Ones that come to mind for me are Vegas, Toronto, Paris
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Dubai is the most liminal fucking city in the world. If a hospital corridor was a city, it would be Dubai.
The opposite of this would be Hanoi. That’s a city where each street feels like a living, breathing animal.
As someone who grew up and lived in Dubai in the 80s to the late 2000s I cannot find fault in your assessment.
Memphis, TN. There was literally no one there on the streets and the high crime didn’t make it any more appealing. Your city really sucks when the best thing to see there is a Bass Pro Shops lol
Fucking Dallas, TX. Of all the major cities in North America, Dallas is the most devoid of culture. It is a city inhabited by cars, not people. If you took the average of all North American cities, it would be Dallas, but not in a way that derives any value from the cities included in the average. If you asked an LLM to generate an American metroplex, you would get a low-resolution, but otherwise one-to-one map of Dallas and Ft. Worth. Dallas is the backrooms except with a clear view of the sky.
Charlotte, NC. That place is still segregated
Glasgow in the 90s. I live in rural Scotland, but while studying in Edinburgh I used to travel through to see my girlfriend. As soon as I got off the bus I’d get this weird, hostile vibe. I was approached all the time by folk trying to hustle me for money or crazies just being weird AF. The city aggressively prides itself on being friendly, but I always found it intimidating.
I was in Glasgow a fair bit during the Commonwealth Games and the locals were almost aggressively friendly, it was pretty funny. I live in Edinburgh and I like going to Glasgow for a break from all the tourists.
it’s not that bad any more. west end is tame too
Trenton, NJ
Newark, NJ
actually just the whole New Jerseywait no Asbury Park is nice.
most of New Jersey
Jersey City has its own charm in a gritty sort of way.
oh man I do not enjoy Jersey City
the PATH train and having to wait 20+ minutes for it can fuck all the way offalthough at least there is a train I guess
New Hope is solid.
Because that’s PA.
Salt Lake City, Utah. Utterly gorgeous, but strongly reconsider moving there if you aren’t a Mormon. The whole valley/arguably state has a constant fog of oppressively bad juju looming over it, despite being truly breathtaking.
Relevant but I’m currently going down this Bricks & Minifigs vs Ben rabbit hole and wow these mormons are creepy as fuck.
Their entire history is insanely, deeply fucked in ways most people don’t realize. Dating back to the very beginning.
Do you have any recommended reading?
So, so much. My very long comment got wiped before I could finish–I was trying to find an old 1800s newspaper account from the Library of Congress, so consider yourself lucky I’m relegated to a phone keyboard. I’m working on a book myself, so I’ve got huuuuuundreds of sources, but many of them are historic and hard to share conveniently. For a quick variety:
Fifteen Years Among the Mormons by Mary Ettie V. Smith (1860) is one of the most breathtaking page-turners I’ve ever read. Like many works that touch on history Mormons don’t like, they’ve been very successful at whitewashing this to a mere “unfair anti-Mormon polemic,” but…eh. Very complicated, but it really has the ring of truth to me compared to other similar sources. That’s the source of the screenshot re: SLC.
Exposé of Polygamy in Utah: A Lady’s Life among the Mormons by Fanny Stenhouse (1872) is a favorite. She had a sharp wit.
No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie (1945) was a nuclear bomb of a book.
In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (1997) goes into the MINIMUM 33 girls and women Smith “celestially wed,” including minors, mother-daughter pairs, etc…
For a much more accessible option, look up Mormon Stories on YouTube. The church recently sued them, so you know they’re good. And lest you sneeze at that, the Mormons successfully forced fucking WIKILEAKS to take down one of the church’s internal instruction manuals (it’s copyrighted material of the literal legal corporation that is the Mormon church). They’ve got crazy money, crazy connections. You’ve no idea.
Look up what was the first Sherlock Holmes book (Part 2) and ask yourself why captive Mormon women became such a theme then. In the UK!? Yup. And so much more.
Did you know that the Mormon church owns 2% of the landmass of Florida? Like right now?
I’m just trying to say: it’s a deeeeep fucking rabbit hole.
I just discovered this yesterday and went all the way down that rabbit hole. Holy moly they are really trying to beat down on the guy trying to do the right thing. That police department is NASTY.
It looks like he has some good lawyers coming his way though. Looking forward to the second part of the civil rights lawyer’s video (and part three of his own).
Seems like it’s a really deep rabbit hole!
Definitely SLC. Hands down.
Shit is like walking through the looking glass.
And not in the cool, drug-induced way. Not like that at all.
I lived in Provo for 2 years. I’d still be there if not for the Mormons.
They have a program that marches the homeless around the city on rotation to keep them out of sight.
There’s a disturbing degree of popular support and blissful ignorance
I’ve heard that, in terms of geography and natural scenery, Salt Lake City is the city people want when they think they want Denver.
What do you get instead with actual Denver?
High plains just before the mountains. SLC is more in the mountains
Yes! I’ve been there several times, and I hate to be the type of person that describes it as having bad vibes, but it always feels weird
Worst city on earth.
Look, I’m just going to say it: I cried the first time I visited, okay? It was that beautiful. Then I immediately moved there. Whoops. Worth it(???) I’m still not sure. Those 5-6 years definitely took a piece of me.
The first time I went to Paris it was in late November and freezing rain was falling. There was a transportation strike and only one subway line was running. I got drenched and caught double-pneumonia on my first day there and was very sick the entire week I was there.
Still had a better time there than SLC.
Bakersfield California, drive through it once. It was like someone was making the most depressing movie about drugs and prostitution and dilapidated infrastructure so they built Bakersfield to be the backdrop
How I felt going through Sacramento
Reminds me of the show Baskets
Wow, New Orleans? I love that city.
Downtown Clearwater FL has been pretty much taken over by Scientologists and is quite creepy now.
I love Nola too but I could see it overwhelming people that are unacquainted or less… let’s say libertine
Phoenix. Don’t ever make the mistake of moving there or you’ll have a hard time leaving. It’s the closest thing to purgatory I’ve ever experienced. I certainly aged, but I don’t think I matured a day while I was there.
i mean its basically a desert, so you arnt far off. family guy did a episode where arizona(i think one of the city) is where people got o become DUMB as rocks, they used to cure peters genius level intellect.
How so? Is it the people there?
It’s the world’s biggest parking lot. Every tree is artificial unless it’s a cactus. The few places you can climb give you a great view of said parking lot. It’s 40 miles wide and can take over an hour to cross, yet bizarrely, everywhere you need to be is 30 minutes away. Some street intersections require multiple passes of building prior knowledge to safely traverse.
I seen my first 8 years there riding the public transport there and it’s an entirely separate hell. Everything goes from 30 minutes away to anywhere from an hour to 90 or more. I would say about 6 months of my time spent there must have been traveling.
And never to go anywhere actually interesting. Everything is one or two floors unless it’s an office building you’ll likely never have the lifestyle to be a part of unless it’s a temp gig.
They are neighborhoods so similar, miles apart from each other that I almost knocked on the wrong friend’s door before I realized I had driven to the wrong place.
I could go on…
That sounds fucking awful my guy. I live in Red Deer Alberta, and it has its faults but I enjoy jogging and skateboarding and walking my dog and the trails here are amazing.
Council Bluffs, IA. I once had family there and there’s a story in our family. One of them had a radio of some sort that works on trucker frequencies and he overheard a conversation between trucker CBs that went something like:
- “I’ve never been to Council Bluffs before. What’s it like?”
- “Well, if the earth needed an enema, Bluffs is where they’d put the tube.”
It used to be a railroad town, but the railroad pulled out and left economic carnage in its wake. Meanwhile, Omaha, just across the river, is comparatively very affluent with skilled jobs in tech, so Bluffs is kindof “the slums” (casualties of the worst end of capitalism.) and Omaha is all gentrified and hip, which rubs salt in the wound, and those who are still in Bluffs are the ones who lacked the wherewithal (luck, credit (social, financial, or otherwise), mental health, etc) to move to Omaha. Last time I was in Bluffs (and that was even before I knew the rail background story) it really felt like there was just a pall over the whole place. The strangers you saw at the grocery store or whatever just seemed “down and out” in an undefinable way. The local government seems some combination of corrupt and incompetent and the few folks I know of who still live in Bluffs there are racists and MAGA nuts and grifters and (I say this with love) deeply mentally ill. It’s a disturbingly strange and depressing place.
For me, Richmond, VA. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable for no reason at all than the 2 days I was in Richmond. Can’t explain it.
I’m not sure I’d describe it as “bad vibes”, but Detroit has always struck me as charmingly postapocalyptic. It’s the only place I’ve ever seen fires in barrels in the middle of streets in real life.
oh that sounds lovely, I’m adding Detroit to the list
I never want to go back to St Louis.
Sounds like a great name for a song.
This. Or anywhere near Missouri, for that matter.
Never seen so many billboards for sex shops and strip clubs as driving through missoura…
Also true. I guess Columbia was ok
was there recently, goddamn despressing
Vegas, no doubt! And I don’t really remember the name of the country all that much, it was somewhere in the Pacific Islands. I was really young, but I remember not ever feeling comfortable.
The Vegas Strip is the only thing remotely interesting (the rest of Vegas is just a huge car park in the desert) and it is somsoul suckingly vapid, void of culture even though they try so hard to shove artists down your throat.
Gambling everywhere of course and nobody gives a fuck, just gamble, lose all your money, fuck a destitute prostitute who desperately needs to leave that hell hole, and then fuck off.
Vegas is the asshole of the world
I think you need to have a large and varied drug collection and the will to commit capital fraud to enjoy Vegas.
