What's the worst town you've ever lived in? Why? Where would you never want to live? Why?

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

Answers

I gew up in Oregon, so clean air, water, mountains and green are what I consider the best environment. I cannot live in flat, hot, treeless, mountain-less and ocean-less places. --- -

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

Well, from about May to Sept. I would definitely have to say Texas. I hate hate hate humidity.

I don't think I could ever live in some dinky little town that is no where near a major city.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

When I was in the service I was stationed near NY City and Philadelphia in Jan-May and I hated it. What a couple of cess pools to live in. And after I was released from the service I lived in El Monte Calif. Eh hombre. Que passo. Chinga tu madre pinche vato. Ehhhhhhh. What a miserable place to be an enlightened human. I live in paradise now. James

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2000

I can't live anywhere that's too hot, or that has spiders as big as my hand. That's a given.

At the risk of offending people who live there: I could not live in Schenectady, NY. I drove through there and stayed a night on my way to university in upstate NY a few years ago... wow. What a dump.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

Oh, and Marisa: I'm moving to Oregon as soon as we can manage it. :) I can't wait. I've lived my life so far entirely in harbour towns, close to the ocean, and I can't wait to experience a different sort of place like Oregon.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I gotta live near water. I grew up in a city that is on a Great Lake, and I live there now. When I lived in Australia, I lived in Melbourne which is on a bay, on the ocean. I don't think I could live on the prairie, miles away from a large body of water.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

Hanford, California. Where my cousins (yes, THOSE cousins) live. Highest teen pregnancy, teen marriage and teen divorce rates in the state. I feel soiled every time I'm there.

I'd never want to live in the midwest, because I can't stand the idea of living where it's flat and there's no ocean. I'd go bats.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

Hmm...worst place I ever lived in was probably where I was born,Lynn, Massachusetts. It's not a pretty place, but I don't remember much about it.

I will not ever live in Florida. Ever. I've told my husband I'll go anywhere in the country or Canada but not Florida or California (too expensive for me, according to friends who've lived there). Since my husband will never move anywhere where a sweater is not an acceptable winter garment, I think we'll probably be in Georgia for awhile.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I think one of the worst places to live would be Buena Vista (pronounced Byoona Vista) VA. I've driven through that town a number of times to get to other places, and the town is a dump and the people are either rednecks or hillbillies.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

Although close to the beach and very nice areas, Mastic-Shirley, New York is an unshaven armpit of a living environment. Awful, awful, awful, unless you like unsahven armpits of course.

Nicole, I am scared of any place that actually distinguishes between rednecks and hillbillies. How do you tell one from the other?

Dwan...', do you have any other cousins that you reference? I don't recall ever seeing anyone mentioned but everyone's favorite Hanford, CA residents. If not,then no need to write 'yes, THOSE cousins' in every post. We are all well aware of who your favorite topical kin is.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

kdrock, the rednecks think that they are hip with their mullets/big permed hair and 80s fashion. The hillbillies know they are a bunch of hicks and are proud of it.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

The worst place I've ever lived was Worcester, MA. The city itself is kind of a decaying industrial mill city, and my neighorhood was the seat of a lot of tension (and some violence) betweeen university students and year-round residents. It was a very stressful environment because a lot of people lived in fear, whether such fear was merited or not.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I flew into the Midway airport in Chicago once; on the final approach, we flew over a set of tract houses that I swear they built right to the very edge of the runway; I thought we were going to clip the last couple houses. In those few seconds, I saw blocks of a neighborhood that looked like something out of Edward Scissorhands: roads, sidewalks, perfect green lawns, houses, fences.

No trees (duh, planes flying overhead...). No kids on bikes. No cars in the driveways. No pets in the yard. No people. Absolutely dead, sterile and lifeless except for the giant thundering planes roaring by overhead, probably one every two minutes or so... 24 hours a day...

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

Yes, kdrock, I do have other cousins that I reference on ocassion. However, for years, I have referred to my baby-makin', education- shunning, married-to-cheating-and-abusive-men Hanfordian cousins specifically by the catchphrase "my cousins (yes, THOSE cousins)." I certainly appreciate your interest in my family and my posts... perhaps if you find my appellation confusing, you should visualize a "tm" after it...?

The worst town I've ever personally lived was outside Philly, when I was in grad school. It's big draw was a dumpy outlet mall. There was little else there... I mean, the best pizza we could find was Pizza Hut. 'Nuff said.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I've never lived anyplace bad, so I can't pick a worst place. I know plenty of places I never want to live, based on seeing them first hand. For instance, I don't ever want to live in Detroit or Nashville. I guess New Orleans can have its bad days, too, although I've lived there and it was OK. Too much humidity, though; I have to agree with the anti-humidity faction.

Funny, I live on the plains, although in Denver, minutes away from the Rocky Mountains, and I love it - but I grew up 30 minutes from Lake Ponchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico and I don't particularly care to live that close to the water again. Although I think I might if I ever move to Maine or Seattle, like I have thought about sometimes.

And I live in paradise now, James, just not your paradise. :-) Seriously, I love the Denver area: geography, climate, most everything.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

wow dwannie THOSW cousins sound just like my family! may be were related. illhave to ask ma if we know any body in cali. i dont think i could live in a big city im just a country pummpkin.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2000

Shelly, I live in a dinky little town in Texas and I love it. I used to have an office in Houston, which is what? the 4th or 5th largest city in the US and belive me it sucked. I do the same thing I did there and thanks to computers, faxes, telephones etc, I could do it in the Antartic. Big city life has always seemed so impersonal somehow. Houston was a terrible place to have kids OR dogs and I love both. Country life CAN be dull, but you can ALWAYS go to the big city, but you can't always go to the country. Not in the real sense. I've never been to Europe but I've been all over the the US and Asia and South America and I've been in THE BIGGEST cities on the planet (Mexico City. LA, Tokyo, New York)and the people are all rush-rush with this sense of desperation, like the White Rabbit in "Through the Looking Glass." I don't know...it wasn't for me. Maybe I have a high tolerance for dumbshits and goobers, but I prefer the country life. I'm always amused by city folk who, because I sound like a rube when I talk, think I'm stupid. Nine times out of ten I'm better educated than they are (I have a graduate degree) and I never let on. I've often wondered why people in big cities think they're somehow more cultured than people who live in the country. At least now, when I go to bed at night, I'm not serenaded by the sound of sirens and perpetual traffic. Hell to me would be to live in an apartment where I can here the people next door flush the toilet and open a window and get bad air and smells and the sounds of horns, sirens and squealing tires. Don't take offense, I know everyone is different (happily) but a constant diet of big city life depresses me. When I'm downtown and bump into the postal lady amking her rounds, she digs in her bag and hands me my office mail without saying anything because she knows who I am. I like that. Not everyone would.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2000

floos, pumpkin, it would be an honor and a privilege! Check Ma's bible and see who-all might've trekked to Cali during WWII....

The Husband-Type Man and I have had the ongoing Tract Home debates... he, growing up happily in one, thinks housing tracts are the bomb- diggity (although he's since ceased to desire to live in one again. Thank you, God). To me, they're Living Death, representing All That Is Evil in the world. When we were house-hunting, as a joke he drove me through the West Hills (LA), ooohing and ahhhing over the matching red tiled roofs and the barn-shaped mailboxes topped with those chickens-with-pinwheel-legs-that-spin-in-the-wind.... Meanwhile, I'm huddled in a ball, rocking back and forth and twitching....

I'm only half-kidding. Seriously, I'd rather live in a studio apartment than a typical SoCal tract home.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2000

Bubba, I meant a dinky little town that isn't by any major city. I'm talking hours away from one where the population is only a few hundred people. I live in San Antonio and even thought it's a big city, it doesn't have that 'big' city feel, which suits me just fine.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2000

Oh Shelly, I'm sorry. That post wasn't really direted at you, hon. You just got me started and I went off on a rant. Sitting in Houston traffic for so long gave me an attitude about big cities. You're right about one thing, I'd go nuts if I couln't go to Houston and Dallas every once in a awhile. I live in Coldspring, Texas...actually outside of Coldspring...on Lake Livingston in East Texas. Population 536.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2000

I grew up in a small town (less than 10,000 people)and left as soon as possible. I thought I hated it while I was there, but in retrospect it was a very nice place to be a kid. We could walk or ride bikes anywhere and you always saw people you knew. I couldn't live there as adult, though, I've grown too acustomed to the conveniences of the city and there are very few opportunities there. The town where I grew up was at least 2 hours from any halfway decent sized city (think Topeka, KS or Tulsa, OK). Right now I'm in a 'burb right outside of Dallas. It's a fairly tame neighborhood and there are lots of places to shop, but it is too durn crowded with traffic and rather polluted. I'm pretty tired of living in an apartment; I look forward to the day when I can afford a house in a residential neighborhood where I can take a walk around the block. I doubt I'll ever stray far from a city, though.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2000

At the risk of offending you, Susan, I'll point out that Schenectady, like every single other city on this planet, has dumpy areas and nice ones. I know this for a fact because I grew up there. But I'm sure if you'd thought it through before you posted, you would have realized that also.

It's okay that I posted this offensive message, isn't it? After all, I did say I hoped I wasn't offending anyone before I proceeded to post the part that I knew was obviously going to be offensive. And that makes it all okay, right?

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2000

It's funny coz when I started this topic, I was thinking, "Everybody's gonna say Ethiopia and that'll be the end of it."

I'd hate to live in one of those countries where they make women cover up all the way and they beat you with a stick if you look at guys or anything. That would suck hard.

Also, I'd hate to live in a really dry place where there aren't any stores or restaurants for miles around, except for the gas station, and you have do drive 15 miles just to be someplace remotely exciting.

Oops... too late! (Just kidding. Leander's not THAT bad.)

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2000

Yeah, word to Gwen, I agree that Afghanistan, what with the Taliban being in power now...yeah, living there would really suck.

Any place where it is either all hot and sandy or all cold and snowy 24/7. I don't groove on being physically miserable all the damn time.

And any place where there's a war going on. Bombs going off, people dying, women and children being raped, etc. = Bad. No thanks, I'll pass.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2000

See, I knew if I actually typed "Afghanistan", it'd be the wrong one. I can change reality like that, you know.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2000

Hee. I didn't notice you'd not actually 'named a name' until your reply. I guess I knew exactly what you were talking about anyway. ;)

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2000

Leander? Is that where you're from? I went to college in Georgetown and it's God's country out there. I love it.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Dude -- I'm not FROM Leander -- I just live there now. Shit. No, I'm from Houston.

I would way, way rather live in Georgetown than Leander. Those 15 miles make a big difference. Where do you live now, fruitbat?

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

I'm dreading my move next fall to LA. Everytime I start to think about how it'll be better than Boston (no cold weather, beaches) I come up with something that'll be worse (overrun with smug shallow anti-intellectual types comes up a lot). We'll see.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Hannah, why are you moving to LA? I missed that.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Well, I'm applying to grad school at USC and UCLA. And if I don't get in, I'm going out there to try to get a job in film/television anyway, and pimping my screenplays, and basically following my dream finally. I thought about going right after college, but was far too chickenshit. I'm pretty excited.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Well, fucking rock on, then. Hey, did you hear about that site that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck started, where they ask for screenplay submissions? I think it was on freshhell.com, the weblog.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Hanna, you are going to be pleasantly surprised at how cultured and dynamic the LA scene is. And there is definately more smog in Boston than in LA now. It will depend on you to make it a good experience or a bad one. All up to you. Many people have come and many people have gone away but most have stayed because it is so much more than any other place under the sun. You'll dig it. When your friends call and complain in February how miserable they are and want to come for a visit you'll learn to gloat properly. It's an art. James

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Houston is now the smoggiest city in America. Isn't that lame?

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

I think Cincinnati's in the top ten, too. I hate driving with the windows up.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Yeah, I even submitted a screenplay there. Projectgreenlight.com.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

Cool! Did you get any response? I wonder if they really read them. Hey, maybe I could go look at the website since I'm so interested...

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

The site's kind of a mess. The message boards are nuts, too. Lots of crap- we'll see, I guess. If you want to register and give wildly inflated positive reviews of my screenplay (Sweet Caroline) or sign up on the message boards and start talking about how great it is, I wouldn't stop you. But I didn't ask you to or anything, cos I think that's against the rules.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

Keli, I use to think Cincinnati had the absolute worst traffic. Until I moved to Columbus. Worse place to live? Southern Ohio - Midland, Lynchburg (Ohio, not Virginia), Wilmington, Morrow, Blanchester. I like living in small towns, just not those.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

Columbus is the fast food capital of the nation, at least. It's the only place in the Midwest I've ever been, and it wasn't nearly as horrible as I expected. But I could never live in the Midwest- not for any reason, just because I'm unnaturally prejudiced against it. And Canada. I know it's a lovely country, but I really can't stand it.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

Yo Gwen, easy there, tiger! I caught the cartoons about your youth in Houston, I guess I just meant coming "from" Leander at the current time. I think I ventured into Leander a time or 2 while in college in Georgepatch, no clear memories. I'm "from" upstate New York, with many formative years also spent in a pleasant suburb of Ft. Worth where every single store and restaraunt was part of a national chain. Now I'm back in Dallas, living in the right ventricle of the heart of the big city. It's cool, spectacular shopping, but I feel like I've seen and done this town and need to take on someplace new. The people here took some getting used to after the Austin area. If you go to the H.E.B. in Austin, half the shoppers are in flipflops and their pajamas. In Dallas, half the shoppers have fancy clothes, radioactive orange tans, and possibly plastic boobs. They're nice enough, actually, but they're not *casual* the way Austinites/Georgetownies/Leanderthals are.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

It's a hard one to answer. I've been pretty fortunate and mostly lived in places that I liked. But I guess the *worst* place I ever lived was in Yong Ho, which is in Taipei county, across a polluted river from Taipei city.

Yong Ho was an industrial suburb. I lived in alley no. 4 off lane no 20 (?) and it was hard to find without a map. The first few times I walked home I had to have people lead me there. I lived on the second floor of a 5 story building. My downstairs neighbors had some sort of washing machine repair business - there were always lots of dismantled washing machines out front.

The air was terrible and their were no dumpsters. Instead, people would pile up their garbage on corner of the alley and the pile would grow and grow up around a lamp post until every now and then some women would come by wearing sleeve protectors and face masks and gloves and pile it into the back of a truck.

The traffic in Taipei county was horrible, so lots of people rode motorcycles and mopeds, families of 4 on a moped. Then, because the traffic would be all snarled up, people would just ride their motorcycles on the sidewalks, which was scary for pedestrians.

It was very grey there and there were few trees. When I took a bath at the end of the day, or washed my face, often the water would be grey with dirt. There were quite a few stray starving dogs there who suffered from mange. You'd see them, kind of pink and bald over half their body. It was sad to see.

But...the food was pretty good. Yong Ho was famous for its soy milk bars and you could get some nice meat buns too. On winter mornings I would buy a bag of warm soymilk and drink it with a straw like all the other commuters. It was also a very safe place in terms of crime, very little mugging although you had to be careful of pick pockets on the bus. Burglary was also not uncommon, which is why most houses or apartment buildings had metal doors and walls tipped with broken glass.

So... Taipei was the worst place I ever lived. But one time I went through Shen Yang and that seemed like a much worse place.

I once spent part of a summer in a house in Omaha Nebraska that had a vile bright orange plush like uncomfortable couch. There was almost no where you could go from the house within walking distance. It was flat and boring mostly. I would say "yes, that is the worst place in the world to live". Yet...one of the nicest used books stores I had ever experienced (up to that point) was somewhere there in Omaha, and later I had a friend who lived in CT and she had a brother in Omaha and she LOVED Omaha. So I guess a lot of it depends on your circle of friends and circumstances.

-- Anonymous, November 14, 2000

Um. Worst place EVER was Manchester, NH...strongly reminiscent of Worcester, MA, actually...

I used to call getting into Manch "circling the bowl" because all the exits lead in and there's no coherent way to escape the damn place.

Ugh.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2001

My brother lived in Manchester, NH for a while, and plans on moving back into that area in the next few years because the cost of living is decent and many of his friends have moved there.

And his wife and her family are from Worcester.

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2001

Worst place I've ever lived: Omaha, Nebraska Horrible place, boring as hell, smelly, dirty, and ugly.

I would never want to live in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and anywhere in that area. You all know all the reasons, so I won't list them out.

Oh, and 1st runner up for most hellish place I have ever lived: Galveston, TX. It's not so much the island or the weather, it's the people.

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2001

I used to live in southern Ohio, and had a love-hate relationship with it. I loved living in the country, I loved the small community aspect, I loved that everytime I went somewhere, I saw someone I knew...But I sometimes hated living in Nowhereville, the gossipy aspect of a small community, and the fact that everytime I went somewhere, I saw someone I knew. (Where I live now, Sevenoaks, is another place I have a love/hate relationship with: I love the town itself, the fact that it's 20 minutes from my front door to London Bridge, and the fact that I live a 3 minute walk from the office. I HATE that all of this great stuff is sucking up so much of my income.)

Oma D, my best friend's father is the principal of Blanchester High School -- the fact that he chooses a three hour commute over actually living there may have something to do with your hatred of the place!

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2001

Why didn't you like the Galvestonians, Robyn? (Or the Galvestonites, or whatever.)

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2001

Gal-ve-stones?

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2001

Just to babble a bit more to the Ohio folk:

Have you ever been to the Continent in Columbus? It's a fake continental village with overpriced shops and eateries. Anyway, I was walking home the other night after going to the local McDonald's (the most upmarket McDonalds EVER -- they have chicken sandwiches that come on foccacia and ciabatta), and thinking, 'This reminds me of the Continent.' Except, you know, it's for real and I live there.

I like the fact that where I live has an actual history, full of places that are copied as theme parks and theme pubs and theme everything else; I don't like the theme places themselves, and I'd never want to live somewhere that was full of them.

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2001

I could write volumes about what I don't like about Galveston people. I lived there for several of my formative years, but I was not BOI (born on the island). Of course there were some wonderful people, there are a few wonderful people everywhere, and of course I have some good memories, because I was there for several years. But, most of the people that I knew there were completely self centered, spoiled assholes. These are teenagers I'm talking about, but they were like no teenagers I've seen anywhere else that I've lived. Lots of drugs (yes, I used my fair share), lots of date/acquaintance rape, and the high school had fraternities and sororoties. That's high school, guys.

As a teenager, I knew few adults, but the ones I knew were utter fuckers. One example, the attorney who called me a liar when I begged him to help me after I had been abused.

Galveston was a fucked up place, and the absolute wrong place for me to be as a teenager. Having visited as an adult, I didn't notice that much had changed and I saw so many of the same damn people that were there a decade before that I began to feel like I was in a time warp. There's just this attitude, this weird superiority that people who live on that dirty little island have that makes me shiver at the idea of ever having to live there again. And they don't leave. And if they do leave (always to move to Austin) they always move back.

I've really only lived 2 places I didn't like: Galveston and Omablah. Now let me tell you how wonderful Germany was, how beautiful Pennsylvania is, and how Atlanta kicks ass! I feel so negative after dwelling on Galveston.

p.s. Gwen, I've always have had good times in Houston. Too good, I got into way too much trouble running up there to date guys who were way too old for me. Saw my first prostitute (boy) in Montrose right up the street from Numbers. But now it seems so humid when I visit, was it always so humid?

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2001

That's the reason Texas made Galveston into an island. So they wouldn't corrupt the rest of the state. James

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2001

Robyn, They REALLY have sororities and fraternities at the high school?! That really scares me. They were bad enough in college.

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2001

Damn. I always kind of thought I might want to live in Galveston someday.

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2001

Yep, they really have sororities and fraternities in the high school (the islands only non-private high school). When I went there, there were 4 sororities and 2 fraternities. You had "introduction" parties at the beginning of your freshman year, then you were (or weren't) asked to pledge. Then you went through a hazing/pledge period. Mostly just humiliating stuff: no shaving your legs, no make-up, no hair spray, making you kneel on command and bow to people, dressing pledges in dumb clothes and having them perform songs or dances on the seawall while being sprayed with shaving cream or silly string. One girl had her face rubbed in dog shit (and then was blackballed anyway).

And of course, the sororities themselves had a hierarchy: Are you a TAP or a PEG? Ew...you couldn't get into a good sorority?

I went to 4 other high schools, so thank the gods I got to see that real life was nothing like Galveston. And now that I know that there is an entire world of places that are not Galveston, it should be really easy to avoid ever having to visit there again.

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2001