The Ten Worst American Cities to Live In

Bully Magazine ^ | Ken Wohlrob

[Hillary's Folly]

Bully's "Ten Worst American Cities To Live In" List

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By Ken Wohlrob

10. Seattle

Seattle would seem to have everything going for it. Great music, good restaurants, a beautiful landscape, a range of ethnic cultures, and centralized collection of hi-tech businesses that attract brainy folks from places like San Francisco (ever since that city hit the economic slide). So what makes Seattle one of the ten worst cities to live in? Well it's those same techies who fled San Francisco to seek Seattle's venture-capital rich environment, usually after watching the movie Singles, who have turned this once humble and artistic community into a plague of cellphone sporting, PDA carrying idiots who fly around the streets in their Volkswagens while listening to the Flaming Lips. You know that annoying jackass who walks around in the cellphone commercials saying, "Can you hear me now?" He's the official mascot for Seattle. About the only consolation to all this is that Seattle still has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation.

9. Toledo

The first of the Ohio Triplets on our list, Toledo would be the perfect place to re-make The Omega Man. This mostly due to the fact that this Midwestern hole is so bleak, so gray, so devoid of life, that except for rush hour, you wouldn't know that anyone actually lived in Toledo. Forget civic pride, everyone in Toledo knows the city is a hellhole and just stays home to watch TV. Last time we visited, the only after hours joint was located in a hotel for men. Toledo's official city slogan should be "Toledo…We're…well…ah screw it."

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"What can we say about Miami except that it brings out the worst cheesy tendencies in people of all races, creeds, and colors."

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8. Los Angeles

If you look at some of the most talented people to ever walk the planet that ended up destroying themselves - Hemingway, Bruce, Belushi, Morrison, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Welles, and yes even Osbourne - all have one thing in common. LA.

7. Salt Lake City

This one should be obvious to any intelligent human: Mormons and lots of them. Need we say more?

6. Cincinnati

If you took Chicago, sucked out every last ounce of culture including its thriving music scenes and quality restaurants and bars, leaving a graying hulk of skyscrapers and a complete lack of night life, then you would have Cincinnati. To some Cincinnati is the greatest city in the U.S. - usually these folks are old, white, Christian fundamentalists, confined to wheelchairs, and are very scared of "coloreds." If you are not this type of person and you live in Cincinnati and like it, you have mental problems and should seek professional help.

5. St. Louis

The "Gateway to the West" has three strikes against it. First is that St. Louis has the highest crime rate of any U.S. city. Second, the main architectural landmark looks like an unfinished McDonald's logo. Third, Bob Costas lives there.

4. Atlanta

Any place nicknamed "Hotlanta" has to suck big time. Here's the catch: Did you ever meet someone who went to New York City and said, "I didn't like it, it was too dirty and oh my God there were all these weirdoes." Usually in the next sentence they'll say, "But I really like Hotlanta, it's so cool down there." That's because Atlanta is the city of choice for suburbanites who don't really like cities. Hence Atlanta has turned into nothing more than an over-sprawled suburb, just with more bad bars.

3. Miami

What can we say about Miami except that it brings out the worst cheesy tendencies in people of all races, creeds, and colors. If you want to see blacks, whites, and latinos at their intellectual lowest, than Miami is just for you. Gaudy neon, bad dance clubs, dopey fashionistas, y'all come back now ya hear!

2. Phoenix

Only an idiot would want to spend most of the year trapped in air conditioning. Such an idiot usually moves to Phoenix. Then this dope will say, "Yeah but it's a dry heat." To make matters worse there is absolutely nothing to do in Phoenix besides run from your car's air conditioning to your house's air conditioning. Or you can play golf. Otherwise, they should tear the whole metropolis down and let it just rot back into the desert.

1. Cleveland

The obvious choice for worst city to live in is Cleveland. Not so much because of the lack of culture. Nor is it the lack of a thriving night life. And it is not the constant economic pall that looms over the city. What really makes Cleveland the worst city in all of America is the fact that it shares many of these qualities with other cities - such as its Ohio Twin, Toledo - and refuses to acknowledge it. As a recent article in the Washington Post pointed out, Cleveland peaked in the 1930s and has been on the downslide ever since. To make matters worse, the Plain Dealer - the local city newspaper - found that the higher a young person's education degree, the more likely said person was to move out of Cleveland. In fact it was one of the only three major metropolitan areas in the 1990s to experience such a mass exodus of intelligence. In essence, smart people leave Cleveland while the dumb stay to crank out children and watch the Indians games. Now if you said this to the average Clevelandite, they would call you an a-hole, pound their fist on the table, and insist that Cleveland has just as much to offer as New York City or Chicago. It's almost as if the citizens have become desensitized to the obvious. At least the Toledoans have a clue, but Clevelandites like their city just the way it is and they're damn proud of it…with the closed steel mills, and bad wing joints, and those horrible blues bands that all play a terrible rendition of "Mustang Sally."

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© 1998-2003 Bully Magazine

[Saundra Duffy]

This one should be obvious to any intelligent human: Mormons and lots of them. Need we say more?

This is interesting. Mormon hating. Well, one time the governor of Missouri issued an extermination order against Mormons. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[smith288]

Big Wally? do they have indoor plumbing yet?

You oughta see the proposal for Genoa... Right now, we have a 400 seat sanctuary/activity center...well, a new 5,000 seat Genoa-dome is going to be built along with community rec center, High School and Mission Office for the SBC...

Im not big on big churches but its better (IMHO) than Rod Parsely's World Harvest. hehe

[macrahanish #1]

I love Aberdeen and Dornoch.

[onyx]

Our day comes when they post the Top 10 Best Cities to live in. ;-)

Shush. We already have waaaaaay too many people. I liked our town best when we were kids and the Navy was our largest industry.

[Bikers4Bush]

Many, many times. I also have family living there.

[smith288]

make that 1200 seats not 400 seats that I stated previously...(im retarded....went to Big Nut)

[Scenic Sounds]

Shush. We already have waaaaaay too many people. I liked our town best when we were kids and the Navy was our largest industry.

Yeah, we do have too many people. It's impossible to adequately explain to people what we had as kids.

Pssst! ;-)

[onyx]

Re: pssst. I am pissed.

[Sofa King]

There's currently an exodus from Louisiana of young people with college degrees. The anti-business crap has done such a good job of preventing big business from taking root here that there are far too few career opportunities to keep productive people in the state. There are too many politicians whose first reaction to business is "how can we screw them out of as much money as possible".

[Sofa King]

How many conservative cities are actually out there? Cities tend to be havens for liberalism.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Hey, ya got a link to a picture of that Texans promo with Barbara Bush and those football black lines under her eyes?

I've looked all over the web for that image, with no luck. That billboard made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Look at the bright side of Seattle and Portland weather: cool, cloudy, and misty is great hiking weather, and there are plenty of places nearby to go hiking, camping, and fishing. Heck, if the dampness gets old, its only a 2-3 hours drive east through the Cascades to the deserts of Eastern WA and OR.

I love the NW climate.

[gcruse]

I survived the wonderful NW weather for three years, even to the point of thinking of the sun as the Evil Star of the Day. Can't tell you how happy I am to be in a part of the country in which you will never hear the word "sunbreak" in a weather forecast.

[RightWingAtheist]

At one time East St Louis in Illinois had the highest per capita murder rate, but that was about 20 years ago.

I love that scene in National Lampoon's Vacation where they take a wrong turn, and wind up there!

"Pardon me, but..."

"F%#& yo'mama!"

[RightWingAtheist]

a bunch of overpriced and over-rated scuzzy bars.

I was suckered into paying five dollars for a 7-Up when I was in a bar there

[cardinal4]

"Hey do you guys know the Commodores?"

[frodolives]

It doesn't count as a "city"- nothing in Idaho does- but I once spent a year in Pocatello one week.

[Dan from Michigan]

There is a Muskegon Township and a Benton Township. I don't know Muskegon Township, but the city is a little rough, and Muskegon Heights is bigtime rough. Benton is rough, but the city of Benton Harbor is possibly worse than Detroit.

[Ditter]

Well, like they say..... don't let the door knob hit you in the butt.... We have way too many people here anyway. I know where you should go, how about Dallas? ;9}

[COBOL2Java]

Yet, I know that San Francisco will always have a piece of my heart.

You left your heart there? :-)