Most depressing city/town you've been to?

[DandyDan]

I've never found much redeeming about Terre Haute, Indiana or St. Joseph, Missouri.

Since I moved to Arizona, the easy answer to this question is Douglas.

I forgot about St. Joseph, MO. It was always a dreary place to visit. One of my friends said two of the highlights of his visit there was Jesse James's house and the psychiatric museum there. I'll pass.

[Flint1979]

Surprised no one has mentioned this, but for Ontario, Canada, there exists a place called

Hamilton, Ontario

Which looks pretty sad.

Yeah, if you want the Rust Belt in Canada, Hamilton is definitely it. It gets lumped in with the Toronto area because Burlington is basically a suburb of both cities, but the Hamilton side of the bay has much different and more depressing vibes.

Probably about 20-25 years ago now but I was in Grand Bend, Ontario and thought it was pretty depressing. It's right on Lake Huron and all I remember is driving on Route 21 and a town called Forest. Took a walk along the beach and got the hell outta there and went to Niagara Falls then crossed back into the US into New York and went to Buffalo. It was my first experience with Buffalo and I thought it was a pretty depressed place too. I think a lot of the depressed cities are in the northern part of the country.

[CapeCodder]

Surprised no one has mentioned this, but for Ontario, Canada, there exists a place called

Hamilton, Ontario

Which looks pretty sad.

Yeah, if you want the Rust Belt in Canada, Hamilton is definitely it. It gets lumped in with the Toronto area because Burlington is basically a suburb of both cities, but the Hamilton side of the bay has much different and more depressing vibes.

Probably about 20-25 years ago now but I was in Grand Bend, Ontario and thought it was pretty depressing. It's right on Lake Huron and all I remember is driving on Route 21 and a town called Forest. Took a walk along the beach and got the hell outta there and went to Niagara Falls then crossed back into the US into New York and went to Buffalo. It was my first experience with Buffalo and I thought it was a pretty depressed place too. I think a lot of the depressed cities are in the northern part of the country.

Buffalo, NY and Erie, PA are both very sad places. Erie was the hometown of one of my favorite 80's groups: The Stabilizers.

[GCrites]

Did anyone mention Butte, MT? Definitely a downer vibe compared to other similar sized cities in the state like Bozeman, Billings and Great Falls. Copper mines and ramshackle houses. Years ago, I read that FBI's Butte office was used to exile problem employees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/08/15/fbi-agents-siberia-lives-on/be4abec3-b888-4414-b906-de1cfa1a64f6/

The way Evel Knievel talked about Butte the wild west never ended there, at least when he was alive. I don't think he exaggerated much.

[Rothman]

Did anyone mention Butte, MT? Definitely a downer vibe compared to other similar sized cities in the state like Bozeman, Billings and Great Falls. Copper mines and ramshackle houses. Years ago, I read that FBI's Butte office was used to exile problem employees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/08/15/fbi-agents-siberia-lives-on/be4abec3-b888-4414-b906-de1cfa1a64f6/

The way Evel Knievel talked about Butte the wild west never ended there, at least when he was alive. I don't think he exaggerated much.

It was one of the last major company towns.

[Stephane Dumas]

Probably about 20-25 years ago now but I was in Grand Bend, Ontario and thought it was pretty depressing. It's right on Lake Huron and all I remember is driving on Route 21 and a town called Forest. Took a walk along the beach and got the hell outta there and went to Niagara Falls then crossed back into the US into New York and went to Buffalo. It was my first experience with Buffalo and I thought it was a pretty depressed place too. I think a lot of the depressed cities are in the northern part of the country.

I guess the Dream Academy song "Life in a northern town" would fit these cities.  There's 2 differents music videos of that song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5uxQElYu68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UXnulANF8g

[thenetwork]

Did anyone mention Butte, MT? Definitely a downer vibe compared to other similar sized cities in the state like Bozeman, Billings and Great Falls. Copper mines and ramshackle houses. Years ago, I read that FBI's Butte office was used to exile problem employees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/08/15/fbi-agents-siberia-lives-on/be4abec3-b888-4414-b906-de1cfa1a64f6/

The way Evel Knievel talked about Butte the wild west never ended there, at least when he was alive. I don't think he exaggerated much.

I'll see your Butte, Montana and raise you a Havre, Montana.  I spent 6 months there on a job and it was such a s-hole.  And the place I worked for ran their business as if it was a Hooterville business on Green Acres.

[corco]

Did anyone mention Butte, MT? Definitely a downer vibe compared to other similar sized cities in the state like Bozeman, Billings and Great Falls. Copper mines and ramshackle houses. Years ago, I read that FBI's Butte office was used to exile problem employees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/08/15/fbi-agents-siberia-lives-on/be4abec3-b888-4414-b906-de1cfa1a64f6/

The way Evel Knievel talked about Butte the wild west never ended there, at least when he was alive. I don't think he exaggerated much.

I'll see your Butte, Montana and raise you a Havre, Montana.  I spent 6 months there on a job and it was such a s-hole.  And the place I worked for ran their business as if it was a Hooterville business on Green Acres.

I'll see your both of those and raise you a Deer Lodge, Montana. Lived there a year and a half - yikes. Butte was where we'd go for fun. I don't mind Havre (had to go there a lot for my subsequent state job out of Helena) - at least they have a couple good restaurants, but I also never lived there.

[Kniwt]

I'll see your Butte, Montana and raise you a Havre, Montana.  I spent 6 months there on a job and it was such a s-hole.  And the place I worked for ran their business as if it was a Hooterville business on Green Acres.

Visited Havre last year before things got crazy; aside from a couple arterials, it has some of the worst pavement quality I've encountered for years in any decent-size (at least by Montana standards) city.

At least Butte has its toxic-waste-tourism traffic and the nonstop flow from I-15/I-90, and they've made significant progress on bicycle infrastructure. But some of the close-in neighborhoods are, indeed, quite rundown.

[webny99]

Anyone giving a "worst cities in New York" list without Newburgh is automatically wrong. Having been to nearly municipality in the state (and all on the state highway system), I would easily rank that as the worst.

The only reason Newburgh isn't on my list is because I've never been there.
From what I've seen on Street View, it would definitely be included if I'd been there.

[SectorZ]

I feel so bad for New York. There are people over the world that probably think the state is some zeroth-world super-advanced cosmopolitan place because of NYC. Then they find this thread...

Without counting, at least 1/3 of the places mentioned here are in New York?

I' have not been off the beaten path in many places in New York, except for Niagara Falls. The stark difference between each side of the river is quite depressing, and that includes the fact that some swaths of the Ontario edition are pretty meh.

[webny99]

I feel so bad for New York. There are people over the world that probably think the state is some zeroth-world super-advanced cosmopolitan place because of NYC. Then they find this thread...

Without counting, at least 1/3 of the places mentioned here are in New York?

Part of that is the fact that we've got at least 4 users from NY contributing to the thread.
Part of it is that much of Upstate NY really is depressing. But there's plenty of beauty too if you know where to look.

On the whole, New York might not even be on my top-5 list of most depressing states.

[CapeCodder]

I feel so bad for New York. There are people over the world that probably think the state is some zeroth-world super-advanced cosmopolitan place because of NYC. Then they find this thread...

Without counting, at least 1/3 of the places mentioned here are in New York?

Part of that is the fact that we've got at least 4 users from NY contributing to the thread.
Part of it is that much of Upstate NY really is depressing. But there's plenty of beauty too if you know where to look.

On the whole, New York might not even be on my top-5 list of most depressing states.

I'd add Gouverneur, NY to that list too. My dad lived there from 2009-2015. The last time I was there was for Thanksgiving '14. We were turning on to Rock Island Road after driving up to the Reservation (cheap smokes) and he muttered "I need to get the fuck out of here." One of the worst McDonalds I've been to was in Malone  (cold burgers, limp fries [like they'd been sitting there since October], and strange yokels.) In order to get to Gouverneur, I flew into Ogdensburg from Albany on Cape Air. The weather that day was windy/rainy and the tailwind aided us into arriving 20 minutes early. We drove the back roads into the part of town where he lived. That same day in the span of three hours I heard Paula Cole's "I Don't Wanna Wait" four times: At Logan, at Albany, Ogdensburg, and in the car headed to Gouverneur. I didn't realize that the song still had staying power.

[hotdogPi]

The closest declining area to much of the US population is in western/central NY or most of WV, and the former has more population and reason to go there. This why NY is mentioned so much in this thread.

[Rothman]

I feel so bad for New York. There are people over the world that probably think the state is some zeroth-world super-advanced cosmopolitan place because of NYC. Then they find this thread...

Without counting, at least 1/3 of the places mentioned here are in New York?

Part of that is the fact that we've got at least 4 users from NY contributing to the thread.
Part of it is that much of Upstate NY really is depressing. But there's plenty of beauty too if you know where to look.

On the whole, New York might not even be on my top-5 list of most depressing states.

I'd add Gouverneur, NY to that list too. My dad lived there from 2009-2015. The last time I was there was for Thanksgiving '14. We were turning on to Rock Island Road after driving up to the Reservation (cheap smokes) and he muttered "I need to get the fuck out of here." One of the worst McDonalds I've been to was in Malone  (cold burgers, limp fries [like they'd been sitting there since October], and strange yokels.) In order to get to Gouverneur, I flew into Ogdensburg from Albany on Cape Air. The weather that day was windy/rainy and the tailwind aided us into arriving 20 minutes early. We drove the back roads into the part of town where he lived. That same day in the span of three hours I heard Paula Cole's "I Don't Wanna Wait" four times: At Logan, at Albany, Ogdensburg, and in the car headed to Gouverneur. I didn't realize that the song still had staying power.

Wrong.  It's got the Lifesavers candy memorial.

[Flint1979]

Anyone giving a "worst cities in New York" list without Newburgh is automatically wrong. Having been to nearly municipality in the state (and all on the state highway system), I would easily rank that as the worst.

The only reason Newburgh isn't on my list is because I've never been there.
From what I've seen on Street View, it would definitely be included if I'd been there.

Just take one trip there and you'll put it on this list. Beacon on the other side of the Hudson didn't seem as bad as Newburgh. I couldn't wait to get out of Newburgh when I was there.

[Flint1979]

Speaking of bad experiences in New York. I took a trip to NYC about 15-16 years ago and that was the last time I ever ate at a Burger King. It was located on the Thruway somewhere between the Tappan Zee Bridge and The Bronx. The place was disgusting and mind you this is at a service plaza on the Thruway every trash can was overfilled with trash, there were trays sitting on the tables dirty and I thought to myself A) I'm not fucking eating here and B) I'm never eating at a Burger King again because I haven't ever had a good experience at one. They are slow, their food tastes like shit and you can smell the place over a mile away. But anyway that was the last straw with BK for me. I know that they probably have some damn good locations but I've never tried to find one.

New York's neighbor over in New Jersey has some dandy cities in it most of which have probably been already mentioned, Atlantic City, Camden, Patterson, Newark, every city along the Hudson River that's as overcrowded as NYC is. On Staten Island there was a neighborhood in the northern part of the borough called Mariners Harbor that I found pretty depressing as well.

[webny99]

The closest declining area to much of the US population is in western/central NY or most of WV, and the former has more population and reason to go there. This why NY is mentioned so much in this thread.

You could also include much of northern and western PA, excluding Pittsburgh. That makes it a contiguous area.

[dkblake]

I'd add Gouverneur, NY to that list too. My dad lived there from 2009-2015. The last time I was there was for Thanksgiving '14. We were turning on to Rock Island Road after driving up to the Reservation (cheap smokes) and he muttered "I need to get the fuck out of here." One of the worst McDonalds I've been to was in Malone  (cold burgers, limp fries [like they'd been sitting there since October], and strange yokels.) In order to get to Gouverneur, I flew into Ogdensburg from Albany on Cape Air. The weather that day was windy/rainy and the tailwind aided us into arriving 20 minutes early. We drove the back roads into the part of town where he lived. That same day in the span of three hours I heard Paula Cole's "I Don't Wanna Wait" four times: At Logan, at Albany, Ogdensburg, and in the car headed to Gouverneur. I didn't realize that the song still had staying power.

Wrong.  It's got the Lifesavers candy memorial.

Gouverneur is an excellent choice for depressing- I lived in Potsdam for a few years and Gouverneur just didn't seem to have a reason for being. Never mind if you're driving along route 11 to Canton or Potsdam you're not yet close enough to feel like you're getting anywhere. Watertown is up there as well, though Thompson Park somewhat redeems it.

Martinsburg or Wheeling are also pretty depressing; I stopped in both on different trips essentially to say that I did something in West Virginia, and I think I ended up eating bad food at cheap diners on Main Street.

[cl94]

Anyone giving a "worst cities in New York" list without Newburgh is automatically wrong. Having been to nearly municipality in the state (and all on the state highway system), I would easily rank that as the worst.

The only reason Newburgh isn't on my list is because I've never been there.
From what I've seen on Street View, it would definitely be included if I'd been there.

Just take one trip there and you'll put it on this list. Beacon on the other side of the Hudson didn't seem as bad as Newburgh. I couldn't wait to get out of Newburgh when I was there.

Beacon really cleaned itself up in the past 20 years or so. My dad talks about it being nearly as bad as Newburgh in the 80s. But Newburgh...yeah, it's still as bad it has always been. Similarly, if I was making a list of "most depressing NY cities in 2000", Troy would definitely be on that list, but it has improved greatly in the past 15 years.

As far as why so much of New York sucks...Upstate NY is Rust Belt and Appalachia. Probably the two most depressing cultural regions of the country. There are pockets of nice (mostly in the eastern part of Upstate), but Central and Western NY have a lot of decay.

[webny99]

As far as why so much of New York sucks...Upstate NY is Rust Belt and Appalachia. Probably the two most depressing cultural regions of the country. There are pockets of nice (mostly in the eastern part of Upstate), but Central and Western NY have a lot of decay.

I would say the Mohawk Valley and Western NY (west of Batavia) are the most depressing areas. The Finger Lakes region is probably the nicest part of Upstate. The scenery doesn't quite rival the Adirondacks, but it's plenty affluent and a lot less run down than the North Country. Other than Auburn and perhaps Waterloo (as discussed upthread), the area bounded by I-90/I-81/I-86/I-390 isn't bad at all.

[hbelkins]

Martinsburg or Wheeling are also pretty depressing; I stopped in both on different trips essentially to say that I did something in West Virginia, and I think I ended up eating bad food at cheap diners on Main Street.

Totally different vibes for me. Wheeling is both a Rust Belt river town and a mountain town. But I don't get that impression of Martinsburg at all. It's more like a DC suburb, or a Shenandoah Valley town in Virginia, to me. Martinsburg doesn't really feel much different than Staunton, Harrisonburg, or Winchester. Plus, it definitely seems to be thriving more than Wheeling. Isn't the biggest shopping-retail area of Wheeling actually out of the valley in Ohio near the western end of I-470?

[Flint1979]

Martinsburg or Wheeling are also pretty depressing; I stopped in both on different trips essentially to say that I did something in West Virginia, and I think I ended up eating bad food at cheap diners on Main Street.

Totally different vibes for me. Wheeling is both a Rust Belt river town and a mountain town. But I don't get that impression of Martinsburg at all. It's more like a DC suburb, or a Shenandoah Valley town in Virginia, to me. Martinsburg doesn't really feel much different than Staunton, Harrisonburg, or Winchester. Plus, it definitely seems to be thriving more than Wheeling. Isn't the biggest shopping-retail area of Wheeling actually out of the valley in Ohio near the western end of I-470?

Pretty much St. Clairsville. Exit 218 is the exit with the mall and everyhing. I stayed at the Red Roof Inn there about 15 years ago and it seemed kind of like it's own little area not really part of Wheeling or even really St. Clairsville. Downtown Wheeling is like 9-10 miles from there. It just seemed like a development plopped down in the middle of nowhere.

[GaryV]

It just seemed like a development plopped down in the middle of nowhere.

So, like Birch Run.  Yes, there's a town there.  But the development has nothing to do with the town.

[Flint1979]

It just seemed like a development plopped down in the middle of nowhere.

So, like Birch Run.  Yes, there's a town there.  But the development has nothing to do with the town.

The development there has to do with I-75 running through the village so yeah basically the same thing but this is Wheeling's main retail area. It'd be like Birch Run being the main retail area for Flint or Saginaw pretty much. Another reason I think is that it's the northbound exit for Frankenmuth as well.