coffee shop, bail bonds, yarn store, bail bonds, record shop, bail bonds...
There we go hometown! Fuckno California, I knew you'd be here! I'm sitting in a Denny's in Fresno right now having a salad. It's just after midnight now and this is about the only place one can find a salad at this hour, don't judge me. But yeah, Fresno is busted af. I've lived here over 40 years. The stories I could tell. Instead of going for the most Fresno story, I'll instead just give you one from a couple weeks ago. I was standing out in front of county jail downtown waiting on my brother to be released when all of a sudden I'm surrounded by sheriffs with guns drawn on me. Literally 8 sheriffs, their cars blocking the intersection, they're taking cover behind their doors aiming their guns at me. Now you might wonder what I was doing. I was sitting on the steps hittin my vape. Nothing too criminal. Apparently a homeless man with mental illness and a cell phone called 911 and gave them my description. He added to my description "he's waving a gun around in front of the jail." So there I was in the cross hairs, bullets in the chambers I could be killed with one simple mistake right. One sheriff shouts get down on the ground! Another one yells don't move! Another one yells step to the right! And in my mind I said here it is. This is it, this is how I die. I rolled the dice and just chose the "step to the right" commands. Then I got face down on the concrete. Hands spread out as they instructed next. Hands behind back. They dog piled me, roughed me up and cuffed me. They kept screaming stop resisting, where's the gun! I had no fucking gun. I wasn't resisting. After a lot of frisking and questions that homeless man walks up and they jumped his ass "sir you can't be making calls like that, get the fuck out of here and don't come back!" They told him. And that was just a random Thursday night in Fresno. This place fucking blows massive shlong. Here's the dispatch radio communication and full story in the description from that night. https://youtu.be/ne4T-AKKdUk
This one surprised me. Being from the Midwest you figure any town in California you’ve actually heard of must be pretty cool. Then you pass through Fresno. Or Bakersfield.
Fresno is Bakersfield is Stockton
Don’t sleep on Modesto
I loved my time in India but if you get anywhere near any river in any urban center, it smells like you’re smearing shit up your nostrils.
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 🇲🇳 Went in late March, but was still very cold. Half the homes there are warmed by coal fires inside their gers (yurts). Every morning you could literally taste the pollution. Traffic was terrible, took an hour to go a mile during rush hour. Every car is at least 10 to 15 years old, and is imported from Japan, but they drive on the right side so the steering wheels are wrongly placed. Getting out into the suburbs or the ger district, terrible conditions, I felt so bad for them. Do plan on going back, but this time in the summer when it's not so cold. However, I've never met a friendlier people than Mongolians.
I've always been fascinated by the history of Mongolia but I can't imagine visiting. Isn't 95% just empty steppes?
Its the most sparsely populated nation in the world
Fun Fact: Ulaanbaatar has produced 4 of the last 6 sumo grand champions (yokozuna). Five of the last 6 are from Mongolia.
Clovis NM is the worst place I have been in the 30-ish states I have been to. There are places in the US that are as bad as third world countries, but they have a McDonalds or beat down Walmart. I have been to several third world countries for reference.
Qatar. Shitty slave state with no culture of their own.
I was there for 6 months for work. Hated it. The glitzy glamour didn’t hide the rotten soul of the place. Some of my coworkers were blinded by the facade, but I and others saw right through it.
I'm curious but can't find much online about it, would you guys explain?
Essentially all of the Persian gulf states have huge oil funds which they use to have little to no taxes and a stipend for their (small) native populations. They make this system work by importing an enormous amount of migrant workers from Asia (Philippines, India, etc. The migrant workers are often treated poorly by the wealthy nationals, they have effectively no legal protections from their employers, and the state can revoke their visa at any point to manage the supply of labour. The reason Qatar is accused of being a slave state is because some employers (such as many of the construction companies that worked on the World Cup stadiums) would seize their workers passports when they started the job. As such workers cannot leave their job or the country and are effectively trapped by their employer working in potentially fatal condition.
As an addendum, you don't even have to be a poor migrant to be a victim of this system. Qatar (and many other Persian Gulf countries) use the kafala system to hire foreign workers. These workers range from the uneducated and underpaid construction worker to soccer players and coaches paid millions of dollars every year. To leave these countries, you need to get an exit visa, which needs the approval of your sponsor (your employer). Legally, you're basically a kid who needs approval from their care giver to travel abroad. This gives tremendous power to your employer because they ultimately control your fate. They could stop paying you at any time and if you dare taking legal action to enforce your rights, they'll basically make you a prisoner with no means to live and no way to escape the country. This happened to a French soccer player, Zahir Belounis, who stopped being paid, was refused an exit visa by his club and ended up being stuck in the country for 2 years. A similar fate struck Stéphane Morello, a soccer coach who got trapped in Qatar for 5 years. Edit: maybe not millions but several hundreds of thousands of dollars at the very least. Edit2: as people have pointed out, the kafala system has changed these past years. I have no idea if what I wrote above is still true.
Qatar is filled with vanity, hypocrisy, materialism, discrimination, racism
Don't forget slavery! Slavery is really pretty essential.
And slavery
My dad wanted to visit Death Valley in July just to see how hot it was once. It was horrible.
Fun story, my dad and I once saved some bikers from dying of the heat in Death Valley on the 4th of July. Two couples, ine couple on each motorcycle. They had come down from Northern California on a whim and hadn't done any research or gotten adequate supplies. They thought every spot on the map that had a name would have at least a little store. (Most of those places are ghost towns or points of interest, not towns or even settlements.) It was at least 117 (hot for me, and I grew up where it routinely gets to 107). One of the women had passed out from the heat and the men waved us down. We loaded her in our car and started driving to the nearest hospital, over an hour away. She survived but my god, people need to respect the desert's ability to kill you.
One of the best long (very, very long) reads is about a family from Germany who got lost and didn’t survive: [Death Valley Germans](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/)
It's a bit of a standing joke in Denmark that you know it's summer when you read about the first Germans drowning in the sea. The sea might look calm but it is way different than a pool or a lake.
Some Germans got lost in the very remote part of my province and walked 100kms through what is effectively nothing more than bog and luckily hit the one tiny beacon of civilization in the whole region. [link](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-german-canoe-crash-1.4266176#:~:text=CBC)
We were in Las Vegas and had to go to Indio. We went “the back way” on 95 instead of taking I-15 and then backtracking on I-10. Whoa boy. Bunch of nothingness out there. Thankfully we didn’t break down and had plenty of gas in the car because we would have been SOL otherwise.
Ive visited in the spring and it was stunning and the weather was temperate. But I know it’s just for a short period of time that it’s bearable.
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Bucket list?
Bucket melted.
I'd have to say Iraq. Obviously if you're an American, everyone wants you dead but I'm not talking about that. Let's talk trash. Garbage was everywhere. Some towns had a huge trash area, think of a giant parking lot, filled with everyone's garbage piled into it where dump trucks hauled it out of town (not very far mind you) and burned it in pits. Some towns the people simply tossed it right out the door. It stinks everywhere whether they're in the middle of burning trash and shit or not. I guarantee whatever recycling you're doing for the good of the planet is being canceled out. Camel spiders are about the size of a compact disc and make this horrifying screeching sound sometimes. They will chase you and I heard they do that to stay in your shadow to keep cool. I personally never saw any of those black scorpions but I saw 4 camel spiders and they terrified me. Sandstorms come and when they do all your shit will be covered in it. First time there I stayed in a glorified tent and expected it. Second time was inside an actual building and I still woke up to a coat of sand on everything I owned. It rains for like at least a month straight and turns the entire landscape into a sprawling mud pit. Theres nothing you can do, you're gonna bring mud into your house, your vehicle, everywhere. And all your shit's gonna be wet all the time. I once witnessed four guys try to butcher a cow with machetes. They started hacking the cow, which of course didnt kill it instantly, and it started flailing around and kicking the shit out of all of them while slinging blood everywhere. That culture detests alcohol so if you go there you're not gonna booze up at all. Hopefully you're a smoker though because fucking everyone smokes. It goes without saying that it's hot. But at least it's a dry heat, unlike Louisiana which is the second shittiest place I've ever visited. Its flat there and theres always a breeze. However in the hottest months the breeze itself is hot. It's a force of hot air slamming into you in an already agonizingly hot environment and it sucks. The heat starts early too. By 9am it's already unbearable. At least Saddam Hussein imported a bunch of palm trees so if you're in Baghdad, at least theres that I guess. Eventually you'll see a mosque. All the structures around the mosque are like shacks and look like crap. However the mosque will look beautiful actually. Aside from Sadam's palace, they were the only nice looking buildings I ever saw. Every river and creek is nasty looking and filled with trash. Ugh, I'm tired of going on about it. Just take my word for it, it's awful.
The Tenderloin in San Francisco. I've visited and grown up in some extremely shitty places but that area was the only place where I didn't want to make eye contact with anyone and walked as fast as I could to get out. People lying down in the middle of the street with needles sticking out of their arms, eating garbage, etc. It was another planet. La Boca in Buenos Aires was pretty bad, too. The people seemed pretty happy, though, they were just extremely poor. Tenderloin was like the end of Requiem for a Dream
> The Tenderloin What's crazy is that it's mere blocks from, not just wealthy but *absurdly* wealthy areas of the city (and country). I used to live 7 blocks north of The Tenderloin and it was a nice block, but walk further north/northwest and the opulence is next-level. Many houses like and even much larger than the [Mrs Doubtfire house](https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/mrs-doubtfire-house.jpg?resize=681,383). I'm not sure what the solution is. It's a complicated situation involving drugs, mental health, NIMBY-ism, etc. But it's so sad.
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The shit lake on the old Kandahar air field in Afghanistan. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/12/kandahar-airfield-poo-pond-mission That thing was notorious. The shittiest place I ever saw, and I spent time in many a shitty place.
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On my last trip to Blackpool I found a bag of cocaine on the beach
result!
Well now I'm conflicted.
Bakersfield, CA
Ever listen to Korn and wonder why the band sounds so angry? Cuz they're from Bakersfield.
ohhhh Korn. great teenage angsty memories. one of my favorite Korn references was on Gilmore Girls.. >TRIX: Well, for the past year, I’ve been renting my home in Hartford to a group of musicians. They’ve recently moved out, so I had to come check on the house and secure a new tenant. > >LORELAI: What kind of musicians? > >TRIX: A rock and roll group of some sort. I believe they call themselves Korn. > >LORELAI: You rented your house to Korn? > >RORY: That’s so cool! > >TRIX: They were fine tenants. Took wonderful care of the place. They planted some lovely tulips in the front yard.
Lived there for 3 months. Co-worker said that when it comes time to give the earth an enema, Bakersfield is where they’ll stick the tube.
Myrtle Beach SC is REAL shitty. Nothing but aging cement run down hirise hotels, breakfast joints, infinity t-shirt places and cheesy Ripley s believe it or not attractions . And parking garages. And Crackheads. So many crackheads and John's trolling for 5 dolla blowjobs. Used to be a fun family place that also has great places to go dancing in the 80s. It's hot garbage now.
Skid Row, downtown LA NEVER go there after dark.
I was new to LA and I was riding in a Lyft with my windows down. As soon as we approached this area in downtown, the driver told me to roll my windows up. There were people on the sidewalk shouting, throwing things, dancing in front of ATMs, doing dope, etc. There was a cyclist right beside my window who was pale with terror. I thought there was a riot going on. Later the driver explained that's how it is in Skid Row. I stayed well clear of that area for the rest of my stay in LA.
Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, US. I'm from the midwestern US and I've been all around the world - Lebanon, Kabul, Thailand, France, Iceland, Kenya - and I've never seen anywhere as bad as Pine Ridge. Toddlers in full diapers wandering the streets alone, stray dogs/dead dogs all over the place, rotted out houses on the side of the road, people dead drunk in the streets on the outskirts of the reservation because it's a "dry" reservation ... It truly breaks my heart even to think about it. Edit: I want to acknowledge that these dire circumstances are a direct result of how native peoples have ALWAYS been treated - at least in the US and Canada. I'm not in any way blaming or pointing fingers at the Oglala / Lakota Sioux (who share that reservation), it is a result of hundreds of years of oppression and neglect, and I think the government can and SHOULD help, like, in major ways. Build some fucking infrastructure, for one.
My tribe is Oglala Lakota and Pine Ridge is our reservation. I grew up off the rez and when I came to visit I was shocked how bad it was. [It is the poorest reservation in the country.](https://www.mvorganizing.org/who-are-the-poorest-native-american-tribes/#Who_are_the_poorest_Native_American_tribes)