Kettering
Even sounds like the diseased bum hole it is.

- Chavs? Check.
- Tesco's murdered the high-street to a point where Charity shops now number 1 in 2 and cash converters, Kebab shops and temp employement agencies fill the gaps? Check.

But the thing that will forever sum up Ket'rin for me was the exchange I overheard between a ratfaced, tracksuit wearing teenage girl being bundled out of the shopping centre by a policewoman for shoplifting (I suppose);
PC: "I know you Lucy, you're not like this - why you pretending to be such a Chav"?
Girl: "You can't just become a Chav - you have to be born into it"!

And that was said with such pride.

The only thing that makes Kettering look good is Corby.

*shudder*
(prescottsflu infected you at, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 7:03, 8 replies)

I know there's already been a few...
But Blackpool is pretty much the only place in the world I'll never again visit. My mate decided for his birthday that we'd all go to Blackpool for the night, book a hotel and go home the next day. I hadn't been there since I was a nipper so my memories of the place were a bit hazy, so I agreed thinking it'd be a good night. We got there in one piece and checked in. Our hotel was cheap but had possibly the best/worst feature I've ever seen, the genius wardrobe/shower! Yeah, a shower, in the wardrobe.

Anyways, we've got a few uni mates from Blackpool so we met up with those lads and the whole night went pretty well. It was after we got kicked out of the last club and it was our lot and this other gang. Now, when me and one particular mate like to sing football songs when we're pissed. Dunno why, we just do. We're Everton fans so we find it a bit funny to subject other drunk people to songs about teams outside the 'big 4'.

Turns out that these lads were Man Utd fans. There's not too much of a rivalry between our clubs, apart from North West proximity, so we thought of our biggest bragging rights over the Mancs. The 1-0 victory in the 1995 FA Cup final! It was 2004. We started singing a song about Paul Rideout, scorer of the winning goal. They proper kicked off. Even though, in the 9 YEARS since the final, we hadn't beaten them since. They'd won the Champion's League and every domestic cup (except maybe the League Cup). Surely they could see the funny side of a couple of supporters of an avaerage team celebrating a 9 year old victory?

No. This group of about 15 lads started beating the shit out of me and my 5 mates. Everyone else walked away with cuts and bruises. Not me. I staggered away with blood gushing from my mouth and the inability to support my own weight. About 50 yards down the road (another of my mates pretty much carried me there), I collapsed. I woke up for a moment in the back of an ambulance and then periodically in a hospital waiting room, sometimes seeing a mate asking a nurse why they haven't seen to me yet and pointing our that blood pouring from the mouth whilst being unconcious "is not right". I woke up at around 7, still hadn't been seen to, and decided to go back to the hotel. The nurse tried to stop me, but when she couldn't meet my demands of seeing a doctor in the next 5 minutes, I told her I was off.

After a long drive back home (I was the only one with a licence, gay), I went to hospital again as I couldn't open my mouth. I was seen within half an hour, x-rayed and told I had a broken jaw in 2 places. A metal plate for life and my jaw wired shut for about 6 weeks. Thanks Blackpool.


Edit: just put some breaks in, didn't realise I'd typed so much
(Visionaryofthe1980s www.myspace.com/visionariesofthe1980s, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 4:36, 11 replies)

Utica, NY.
I happen to have been born in New Hartford NY, a small town outside the thriving metropolis of Utica NY. I lived there for the first ten years of my life, before moving to a suburb of Rochester NY.

Shithole? Please allow me to tell you.

The only real growing business there seems to be the F.X. Matt Brewery, which produces the Saranac line of beers. Utica Cutlery is dead and gone, the lumber industry died around 1920, and all else has turned to rust and dust. When I was a child I remember my father referring to Utica as a dead city. So what is it now?

newyorktraveler.net/utica-lunatic-asylum/

According to Urban Dictionary: "A shithole. Located right in the middle of New York State and centrally located 5 hours away from 3 major cities (just far enough to be out of reach). Most people living there are either retarded or want to get the hell out. Did I mention it sucks?"
Winter's in Utica are proof that hell freezes over.

ask.metafilter.com/79777/why-are-houses-in-Utica-NY-so-cheap

Basically, Utica has no industry other than government at this point. The city is controlled by the Mafia, has harsh weather and is generally not a hospitable place to anyone. It's New Jersey without the charm, Mississippi without the education, Las Vegas without the entertainment. It had almost (but not quite) become a joke to Newark.

When people ask me where I'm from I reply, "Fairport NY. I graduated high school with Philip Seymour Hoffman's older brother, Gordon."

New York. It's like West Virginia, only further north.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Sat 31 Oct 2009, 3:51, 3 replies)

Also, Towyn.
It's a bleak, miserable hole of a place. If you think Rhyl is a tesco value parody of Blackpool, then Towyn is a Netto version of Rhyl.

Someone thought 'Oh here's a cold grey beach with little or no natural beauty. Let's dump some grey concrete and a couple of dingy caravans by it and call it a 'sea-side resort'. Whilst we're at it, let's give it a massive carboot sale every weekend just to liven things up. It'll be BRILLIANT.'

It fucking isn't, it's a sink of shite.
( Wicca'd Witch needs ideas for a new sig on..., Fri 30 Oct 2009, 23:49, 3 replies)

Hook, Basingstoke.
NOTHING good ever came out of Basingstoke. Ever.
( Wicca'd Witch needs ideas for a new sig on..., Fri 30 Oct 2009, 23:43, 8 replies)

Hamilton, Victoria, Australia
Earlier this year myself, a ginger fellow and a Swiss girl were driving through Australia in a bright yellow 1984 Mitsubishi Express 'cuz we could. While this wonderful workhorse eventually made an impressive loop of the entire continent it did have a tendancy to spack up at the worst possible time.

One such moment was on the drive up from the end of the Great Ocean Road up towards The Grampians, a long and tedious drive with little of note between the two points. An ominous rattling noise started up in poor little Tweety's gut, we hoped for the best and kept on driving, praying to the Gods of Backpacking that we didn't get stuck in a Wolf Creek situation. A few kilometers later the rattling had become significantly worse so we pull off to find a mechanic in the ass-end-of-nowhere town of Hamilton.

After a mechanic has tutted at the van a few times and told us that the alternator had almost cracked in half cuz of a shoddy job the mechanic back down in Melbourne had done we're told to make ourselves comfy for a few hours in town while he sorts us out (Great bloke, fitted us in in the middle of the day no fuss, didn't even rip us off like we expected!)

So we trot off into Hamilton and crack open the Backpacker's Bible, or the Lonely Planet Australia Guidebook as it's otherwise known, and set about finding out what there is to do here.

I'll paraphrase the book - "There is no reason to stop in Hamilton unless you really like wool"

That's pretty much it. The self-styled 'Wool Capital of the World's big attraction is the Giant Wool Bales and a Wool Museum, which yes, we did visit!

Oh, also, I'm originally from Holyhead... nuff said...
(happynoodleboy, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 23:33, Reply)

armadale
is an utter shitehole. utter utter shitehole.

findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20071111/ai_n21103691/
(imallamallama looking forward to llamageddon on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 23:17, 5 replies)

Hatfield
A highway exit and a draughty parking lot, really. There is a hotel where all the employees are unresponsive but smiling Indians and that has the look-and-feel of a slasher movie set..
There are no buses or trains. There are no restaurants, pubs or greasy spoons in Hatfield. The nearest curry is 12 miles away in a nice village.
It has a university strangely, i wonder what the students do on friday night. I can only assume they dig a hole in the shrub next to the highway, cover it with plastic and drink themselves in a coma. (bring your own bottle).

Ohyeah, i'm Dutch. I had lived in Britain for 6 months prior to going to Hatfield for a conference. I had lived in Bath. Bath is a town so lovely that i half expected to find it dismantled some day, by the same benevolent giant that must have built it the way geeks built little model towns for their model trains to run through. Oh Bath, sigh....
(bovine intervention, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 22:54, 4 replies)

Yate
Yate is near Bristol, and suffers terribly from edge-of-city syndrome - it has nothing of any real note socially speaking, because everyone goes into bristol for nights out etc, meaning that the teens who cannot afford this hang around on street corners drinking cider, fighting and mating. The best Yate has to offer is a branch of Rileys, the pool-and-drunken-chavfights chain.

To clarify my opinions on Yate, you have to understand that i was born in Bridgwater, and even i think Yate is a shithole...

The town as a whole is spectacularly like the greenroom of an episode of Jeremy Kyle. Once while acquiring lunch, a colleague of mine (we work in nearby Chipping Sodbury, which is pleasant in a posh-but-deliverance kind of way) overheard one of the local females telling another

"ere, 'is cock was so big i was gonna stop and text you!"
(court escaper, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 22:42, 4 replies)

Askam
in cumbria. Now i've been to Barrow in furness. I've been to Millom. I've even stopped off (rather than driven through like everyone else) to Dalton in Furness. but! i have dared go to askam! i shall say no more other than provide this link:

www.flickr.com/photos/obscuracamera/2190534404/

Askam. Don't go.
(DreddPirateBob has watched every scifi film ever on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 22:38, 4 replies)

Crewe
.....SHIT!
(BHMM, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 21:46, 2 replies)

Sure, Basildon is bad but haven't you been to Romford?
Lived there 5 years of skipping over sick on pavements, OK maybe some of it was mine.
The whole of Sarf London, never seen so much excrement everywhere
Hounslow, a smearing of kak would improve it
Greenock & Glasgow, what nice towns they'd be if you removed all the people....
Fourgeres in France, they should test their nukes there
Sheerness, Croydon, Bootle, Harold Hill, Slough - what's the point?
(CleverTrevor, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 21:19, 1 reply)

Tantobie
I've been to some utter middens in my time; I stay in Paisley, and know Greenock and Port Glasgow are just down the road... I've even been to Eastern Europe. Never been to a place as utterly soul destroying as Tantobie. Without fail, raining sideways, hurricane force winds, and people who look like they've never known anyone to smile.

Still... someone's gotta live there... !
(clearasmud, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 20:44, 2 replies)

Croydon
says it all really
(Just Harry What should I put here?, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 20:24, Reply)

But.....
Alan Moore - Northampton
Ken Loach - Nuneaton
Irvine Welsh - Leith
David Byrne - Dumbarton
Niall Griffiths - Toxteth
Alan Warner - Connel
Alan Clarke - Birkenhead
Shane MacGowan - Tunbridge Wells


Just a thought - shit towns exist globally but they can foster great writing, music and filmmaking which is generated from the general shitness..

Bathtub
(bathtub has renounced CS3 for paint.net, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 20:15, Reply)

Salt Flat, Texas
Been by there on my way between Carlsbad, NM and El Paso, TX. Blink and you'll miss it.

tinyurl.com/yk4cayk

Yes, that's the ENTIRE town.
(WillF http://www.flickr.com/photos/silverfischdotnet/, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 20:00, Reply)

Centralia, Pennsylvania
Never been there myself, but it has an interesting story.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
(WillF http://www.flickr.com/photos/silverfischdotnet/, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 19:54, Reply)

Ruen
People rate this town highly. Stunning catherderals etc...

Yeah? Well try driving round it!

I got in ok, getting out was a nightmare. Followed the signs, followed a map - and still ended up where I bloody started.

Couple that with the fact that it was the weekend of the Bastille celebrations and you can't get a hotel for love nor money either.

Got royally bollocked by the misses when we pulled up at one hotel in time to see a poor chap being taken away in an ambulance after having suffered a heart attack. I perhaps shouldn't have suggested that as they now have a room free.....

Finally got through it and arrived where I was supposed to 8 hours later. On the way back, I figured that perhaps I'd just been unlucky, or read the map wrong (this was pre-gps days).

Nope. The same frigging story on the way back - only this time I saw two coaches with UK plates and a Rugby motif on the site - I figured they'd be on their way to Cherbourg and followed them. For hours.

They were on their BLOODY WAY to the match, NOT, as I had hoped, on the way home.

Another 6 hours late for a bloody ferry.
(dchurch bah, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 19:37, 5 replies)

Fucks Sake. Gillingham, Kent
High street full of skankoid inbreds, junkie-fag-cancer skinny or Greggs' obese. All wearing bleached denim or bobbled skip salvage sportswear from a burned out JD clearance. Looks like the whole town chucks it's pus, cum & drool stained scumwear into the same boiling grey pisswater vat once a month in pursuit of achromate uniformity.

Game over man.
(Ronnie Spleen MMMMNEURRGH I AM A GAY SPAZ AND I LOVE IT UP MY BU, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 19:18, 1 reply)

Glenrothes
About five years ago if you did an image search with google for the word Glenrothes you got my artisitic camera work as the first result.

Pitteuchar Cannabis Crew

Glenrothes is not south side LA. It is home to some truly objectionable little piece of shite neds (chavs in Queen's English) who think they're hard because they drink Buckfast, shag and fight in the town park. As well as this they have stupid fucking names like The A Team if you live in Auchmuty or The Glammy Centre Casuals if you live near the Glamis Centre. To be fair to them they could probably take The Kersal Massive.

So glad I got out.
( djtrialprice, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 19:08, 2 replies)

I live in Millom.
Most people here think of nearby Barrow-In-Furness as 'the big city'.
( Angry Boss Bee I love horses, death to other animals, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 18:53, 4 replies)

Camden
I have witnessed the exchange of money for cocaine there, in broad daylight. Cocaine that was being stored in a babies hat. Charming place.
(Melody was not PMSing on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 18:40, 1 reply)

Ciudad del Este, Paraguay
Ciudad del Este, formerly called Puerto Stroessner after the ex-dictator of Paraguay. Truly one of the worst places I’ve been in my life. The long, and somewhat shabbily maintained, bridge crossing the half-dried up river border between Brazil and Paraguay was choked with cars, buses, and lorries, all full of Argentines and Brazilians eager to take advantage of the extensive smuggling and blackmarket operations that the town thrives upon.

We walked across the bridge, my friend, myself and a Brazilian taxi driver who was translating from Spanish/Guarani into Portuguese for us. Border control was a group of suspiciously Nazi-Germany-SA-looking guards with automatic rifles almost as tall as themselves. Two of them spat at us and a third demanded a bribe to get in. The town itself is relatively ugly – it exists solely to provide a black market and smuggling hub for the southern part of South America. The gerry-built buildings slumped next to the crack and scarred pavement, which in itself is commandeered by rickety wood and corrugated iron market stalls selling anything from Paraguayan lacework (usually of a high quality) to faked Hugo Boss gear. Men with suspiciously gun-like bulges loll insouciantly against copious amounts of faked merchandise, whilst Brazilian car thieves drive in stolen Mercedes and other luxury cars to sell. The President of Paraguay was caught driving around in a stolen Brazilian Mercedes a few years ago. He probably got it in Ciudad del Este (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1208609.stm). To be fair, this is probably less of a crime than that of his predecessor, who had his vice-President machine-gunned and grenaded to death. We ambled through the streets, choked by fumes from the cars, pestered to buy gold, heroin, women, guns. A Paraguayan came up to me and offered to sell me an oblong wooden box, engraved with a swastika. Inside were two SS knives and a ceremonial luger. He’d got it off an elderly German man who had lived in Paraguay since 1945, and wanted $3000 for it. After I declined he offered me heroin, cannabis, women, or guns. He told me he could get anything.

We went in one of the premier shopping centres there. Heartbreakingly beautiful Paraguayan girls lounged around, selling faked perfume and makeup to Brazilian and Argentine women. One tried to interest me in a fake Yamaha piano (it was called a Yomaha), and then in something called a Ploystation. I was tempted, as I’d fallen in love with her deep brown eyes, but I realised that it wasn’t the best thing to take home.

Outside again, we ran into a police patrol drinking maté, and, being gringos, they started talking to us. Apparently gunfights between rival smuggling gangs are common, so the police just dump the dead bodies in the river between Brazil and Paraguay so that no one has to investigate. There is also a suspicion that there’s a cell of Hamas based there, responsible for a series of bombings in Buenos Aires in 1992-94.

Ciudad del Este – the only place I’ve ever come across with a combined Supermarket-Brothel.

Ciudad del Este – reputed second largest exporter of Scotch in the world after Scotland at one point.

Ciudad del Este – smuggling capital of South America.

It’s a shithole…. but if I had the chance I’d go back again tomorrow.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 18:39, 2 replies)

Tenby
A tourist trap of a town whose centre is stuck in multiple timewarps - Late Norman, Tudor, Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and everything else in between except modern, as all new builds in the centre are mock Georgian/Victorian. With everything facing the sea front painted in pastel hues.

The town itself possesses an abundance of hotels, B&B's, cafes, takeaways, 5 members clubs and 16 pubs (for a town of 6,000). There's bugger all in the way of high street chain stores for shopping [Smiths, Boots, New Look, Sainsburys, Tesco - that's it]. The nearest nightclubs are both 2 miles away from the town centre in opposite directions (great for the local Taxi's).

The only other recognisible form of entertainment, for those who are fed up of drinking, is the cinema with 1 screen and 1 showing per day outwith the summer holidays when it can be 2 showings per day, with the outside possibility of it being 2 different films. The exterior is brightly painted, the interior is however stuck in the 1970's with narrow brown velour seats, well worn 70's patterned red carpet throughout and a strong smell of damp in the auditorium. The only upside is that this usually means you have a near free pick of the seats for most blockbusters.

The sedate nature of the town makes it a magnet for retirees and those with young children. It is so quiet, that minor acts of vandalism, such as scratched cars and upturned benches, have been known to make it into the local paper, with the details of the PC assigned to the case given, so the cad can be apprehended.

Hence why most youths stay in education as long as possible to find an adequate means of escaping the town, with very few returning after uni.
(trainee mad doctor is currently trying to build a secret laboratory, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 18:21, 2 replies)

Penge
Just the name... "Penge." Is it too close to Mange?
(Rikaitch is full of crap ideas., Fri 30 Oct 2009, 18:19, 2 replies)

Greenock
...where Pirate ships go to get robbed.
(MartinB9999, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 18:17, 3 replies)

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
I grew up, as most of my colleagues and friends don't believe because I have a Kentish accent (going to uni in Canterbury and living in Ashford with a man from Whitstable will do this to you), in the Midlands. Hinckley, to be precise.

Hinckley's chief exports are Una Stubbs, socks, tights, the hansom cab, Triumph motorbikes and chavs. The local activities include smashing things, glaring at anyone who is not locally born and bred with intent to look at them funny when they notice, getting pregnant, and incest. Friday nights in't town are overseen by a very powerful police presence through the rather grandly named "pedestrianised area" for when the inevitable fight between the natives and the knuckle-draggers from neighbouring (and equally shit) Nuneaton come kick-out time. The pubs will serve anyone who looks over 18 or is willing to flash her norks to get in, and the town's two clubs are where the ever-evolving strains of STDs are cultivated. For those too spotty or baby-faced to get stabbed drink in the pubs, there's always the park, the car park behind the theatre, the council gardens or the churchyard, after all. There is no cinema, no alternative nightlife, no bowling alley, nowhere for those whose ambitions in life are not to drink White Lightning and get fingered in an alleyway to hang around, hence the local propensity for smashing things for something to do. There is graffiti on the wall next to the theatre that reads "THATCHER OUT" that was there when I moved there in 1990, and was still there, although faded, when I moved away in 2006.

Hinckley is the same place where this happened, and the council did fuck all about it even though they knew it was going on.

Length? 16 years' worth of field notes.
( Maladicta, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 18:02, 12 replies)

Manchester (the city that thinks it's a town)
Got sent to this throbbing muscle of a city earlier this year. Thursday night - 8.15 - went to the Corner House, reputedly a lively arts venue for the hep cats o' the North. Bar closed, last films already half-shown, dead. Crossed a desolate city centre on foot, back to hotel. 2.30 a.m. I was awoken by a gang fight on the street outside. Highly entertaining. Like a live version of most modern british cinema, only in Manchester the police don't turn up. I don't blame them really. Lots of yelling, screaming, posturing for quite a long time. Or maybe it was a dream?
(flapbat chocolate cornflake mini bites 2 for 4 pounds, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 17:54, 2 replies)

Croydon
I've only passed through, but the view from East Croydon station looked very post-apocalyptic, deserted office blocks, a chill wind.. all it needed was zombies
( Finite "Aardvark sorted out my shit!" on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 17:22, 3 replies)