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The Bronx. I was born in the Bronx. I also lived-and went to school there in 1980.
I was the only white person. I hung out with a guy from Brazil and drank booze in Poe Park. In school-A big black guy sed if I didnt do his homework he would beat my ass. This happened in the front of the classroom. The teacher was a cow. I sed-"f**k you." The guy ended up being my "protecter". Nobobody f**ked with me after that.
I could buy booze anywhere.I was only 17. But NYC is weird. No one gave a f**k. I had a couple bucks-they'd sell it. I had a job working on a garbage truck.
I saw an old woman take a s**t on a subay platform. I got in a fight with a street gang with my brother Glen. I passed out at Port Authority and fought 2 motherf**kers for my shoes.
NYC is f**ked.

I usta sit on the porch of this motherf**ker and drink. I was 17 years old.

(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l79/RCMerchant/3152275436_c052273f39_z.jpg)

This is at Poe Park.

Middlesbrough:
(http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2007/10/middlesbrough_450x297.jpg)

The North East of England. I was working up there with this guy and we were fitting show homes on new estates with blinds, curtain, shelves, doors etc...But when we got into Middlesbrough it was like a nuclear bomb had just hit. The sky was the dullest, greyest sky I have ever seen and if you took a total 360 look at the surrounding scenery there was nothing but huge factories billowing smoke in every single direction, in the distance behind every house. The houses themselves were all boarded up, most had roof's that had collapsed but people were still living in them! Stray animals roamed the streets and we even saw some kids no older than 10yrs old steal a car! Whenever we drove off site to get supplies, no matter what store we visited, the car park would always be full of broken glass and traces of blood. Middlesbrough is the worst place I've been in this country and it was even voted the worst place to live in the UK in a recent poll.

Bahrain:
(http://previous.presstv.ir/photo/20110318/tarapour20110318021138653.jpg)

I went with my mom & dad for a holiday to visit family over there. I was 9 years old at the time and it was about a month before my parents actually divorced. On the surface Bahrain is a beautiful place, especially the coastal areas which are like something out of a movie - pure paradise. But in certain areas and in particular, at night, the country is a scary world to be in. There's patrols crawling all over the place and violence breaking out, thieves and con-men so you have to watch your back. I remember vividly one night we got lost in this place that was like the middle of some desert and we got stopped by guys with machine guns wanting to check the car. Nothing bad happened but my mom, dad & I were pretty shaken up. There was always men in restaurants trying to offer money to my dad so they could have sex with my mom. This happened right infront of me, they didn't care. On the last night of the "holiday" my aunt and mom had a bust up and they threw us out. We had to sleep in a garden somewhere, as we didn't have any money or possessions and the police would not come out to resolve the situation. I don't remember the details of that night fully, but it sucked big time.

The North.

Everything Circus says is true.

Wow. I'm speechless,Circus. That's amazing.
I love true life stories.

A beautiful city with a horrible rep, New Orleans. Born and raised here (well, most of the time- 4+ months living in Houston during Katrina  :bluesad:)

RC- I don't think that people around the country/ world understand what Guliani did in NYC. I think if they had he would have done a lot better in 08.

I've never been anywhere truly messed up.

The worst place I've been is a suburb here in Brisbane called Fortitude Valley (The Valley to locals).  It's on the city fringe and is a weird mish mash of cultures.  It's basically a Chinatown.  There are ethnic supermarkets and all the usual shops and banks you get everywhere in the country.  Strip clubs and sex shops abound.  A methodone clinic takes up a shop front right in the main street. There's a huge pub with live music that houses a backpackers hostel and there are always foreigners of every kind around.  There's also street markets and poshy clothing stores and second hand charity clothing stores as well.  Also, lots of nightclubs with that stupid techno doof-doof type music.

It's also where the dregs of humanity live:  homeless people, drug addicts, drunks, massive wandering indigenous population who suffer from all three of those afflictions.  There are police everywhere.  It's pretty scary when the cops are wandering around wearing surgical gloves  :buggedout:

By weird contrast, because it's right next to the city, there are apartments that cost a bomb to live in.

I used to work there and dodging the unwashed masses got really old after a while.  I was never really  scared for my safety, but I did get yelled at by random losers.  Once a drunken aboriginal guy shouted at me "I'm sorry that we have better skin that you guys."  I shouted right back, "don't worry about it, I didn't ask."  :bouncegiggle:

As a general rule, I tend to avoid places that might result in me ending up damaged in the hospital.

Probably the Philippines in the 1980's.  Everything and everyone was for sale,  families sold their daughters into prostitution at age 12 to feed themselves.  I was a pretty puritanical young man, and I was nauseated at having to literally push my way through throngs of hookers at the gates of the Navy base just so I could go on liberty . . . I even got propositioned by a GUY when I tried going to a movie! (It was George A. Romero's MARTIN, I still recall that).  He came to the urinal next to mine, glanced down, and made his offer!  Yeeech!!!

Wow!  A fictional character came on to you?  :wink:

Over 15 years ago I was lost in NYC around 2 or 3 in the morning the night.  Never sure where exactly where I was, but I believe it was the Bronx.  One block was surreal.  Saw packs (yes, I'd call them packs) of young men, burned cars, and some woman beating the living crap out of her dog in the middle of the street.  It was like being stuck in a real life "Escape from New York" world.

In Korea we drove through hours of wet, cold, stinking rice paddies.  There was nothing but mud.  Even the trees and few dwellings looked like they were sinking into it.

I've been all over Europe but I've never been to any bad places except for this filthy rest stop in France near the Spanish border.
The men's toilet was gross, kind of like when they show gross toilets in movies: flooded with water, TP and urine, clogged sink, broken mirrors and windows.
They also had a small bistro there selling beverages, snacks and hot food. There was dirt and trash on the floor and flies circling the food, yet a few guys sat there eating. Yuck.

We recently had a Filipino restaurant open here. I usually like food from diffrent countries and ethnicities but that Filipino food was really disgusting! It's supposed to be very authentic - according to the staff. It seems to be mostly burnt, chewy pork you dip in cold vinegar, a mushy version of kim-chee, and slimy chicken.  Bleh.

The fried bananas were good and some of the stews look promising but I doubt if I'll try it again.

As far as places I've been I've never seen anything scarier than some of the very rural regions of north Alabama and Tennessee, the area where I 'born and raised'. DELIVERANCE was a Disney-fied documentary compared to some of the places I've seen, particularly in some of the almost forgotten family 'hollers'.

THE SOUTH!
EVEN DOGGETT CAN LIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :thumbup:

The Earth, there's a lot of messed up stuff here.

I grew up in Elwood, Indiana which was only moderately f*cked up when I was a kid there (no horror stories forthcoming, since this post opens with the 1980's Bronx anything I put here would make my childhood look like Disneyland). Notoriously it is the home of the Klu Klux Klan, but honestly I never actually saw any in person despite living less than a quarter a mile or so (as the crow flies) away from their purported main hangout which was a neglected cemetary in the woods (in another post I mention how where I grew up was a haunted area because it was remote). The one Klan rally they did have in town a bunch of mothers brought out their kids too because the cops brought horses to keep the crowd (all half-dozen of them) from getting out of hand. The mom's wanted their kids to get a chance to see and pet the horses so the Klan rally turned into a petting zoo. That was pretty much the end of any visible organized Klan activity in Elwood, they had just lost all power as they squawked their random hate messages in the megaphones while mothers ignored them and held their kids up to the cops horse to get a better chance to pet them.  Elwood now is really f*cked up because of a complete lack of any economic activity. Just drug addicts/bums are the only ones left in the town proper itself anymore and almost anyone with any marketable skills moved away to find work (including myself, yes I am part of the brain drain problem).

Jamaica in 2000 in Mountainside/Blackriver as a teenage missionary was a bit f*cked up but not nearly as bad as if I had been in Kingston. Jamaica however makes you appreciate infrastructure because although it is poor it is overall very well run as a country, they have drinkable running water, reasonably well established agriculture/fishing, some electricity, just no money. Crime was rampant though and we spent nights in a barred up manse for our own protection.  I went back in 2010 and as we drove through the same area and I didn't even recognize it. Where Jamaicans were walking barefoot (carrying files to rub off calouses) down roads in 2000 they were now zipping along in airconditioned cars in 2010. Where there was just empty fields they now have factories and some economic acitivity going on. Man did Jamaica change in 10 years for the better.

I've heard others from New York say the same thing as what Lester posted earlier that it's completely different than what it was like in the 80/70's. I don't know if RC ever went back to the Bronx, but you may not recognize it anymore.

The North sucks.

Its grim.


 :bluesad:

Last Halloween, a group of freinds and I took one of those haunted tours around the city of Cleveland.  This particular tour not only talked about places that where spousedly haunted but also places where great disaters or murders took place. While on the bus we took a drive over a place where a Gas Explosion killed over a hundred people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_East_Ohio_Gas_explosion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_East_Ohio_Gas_explosion)

Its a pretty run down part of town so nobody was let off the bus.  The story of what happened was heart breaking to listen too.

Delaware scares the sh*t outta me.

Some of the s**ttier places I've been. Hmmm.

Bahrain is pretty bad, and I don't doubt Circus' account one little bit. I honestly felt uncomfortable most of the time I was there.

East St. Louis is about as bad as it gets. I think it gets listed regularly as among the most depressed cities in the U.S. Massive urban decay that has been going on for decades. Remember the scene in National Lampoon's Vacation where the Griswolds pulled off before going over the bridge into St. Louis? That was East St. Louis they were pulling into, although I'm sure it wasn't actually filmed there. I pulled off the Interstate into East St. Louis while driving once while driving across country for gas, afraid my car wouldn't make it across the bridge into St. Louis proper. Once I pulled off and saw my surroundings, I got right back on the Interstate and took my chances.

  The worst place I ever visited was Brownsville Texas.  I don't know what it's like now but I was there about 20 years ago and unless things have seriously improved you should avoid it like the pague. It's a messed up border town. It features the worst of American and Mexican culture. There were some drug killings, which the locals thought stemmed from nearby Matamoros, which suppossedly houses a drug cartel.

There was also some kind of santeria/cult mass murder there about a year before I arrived. When I'd stop by someone's house it wasn't uncommon to see some kind of unusual religious fetishes, designed to protect the house from evil,  lining the mantle along with photos and in one case a life size portrait of Pat Robertson!

  Finally, at the time it was the stray dog capital of America. They'd roam around in huge packs. Whenever I'd leave a gas station I'd buy some little snacks and throw them away from me, just to get the dogs to clear out of my way.

 

Boston used to have a "red light" district know to the locals as "The Combat Zone."  It was right on the edge of Chinatown.  It was basically a cluster of porno theaters, sex shops, and bars full of strippers and hookers.  After the bars closed at night, the streets for several blocks around would be swarming with hookers.  One night I was there with one of my buddies, basically checking out all the bars.  We walked into one and it was really dark inside.  At first, we couldn't see much but we kept walking toward the bar.  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized there were about a dozen people in the place and they were all black . . . except my buddy and me.  No one said anything, but we were looking at them and they were looking at us and everyone knew we didn't belong in there.  So, we just casually turned around and walked out.  The next place we went into was a strip bar called "The Naked I."  It was a mixed crowd.  My buddy and I sat at a table and each ordered a beer.  My buddy said he would buy the first round.  At that time, you could get a beer in most bars for probably between $1.25 and $2.00.  The waitress brought the two beers and said, "That will be $7.50."  That was a s**tload of money at the time, so my buddy just sort of looked surprised, then reached into his wallet, pulled out some money and paid.  I think we stayed long enough for me to buy the next round, then we got the hell out of there.

Of course, we DID go back and hang around at other bars in the area from time to time.  I can't remember all the names, but one of the more popular ones was "The Intermission Lounge."  The first time I went in, a fat woman wearing garters, fish-net stockings, and lots of make-up took me by the hand as soon as I walked in the door, led me to the bar, and sat on my lap.  Then she asked if I would buy her a drink.  I knew what was going on, so I asked how much the drink for her would cost and the bartender told me $20!  Needless to say, I just bought my beer and she got nothing.

"The Combat Zone" has been cleaned up for years.  All those seedy bars are gone now and you don't see many hookers in the streets anymore.  I think there may still be one or two strip joints there . . . "The Glass Slipper" and maybe one other.  But it's nothing like it was 25 years ago.

Djibouti is, according to some Marines I know, a complete hole.  Trash everywhere, human filth everywhere, and an absolute crush of unhappy humanity.

One that came to mind for me was New Orleans, not too long after Katrina.  That city and it's outlying suburbs was absolutely demolished.  Months after the hurricane, and it still looked like the images you saw right after the hurricane demolished the place.  Worse, even, because trash had piled up.  I think there were even more rats after Katrina - which I didn't think was possible.  New Orleans has always been a rat metropolis.

Back in the old days my old girlfriend and I went to some truly stupid places like downtown Newark, NJ... one empty decimated block after another.  Persons threatening your life from across the street, but mostly burned out drug-addict havens.   :bluesad:  :lookingup:  Stupid.

Yup, New Orleans became a mess after Katrina. But that was just the start..... :bluesad:

Instead of the Forked River Nuclear Power Plant ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forked_River_Nuclear_Power_Plant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forked_River_Nuclear_Power_Plant)) we still have the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station which is located in Forked River, NJ, though it is earlier... (1969).  I visited the tributary in the shadow of the plant around 1980...?  There was a lot of this weird putty-like plastic along the riverbank...  :question:  The whole area was dead.  Tree stumps and blackened inlets.  

(http://www.nucleartourist.com/images/Limrick1.gif)

You're wrong there, Burgo: I walked in after you guys left, so she got me.  :wink:

I've been in the septic-tank of a large ferry boat. Does that count?

Very true about East St. Louis...  When talking about concealed carry law here in Missouri you can easily claim you want to carry a gun because you have to travel regularly through East St. Louis and give even the biggest gun haters pause..  Til they remember East St. Louis is in Illinois.  There are also black neighborhoods in St. Louis itself you don't want to drive into alone if you're white at night.

I was in east St. Louis for a meeting a few months ago.  I drove around a little before the meeting because I was early.  Lot's of boarded up buildings and questionable-looking people roaming the streets.  Luckily, I was only there for one night.

When I was 17 (1987) I went to West Germany as an exchange student, and we spent a day in East Berlin, which was still solidly Communist at the time. It was a pretty bizarre day. First we had a three or four hour train ride into the city from where we were staying, on an ancient train that looked like it pre-dated the war. When we got to East Berlin there were soldiers everywhere, and we always felt like there were eyes watching us everywhere we go. My camera was stolen while I went to the rest room in a cafe', which p**sed me off. It was just a little hunk-o-junk fifteen dollar Kodak that I'd bought in a KMart before the trip, but I guess to your average Iron Curtain schmuck something like that would've cost a year's worth of Rubles or whatever. Of course, being a young, dumb and full of c&m American teenager I wanted to speak to the manager of the cafe and raise hell but our chaperon told me flat out "Dude, just let it go. Seriously. LET. IT. GO."

We also toured the remains of a Nazi death camp in a town called "Plotzensee" which I will NEVER forget as long as I live. Up till that point in my life, the atrocities of WWII were just something I'd read about in Sgt. Rock comics or seen in movies. But seeing those gas chambers, bullet riddled walls, and rooms with meat hooks hanging from the ceilings drove it home that what happened was real... horribly real.

When we traveled back to the (non-Communist) side of the Berlin Wall at the end of the day, I practically kissed the ground. Then I got very drunk.

passing through Alabama back in 2002-3, I remember these rednecks chasing these two black guys down the road, and I heard gun shots. needless to say, I've never been to that part of Alabama. It was in the middle but closer to Mississippi.

The Bogside, Derry, Northern Ireland in 1998. If Hell exists, the parts of Derry I saw must be its foyer. I thought I'd been to some bad places but I was shocked. I was nineteen years old and don't know what I was thinking going there that summer. It wasn't just the city per se, which to look at on the surface wasn't worse than many other past-prime, economically struggling industrial towns, it was the psychological aura of the place, the sense of gloom and the fact its people, Protestant and Catholic alike, were haunted by the past and angry and afraid in equal parts. They all knew someone who had been killed. They all were worried. Behind a lot of bluff and bluster and hate spewing tough talk there was this palpable depression that oozed through even when they tried to be pleasant. Poverty, hatred, paranoia, social decay such as I never knew existed was there, and yet I heard over and over, "Things here are so much better now than they used to be during the Troubles." The thing that got to me most was all the children there growing up in that. Even murals painted on walls schoolchildren had to walk past every day furthered hatred and kept the darkness of the past going. Murals with the faces of IRA "martyrs" on them, and murals of masked men with guns showing what would happen to the enemies of the gangs who ran districts. The Red Hand of Ulster on the sides of other buildings some with legends like: "Catholics, Don't Let The Sun Set On You Here." It was the worst place I've ever been, including recently some lurid slums in Rio de Janeiro.