[ChicagoConservative27]

Pine Bluff sounds terrible.

[Regulator]

South Chicago is better?

[usurper]

Pine Bluff sounds terrible.

My broke son just bought a house near there. It was about 300K. He says the area is quite lovely. The lack of jobs does not concern him as he's never had a job anyway.

Ahh, this generation.

[ansel12]

Poor retirees should jump on this and deals like it in other areas, homes, yards, fences, trees, driveways, electric meters and water meters, city sewer, city streets, it is a great deal for an old guy using all of his social security to exist in an apartment or junk trailer somewhere.

I have mentioned this for decades, friends without much money could buy homes next to or close to each other in these places.

[lakeman]

Pine Bluff had 23 homicides in 2021.[63] Pine Bluff had 23 murders in 2020 - a rate of 56.5 murders per 100,000 people. The national average was 6.5 murders per 100,000 people in 2020.[64]

[bk1000]

There are reasons for this.

[AppyPappy]

Some of this is retooling. You go from being a blue collar working town to a retirement town. Bluefield WV is an example. There is a large number of nice homes but few jobs to support them. Much of coal mining territory is cheap housing now.

[lefty-lie-spy]

Any news on Pine Ridge and the Jot ‘Em Down?
I think I could live there.

[DarrellZero]

It’s been that way as long as I can remember.

[martin_fierro]

I took a motorcycle ride through Pine Bluff once, and yeah, it's pretty bad.

I passed through some grandiose, barren civic center complex with equally oversized hotel alongside.

The hotel looked completely abandoned and falling apart, though reportedly Marriott will be renovating it (why?):

I'm told that crime in PB is reduced to pathetic levels -- like bicycle theft -- because there's nothing left to steal.

A remaining operational paper plant in the area is said to stink up everything.

The other big employer in the area appears to be a casino, so make of that what you will.

The motorcycle ride there bored me to tears, as the roads are all flat and straight. After that ride I try to stick to the Ozark mountains area.

[ifinnegan]

What’s the catch?

[Deepeasttx]

Was stationed at Pine Bluff Arsenal from 2002 and 2003. Needless to say, city proper was rarely ever visited. Little Rock (not much better but more options) was the choice of a night out.

[nitzy]

I’ll give you all a quick tip. If you are thinking of traveling through, staying in or moving to a particular city, just go to the city’s page in Wikipedia and scroll down to the demographics section.

Stay out of Pine Bluff.

[mfish13]

Smells of sulphur from the paper mill. High in crime. I had a large customer in the north part of PB. Just drove down frm the Little Rock airport hotel.

[niteowl77]

Some years ago a facility near us closed and a number of employees were able to relocate to the Little Rock area. They were none too pleased with the reality of greater Little Rock, and a few actually wondered if it would be better to commute from Pine Bluff... until they visited it. As one guy put it, "Pine Bluff is like Little Rock in hospice."

I think that everyone who made the move and stayed in AR eventually ended up in the Ozarks.

[dynachrome]

[RckyRaCoCo]

Things get any worse(CoL), thinking of expat to Ecuador/other.

[Responsibility2nd]

Once in a while, I’ll come across some YouTubes of some of the worst places to live in America. Places like Oakland, Detroit, Gary, and other Third World hell holes. Pine Bluff is one of those places. These Youtubers drive through the town recording block after block and mile after mile of urban ghettos that you do not want to be in day or night.

[AnAmericanMother]

My father-in-law was born there in 1916 . . . his father was a Methodist minister and they were just passing through.

Sounds like a good place to be from.

[nonliberal]

They have a ....... demographics issue.