Most Miserable Cities in the US: Forbes' Misery Measure

[turbo]

In my family, head-cheese was treated as a highly-regarded cold-cut-type meat product, while other waste-meat products were just "food".

 

[G01]

I guess it's what you're used to. I could never live in NY city because I love open spaces, lots of grass and trees, privacy, quiet and no crowds.

There are people that grew up in NY city that love it because they have never known anything else. They think living in an apartment the size of most people's closet is normal and love the fact that there are crowds everywhere and don't even notice the pollution and noise.

I love cities, and I hope to eventually move to a big city, maybe go to grad school in or near one of the country's bigger cities, but NEVER would I consider New York! There is just something about the city that makes it undesirable. I think it has something to do with the fact that it is TOO big, even for a big city lover like me. It's so big as to be hindering. Now, Boston or Chicago! Those are cities I would love to live in!

 

[turbo]

I love cities, and I hope to eventually move to a big city, maybe go to grad school in or near one of the country's bigger cities, but NEVER would I consider New York! There is just something about the city that makes it undesirable. I think it has something to do with the fact that it is TOO big, even for a big city lover like me. It's so big as to be hindering. Now, Boston or Chicago! Those are cities I would love to live in!

If you like to drive, NEVER consider Boston! Those people are the worst drivers in the world, and they are absolutely the rudest! I can tell you that driving in rush-hour traffic in Manhattan is a piece of cake compared to driving in "The Hub" any normal working day. If you're going to be driving a lot in Boston on any given day, you'd better be driving a rental, and let the rental company decide who has to pay for the damage that the creep caused who side-swiped you.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

I have to say, Houston bad drivers definitely beat out Boston's. There are lots of twelve-lane highways out there and the drivers are so accustomed to having an incredible amount of space around them that they don't feel obliged to drive in the same direction the road is going.

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[turbo]

CQ, when you are driving in Boston, you are driving on a spider-web-shaped net of roads that developed almost 300 years ago, and all the other drivers act like they hate you. You really have to experience Boston driving. This is the worst environment with the worst fellow-drivers that you can imagine. I have driven all over the US, (with the exception of the far-west with the stop and go traffic on the coastal highways,) and Boston is by FAR the suckiest place to drive in at least 4/5ths of the country. I have biker friends on the south side of Boston that would invite me and my wife down, and we would refuse every year. They would load up their Harleys on trailers and pickup-beds and come up to ride with us for 15-20 years over and over again. We wouldn't go there on a bet.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Yes, I've driven all over the country too. And I live in New Hampshire so I've driven in Boston lots. I'd agree that navigating in Boston is a pain in the butt, especially given that they don't seem to think street name signs are very important, but by my estimate Houston beat them for bad drivers.

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[Ivan Seeking]

I grew up in LA and now hate all cities. But after twenty years of country living I have gotten so rural that when last at my sister's house in Sacramento, I was outside and almost took a pee in the yard!

Here in the sticks you pee wherever you want!

 

[matthyaouw]

From my bit of the world - Doncaster or Hull

As a lifelong resident of Hull I must contest! Like any UK city it is not without its problems but it doesn't deserve the bad press it gets.

 

[Andre]

I'd voted for London where robbing of car parkers is legalized. Talking about cars in cities, of all Capitals I have driven in, Amsterdam, Bruxelles, Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, the most miserable to drive in is The Hague. Always changing road constructions send you into an urban forest of one way streets, always the wrong way.

Then again The Hague is also the greenest city I know, a plethora of parks, so you can enjoy the scenery on the many detours trying to find your destination.

 

[turbo]

turbo, living in Maine, I don't think you've ever tasted authentic Mexican food.

For years I worked as a technical/training consultant to the pulp and paper industry, and during the time that I was self-employed in that field, most of my clients were in the deep south, ranging from Texas to Florida. I've had some pretty good Mexican food, including some little dives around San Antonio during one business trip. The best ever, though was at this dumpy-looking place on the north side of the causeway between Tampa and Clearwater. That was about 15 years back. The place was staffed by and frequented by Mexicans and the food was wonderful. I don't know if that place still exists, but given the number of patrons there every time I visited, I can't imagine that it has closed.

 

[wolram]

I'd voted for London where robbing of car parkers is legalized. Talking about cars in cities, of all Capitals I have driven in, Amsterdam, Bruxelles, Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, the most miserable to drive in is The Hague. Always changing road constructions send you into an urban forest of one way streets, always the wrong way.

Then again The Hague is also the greenest city I know, a plethora of parks, so you can enjoy the scenery on the many detours trying to find your destination.

I have only been to London twice, once on the train to visit the museums, and one time i had to drive three parts through it ,that was a nightmare, i bet i wore a millimeter off the tyres just trying to keep out of the way of those nutter drivers .

 

[Evo]

It's processed as a cold cut, but it's the same parts of a pig's head. It said so on TV.

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Yes, it's a gelatinous loaf with parts from the pig's head, Andrew Zimmenr was chowing down on it the other night on Bizzarre Foods. I meant that the head meat cooked for tamales is completely different from how it's cooked for head cheese.

I think I ate head cheese when I was little, not sure, my mother used to but some starnge stuff at the deli. but blood sausage with tongue is wonderful.

 

[turbo]

Is this the food thread? I used to love blood sausage pan-fried in butter alongside split flaky biscuits. That made a pretty tasty little breakfast sandwich.

 

[Evo]

I've been watching so many Travel Channel food shows that I now associate cities with food.

 

[jtbell]

I just went through the Forbes list, and all I can say is, you can probably get any cities you want on such a list, by using a suitable set of criteria.

For me, any list of "miserable cities" that includes both Detroit and Charlotte, and does not include either Cleveland or (worse) Youngstown, Ohio, is suspicious.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I just went through the Forbes list, and all I can say is, you can probably get any cities you want on such a list, by using a suitable set of criteria.

For me, any list of "miserable cities" that includes both Detroit and Charlotte, and does not include either Cleveland or (worse) Youngstown, Ohio, is suspicious.

Funny, for a city I thought Charlotte was pretty nice.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

My vote for America's worst city: Watts.

For a number of years I had to work at MLK hospital in Watts from time to time. We would park the mobile CT out back near the emergency entrance and do service and repairs at night. A cop once told me that I was crazy to be working there without a gun.

One night I was there alone and heard a gang coming through the parking lot. So I turned off the lights and kept very quiet while they passed. Fact is, had they seen me I may well be dead now. These guys will kill at the drop of a hat. In fact many gangs require that you kill someone as part of the initiation process.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I thought LA was supposed to be glamorous?

It's a glamorous kind of misery.

 

[jtbell]

Funny, for a city I thought Charlotte was pretty nice.

So so I... I should have made clear that I thought it odd, all by itself, that both Detroit and Charlotte were on the same list.

I watch local news from there on TV regularly, and it's full of crime reports, but that's true of TV news in most cities. I visit there occasionally, too. Charlotte doesn't have anything like the abandoned neighborhoods and empty blocks in Detroit and some other cities, and there's a good amount of activity downtown.

I grew up near Youngstown, Ohio, and drove through the city on my way north while traveling last summer. It was a very depressing experience. It looked like about half the buildings had been torn down along the main street heading into downtown, and an area that once contained steel mills was a big open field.

 

[hypatia]

Cleveland has become a really nice city in the past 15 years. As downtowns go, its people friendly with sidewalk cafes open well into the night. The revamping of the train station was done very well, with artist and speciality shops. I enjoy going there.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Yes, it's a gelatinous loaf with parts from the pig's head, Andrew Zimmenr was chowing down on it the other night on Bizzarre Foods.

There's also a particularly gross How It's Made that covers all kinds of lunch meats (which is where I saw head cheese made.) Salami was interesting; it doesn't involve the application of heat at all, it's essentially cooked chemically by various kinds of mold.

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[Evo]

Salami was interesting; it doesn't involve the application of heat at all, it's essentially cooked chemically by various kinds of mold.

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I didn't need to know that.

 

[Moonbear]

I grew up near Youngstown, Ohio, and drove through the city on my way north while traveling last summer. It was a very depressing experience. It looked like about half the buildings had been torn down along the main street heading into downtown, and an area that once contained steel mills was a big open field.

I was in Youngstown last year (I think it was last year). Definitely miserable. A friend was trapped there for business for a week (mostly twiddling his fingers waiting for a paranoid client to let him see the documents he traveled there to see ), and since I live a reasonable drive to there, I visited to keep him company.

My primary impression of the town was "OMG! There isn't a fast food or chain restaurant they don't have!" Really, we tried really hard to think of one we couldn't find, and a drive in one direction or another would turn it up. And that's ALL they seemed to have. We asked at the hotel if there were any restaurants that weren't chains. There were two they recommended. The one was decent, nothing special (probably would have been better if they weren't obviously cutting corners on food quality to remain competitive with cheap chain restaurants), and the other I didn't go to, but my friend reported back when he went another night that it seemed to be a chain in the making...the menu was written up like all the chain menus were, like they were getting ready to start franchising it, and said the food was terrible. But, hey, they had a mall and a movie theater.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Yeah, Youngstown is miserable. No wonder the Mound People couldn't bring themselves to do much more than http://www.mysteriousworld.com/Journal/2003/Spring/SerpentMound/" .

I found Detroit to be quite miserable. The one time I was there during the winter, 2004 I think, the city evidently didn't have enough money to plow the sidewalks in the downtown, so everybody just walked over filthy mounds of snow and ice. The pristine and pastoral Canadian farm country just across the border has constant smog warnings and billboards advertising casinos up all over the place because they're too close to Detroit. A great one a Detroiter told me is,

“Detroit was founded by New Yorkers who said to themselves, ‘Gee, I'm enjoying all the crime and poverty but it's really not cold enough.’”​

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