The Salton Sea
in California, in the desert outside San Diego. And all towns (read trailer trash parks) around it's shores.

The story of the Salton Sea goes like this:

Many moons ago, it was decided to build a dam across the Colorado river and flood a vast (20 miles across) area of the Mohave desert. This flooded area would then be stocked with fish, watersports would flourish and it would be a paradise, an oasis in the desert. The land around it was sold off at extortionate prices to the wealthy Californians/property developers.

The dam was built, the desert was flooded, the Salton Sea was stocked with fish. People built their new luxurious homes and revelled in their magnificence.

Only someone had cocked up. Nobody thought to analyse the mineral content of the bedrock below the desert floor. It was in fact a dried up salt lake.

All of the (freshwater) fish that has been released died. The same happened to the plants and trees. The Salton Sea lost it's appeal, land values plummeted, leaving thousands bankrupt. The dead fish washed up, and all of the beaches along the shoreline are made up not from sand, but from crushed fish bones. The stench of rotting fish hangs in the air for 30 or so miles around the lake. These days, the only remaining souls there are the once wealthy families who have now been relegated to trailer trash.

My brother and I were taken there by my parents and their best friends. My parent's friends live in San Diego, and the husband, John, is a senior director of a global pharmaceutical company, as such they have a rather lavish lifestyle in the rather lavish San Diego. So they all thought it right to show us youngsters the true meaning of poverty.

The experience has stuck in my mind vividly. I found it hard to understand that in the USA, especially California, there could be such a wealth divide. The USA truly is a polarized place of the haves and have nots. If you have no money, you are outcasts, the arsehole of America, swept out of public view.

I have seen slums and helped starving children build their school in Africa. They were poor, but at least they were recieving some international aid to help them. The people who live around the Salton Sea are living in the most vile, unhealthy place I have ever been to, in absolute squalour and poverty, with nothing from other countries or their own government.

Less than 3hrs drive from one of the wealthiest cities on the planet.
(Sir General ***WoW***, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 19:41, 4 replies)

The Isle of Sheppey (in particular Leysdown)
For those in the know, the Isle of Sheppey (off the north Kent coast) is shit. Nothing there, absolutely nothing. Apart from HMP Swaleside, a maximum security prison.

There is a history of incest on Sheppey. In fact, until the bridge was built across the Swale (water dividing the Isle of Sheppey from the normal world), there were only two last names on 'the Island'.

One of the few towns on Sheppey is called Leysdown. This place was left in the 50s. It reminds me of Royston Vasey. It's awful. Just awful. I have made a few trips through Leysdown at around 4am in the middle of January to go duck shooting on the mud flats on the south east coast of 'the Island'. Even at that time, in that season, there are strange looking people, standing on the pavement, looking at you as if you were an alien. It's wierd. I was glad to be armed, but I still locked my doors.

Another fellow was sitting on a bench at the side of the road. Except this bench was not facing across the road towards the open farmland that was there. Oh no. This bench was thoughtfully placed facing the brick wall lining the path behind it. And this chap was staring at the brick wall. That is how depressing and boring life is on Sheppey.

On one of my drives back from shooting, at around 10am in the morning, I passed a children's play park at the side of the road, with no fence to protect the children (not that they often see such modern things as cars on Sheppey, more likely horse and cart). Anyway, there were quite a few fathers with their children (probably having left the sister/matriarch at home) ferreting at the side of the road. Ferreting involves netting off the holes of a rabbit warren and putting a ferret down. The ferret then bites the rabbits, who bolt before being caught in the nets. It is then that they have their necks broken.

It struck me as odd, although ferreting is a common pastime for a lot of fathers with their boys, it just seemed wrong to be doing it in a children's play park, in broad daylight, in full public view.

This is the nature of the Isle of Sheppey. Please spare yourself some of your valuable time on this planet and never visit there. Ever.
(Sir General ***WoW***, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 19:24, 1 reply)

This place in America...
I got posted there for my new job. When I arrived, the first person I saw was lying dead in the road and being eaten by the local wildlife. I heard a noise behind me and these 3 really weird people were walking towards me. Well, I say walking, it was more of a shuffle...then from behind, someone grabbed my ankle and tried to bite me!

I put a bullet in his head yet that didn't deter the rest of them, and I tried shooting them but that barely slowed them down! I dived down a dark alley and next thing I know, I'm aiming at this cute little redhead with another one of those things behind her. She ducks and I drop him in one shot.

We dive out the alley and find a car to head to my office. As we're headed there, we exchange names and smalltalk, and I find out she's looking for her brother, who I assume is a resident in this place. We pull out in front of this petrol tanker as she finds a gun in the glove compartment. Suddenly, another one of those things dives out from the back seat as we approach a T-Junction. I miss the junction and we smash into a lamp-post. The thing goes through the windscreen and as we're checking for injuries, we have to dive out the car as the petrol tanker barrels into us and explodes!!

We get split up and I tell her to head to my office...and to cut a long story short, we meet up at the office and find out that a multi-national pharmaceutical company has released some sort of virus, which turned the locals into what they called zombies! We manage to escape with the only other survivor, a young girl.

After we escaped, I joined a government agency, and you really don't want to know where they sent me next!
(TheUnthinkingMinority needs some new music to listen to., Sat 31 Oct 2009, 18:57, 1 reply)

Leigh
When someone from Wigan thinks somehwere else is a dump it must be a shithole!
(PieEater, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 18:17, Reply)

Leeds is shit. Unless you moved here for the office work or commute.
It has aspirations to be London and has decided the way to go is up, and architecturally and socially is expressing that as quickly as the council can sell off the land and chuck off the locals.

As such you end up with an area where there is no heart, where there is only sky-high glass and metal, with walls, cameras and spikes that only those higher educated folks from out of town could possibly qualify to park behind or afford to live in, shopping complexes with guards on the entrances and exits making sure only the elite are allowed in, and a whole bunch of poorer folks who were brought up in the area left to look at it and wish they could touch it without being arrested.

Chavs and thieving scally scum are rife here and I really aren't surprised, if you don't have the money or the higher class, you are NOTHING in Leeds, and thanks to the high rises, can't even see the sun mid-summer unless you live in the highest apartments that get the rooftop gardens.

It's London without the wages, higher benefits or born-into class system, you have to bring that money and class IN to to live comfortably and be welcome here, and if you're born anywhere locally, that ain't you, you get to clean the streets for minimum wage, and at £10 in and £4 a pint, a night out is FAR too 'exclusive' for you, you get to stay at home, drink Stella and plot your revenge.

Blade Runner in the centre of Yorkshire without the cool umbrellas or sex-bots. Avoid if you can.
( ..wil, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 17:24, 26 replies)

Watford
After my best mate threatened to burn said home town of my ex-boyfriend to the ground my Dad responded 'Yep. I can see the headlines now. Quarter of a million pounds worth of improvements done to Watford'.

I think his estimate was probably conservative.
(mallory, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 17:11, Reply)

Kvatch*
Went there once. Place was a fucking mess.

*If you get this, you're a nerd.
(chrisdood Why yes, I am the shizzle, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 17:01, 13 replies)

Grantham...
...a previous winner of the prestigious 'most boring town' award, also, incidentally, a winner of "Station of the Year" - medium sized category - in 1998. Get in.

Grantham is a place of quiet desperation and apathy, famous only for having been the birthplace of the Devil's own, Margret Thatcher. The mostly boarded-up high street consists only of pound shops and charity shops and the town as a whole is grey, miserable and totally bereft of, well...everything! 'G-Town' is also home to the notorious Earlsfield 'Earsy' Estate, home primarily to underage single mothers, hard drug users and alcoholic 'Kevs' on the fiddle. It is a place where the law no longer dares to tread...

As some wise soul once said- the best thing to come out of Grantham is the A1!
(Bob Frapples is de-lurking on, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 16:27, Reply)

London.
It's grey, it's wet, it smells of piss, the people are uncouth miserable bastards, and it's ridiculously expensive. Fuck off London.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 16:13, 6 replies)

Basildon
I live in a shit town near Basildon. The claim to fame of said town is being home to that vile Paris Hilton lookalike, Chantelle Houghton, who was in Celebrity Big Brother despite not being a celebrity.

We've been home to a few BB contestants now, come to think of it.

The town was also in the news a couple years ago after a kid at the local school got stabbed with a football post. Lovely stuff.
(killthearcade, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:59, 2 replies)

Runcorn.......New Town
This from runcorns local paper

HALTON Lea shopping centre, once the flagship of Runcorn New Town, has been put into receivership.
Then it quotes "It was absolutely gorgeous when it opened". and my favorite line “You could buy a man a shirt".
images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.runcornandwidnesworld.co.uk/resources/images/1047782/%3Ftype%3Ddisplay&imgrefurl=http://www.runcornandwidnesworld.co.uk/news/4643588._Business_as_usual__at_Runcorn_s_Halton_Lea_shopping_centre___say_receivers/&usg=__jMMsWabmEHv6o9f_GhNFIXsltAk=&h=468&w=310&sz=24&hl=en&start=48&um=1&tbnid=lCvJtsf2AdOauM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=85&prev=/images%3Fq%3DRUNCORN%2BSHOPPING%2BCENTRE%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26start%3D36%26um%3D1

farm4.static.flickr.com/3171/2610595250_3124b4cb8e.jpg
(derlin9753, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:49, Reply)

I once lived in Wolverhampton?
( johnvile dsfadsfgafgf, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:45, 4 replies)

Silent hill
Fucking maddest place i've ever been to.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:28, Reply)

Welwyn Garden City
My goodness!

Having seen Hatfield mentions 4 times already I thought that I would tell you about my fair town which I grew up in, WGC which is neighbour's with Hatfield. Welwyn is a nice place but is really only suited for 2 types of people - people with kids and old people. So great if you are bringing up children or retired but not so great if your ambition in life is not to add to the population.
I moved away some years ago and return every 6 months or so as my family demand the pleasure of my company and every time I go back, it hasn't changed. Apart from the Shredded Wheat factory and Tesco's head office, there really isn't any decent employment (unless you want to work in a shop).
WGC has no major supermarket except for an over priced Sainsbury's. If you want cheap food you have to travel to Hatfield for Tesco or ASDA. Neither are assessable with out a car as they are on the outskirts of the town and you wouldn't risk going on the bus.
It is 23 miles from London meaning that a lot of professionals live there and commute, causing the house prices to be massive. If you want to get a council flat then you have to have a kid, I was told this by the housing officer, nice huh?
There is lots of young single mums, when I visit the town centre I do happen to see all the skummy girls I went to school with normally with 2 or 3 kids (considering that I am 26 now 3 is quite a small number).
Anyway, welwyn town centre has 3 pubs, The Cork which was called the Cork and Cask, (had a huge refit then burnt down so they had to do it again, ) It is overpriced but because of that it isn't so bad to go into.

The Doctors Tonic (renamed something else but no-one ever uses the new name) full of the chav skum.
And then the Fountain, which apparently has a 'night club' above it (more like a stab club) frequented by the local gypsy groups so if you want to come out alive then just don't bother to go in.

There is no nightclub, you would have to go to stevenage for the delights of the leisure park. If you have a car then great, no worries! It has a huge car park but if you have to get the train then don't expect to get home after 12pm on sat as it shuts. So you have the choice of going home early or spending £20+ on a taxi home, (wgc is 20 miles from stevenage). There used to be the 'squash club' which was interesting to say the least. It was walking distance from my house but you had to be either really really drunk or bloody stupid to go there after the pubs shut. It's nick name was the sticky floor club (need I say more?) but the building it was in was sold and now houses are there.
wgc is a relatively quiet and safe place to live, walking down the main road at close to midnight the other week there was no one around and strangely 2pm on a Tuesday seems to turn it in to a ghost road as well.

I got so bored of WGC that I decided to move to London, living on the Isle of Dogs (nice) and in Leyton (bad). Leyton was not a nice place to live, having to walk past the crack users sitting on park benches at night and feeling very unsafe due to the fact that white people are the minority there. The road I lived on had a pub at one end and the Layton Orient football club at the other end so on match day you didn't venture out the door in case you got caught up with the hooligans. Walking past the local 'Massage parlour' was funny though as it never shut and you would see all sorts of men heading in there for a 'massage with perks'.

I then moved to Liverpool and I've been here 2 years next month. I will say that I am more scared to walk outside at night here then I ever was in Leyton, or London in general for that fact! I am still getting used to the scouse accent and I do find it hard to understand people. A scouser could be saying the nicest thing possible but due to the fact that the accent is so harsh I always think that they are being nasty. Sometimes I have to get my boyfriend to translate for me (he's from Liverpool but the posh side so he has has a slight lilt).
Liverpool is rather amusing to a southerner like myself, I will never forget the amusement and shock to see most of the women in asda wearing their pj's even though it was the middle of the day.I thought it was bad in the supermarkets but then I've seen girls on the high street in them shopping. My friend came to visit from Amsterdam and we had to go to ASDA and I told her about the pj brigade and I was upset when we didn't see any of them. If they arn't in their pj's then they are in velour tracksuits with their hair in those stupidly big curlers. Also Liverpool only seems to have 3 kinds of shops, tanning salons, hair dressers and pound shops.

Then you have all the chav scum boys who's uniform consists of black trackies and those stupid hats made famous by the chav scum group 'n-dubs'. What I don't understand is they need for them to walk around with their hands down their pants, do they think that their dicks are going to fall off if they let go?

To be fair everyone moans about their home town but hates it when an outsider does the same. WGC is fine and Liverpool is an experience but it doesn't even match up to my house mates home town which is Londonderry. Enough said really.
(Soaps Roller derbying your way since, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:20, 11 replies)

Thurso
The most northerly town on the UK mainland, It seems to be full of touring pensioners and not much else.

Stopped in a hotel there and discovered I was the youngest guest by at least 50 years, also found the beds have rubber covers over the mattress no doubt to ease the cleanup of piss from the elderly, incontinent bladders of the usual visitors.
( Terry Oblong There's nobody here but us chickens on, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:14, 5 replies)

This looks like paradise on Earth
"Schedule your next corporate or family event this season at Gobbler's Knob Family Fun Park"

Go there
( MisterPunch did it that way on, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 15:04, 3 replies)

When not at uni
I live in a tiny place in the heart of Suffolk. The most spectacular thing that has happened there in the last twenty years was the day a drunken guy climbed the church tower and was left clinging to the weather vane at 11am.

Reading these replies, I am so very glad of that fact.
( MatJ LOOK, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 14:28, Reply)

Lampeter
My mothers side of the family, being Welsh, live scattered throughout South and West Wales. Some of them live in relatively nice little places.

Except my Aunt. She lives in Lampeter.

For the last 20 years or so I've been wondering whether my Aunt is crazy because she lives in Lampeter, or whether she lives in Lampeter because she's crazy. I still don't know. What I do know is that a few years ago we went down there for New Years. The idea was that we'd do the family stuff, my parents could get drunk and have the inevitable apocalyptic falling out with various aunts and uncles, whilst my cousins and I would slope off to the pub.

The cold biting wind on the seemingly endless walk to the "centre" of town carried the bleating of the approximately 400,000,000,000 sheep that live around the place. Entering town there appeared to be a large number of dead bodies scattered liberally around. It took a second or two to realise that these were in fact the residents who, presumably upon realising that they were spending another day in Lampeter, had decided to drink themselves wholly insensible. Gangs of drunks shouted and screamed at each other, others lay down on the ground, mired in their own vomit.

The pubs were unfriendly, and overcrowded. Everyone seemed to be trying to drink themselves to death. A girl asked me for 10p to call her parents whilst taking a piss outside in the smoking area. Everyone seemed to be incomprehensibly drunk. I asked one girl if this was because it was New Years, she told me that no, it was because it was Lampeter. It seemed that pretty much the only things to do in Lampeter if you were under, say, 50 were to look at the sheep, or drink heavily.

A friend of mine went to university there - he dropped out after a year because he hated the town so much. He often rants about the place when he's drunk. He wants to win the lottery, so that he can buy himself an F-16 and napalm the place, machine-gunning what ever remains of the town in a final paroxysm of rage.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 13:57, 2 replies)

Douglas, Isle of man
Not spotted this anywhere so here's my half a sheckle

Had to work there for three months and knew nothing of the place till I got there.

Landlady was mad and I'm sure was trying to kill me with fat based products. Also scolded me for smoking in my room. "But theres an ashtray?" I replied. Apparently the ashtray is for show, not for use - solution was to just knock my smoke ash out the window and she never bothered me again.

The pubs shut earlier than on the mainland, the off license shut earlier than on the mainland.

The local swimming pool/sauna was so over run by repressed homexicals that I stopped going (one guy got pissed at me for rejecting his numerous advances and nearly got violent, I think I was the only straight guy in there).

You get put in prison for a month if your caught smoking weed BEFORE going to court (this may have changed as it was a few years back, but I was told this after trying to get weed sent to me by a mate. An ex copper was asked to take me aside and have a quiet word with me so I didnt do it again).

Everywhere I went, nerdy fat guys would tell me that its a wonderful island and there are 3 women for every guy blah blah
Whats the point of having excess of women if most of them look like a cows arse? *

One of the guys I worked with was a little bit like Forest gump, except he had a permanent horn and would sidle up to girls he liked and stroke their hair.

My neighbours bedroom was the next door to my front room. If I had the TV on past 9pm they would bang on the wall repeatedly. Solved that one by putting on my cockney ganster voice and shouting alot...

Theres more but just thinking about it has made my head hurt :-/


*ok so there were a couple of nice girls I met, but I already had a Mrs Evilmeister waiting at home for me
(EvilMeister, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 13:44, Reply)

Sadoga-shima, Niigata-ken, Japan
I thought this was going to be worth the trip. A bit of culture. I was told the place was littered with Noh theatres, and I always like boat trips... so I set off on a road trip to Sado Island.

Depart from work in Fukushima at 9pm on Friday, with my English girlfriend, and head off towards the west. Miserably cold, and I had banked on there being a few more 'Love hotels' to crash for a few hours n the way. It took fucking AGES and was snowy as hell. I had forgotten the drive was over the Japanese Alps. So, we unfortunately got all the way to Niigata - about 3 hours before the ferry was due to leave the next morning. Slept for a bit in the car.

I was convinced it would be worth it - but I was massively wrong.

Massively cold.
Lots of stray dogs.
Boring shit town that seemed closed.
Nearly nowhere to eat.

Miserable unhelpful people (they speak a strong local dialect, so presumably I sounded like a moon man based on their uselessness)
Could I get any info about seeing a Noh play? Could I fuck!

I was frozen to shit, and despite the lack of busses I spent a lot of time at the bus stop warming myself off the gas heater.

I walked a stupid distance to find somewhere to get some food, and it was incredibly boring. The dogs running around outside seemed miserable.

It was the most soul destroying trip in my life.

Took an earlier ferry back, and made my way back home. Grabbed some local delicacy that no doubt was a boring over-packaged biscuits with some tea flavouring.

Miserable, miserable, and I wish I had forgot about it. Hooray for qotw.
(gaijintendo v2.0 compressed, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 13:06, 1 reply)

Thanks to my work
I travel all over, staying places for a few months at a time, but the worst town is the one a couple of miles from where I live.

Dewsbury. It's a typical Yorkshire market town: rundown, inbred and rough as arses. Karen Matthews comes from there, and she's almost typical of the denizens of the parish. Two of the Tube bombers were from there, the Yorkshire Ripper was in court there, and its MP claimed a mortgage on a house he'd already paid for. It also has the largest population of wild smackheads outside Scotland.

Still, at least it's not Batley.
( gingerfreak Why? Why not., Sat 31 Oct 2009, 12:25, 2 replies)

Milton Keynes.
Milton Keyes was apparently designed by an unholy cabal of accountants and taxi-drivers. Accountants, because how else do you explain the concerted campaign to annihilate anything resembling "soul"? And taxi drivers because how else do you explain the coach station being miles outside the town and the massive amounts of fuck-all in between any two points you care to name?

Milton Keynes. Duller than people who collect string.
(Big D, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 12:05, 2 replies)

Can't think of anything
Having spent almost my entire life living in Crewe and a short spell in Hull I just don't have anything to contribute.
(Abercadabra looks more like Gerry Adams every day, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 12:02, Reply)

Heathrow
I went up to Heathrow once for a convention (Shinnenkai, if anybody cares)and was alarmed to discover that outside the hotels and the airport there is nothing else there. Hotel, hotel, hirecar place, hotel, repeat until you hit the horizon..
When finding a Mcdonalds is the highlight of your visit you know something's gone horribly wrong.
(Big D, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 11:56, Reply)

Dundee
Only mentioned 5 times in 13 pages, i am disappointed in this.

I dislike my hometown for several reasons, but this is the most important:

The thriving music scene? It's dominated by The View clones and has all but killed off any 'folk' or 'acoustic' music scene. Meaning that the music i'd normally enjoy listening to or going to a gig for has relocated to... Edinburgh. And am i fuck going all the way there for a gig.

I spit on the sticky ground of this place.
(Schumann makes awesome quiches., Sat 31 Oct 2009, 11:29, Reply)

It looks lovely,
but the smug, fat, ignorant, inbred fuckwits around here...and I really do mean inbred, everyone seems to be related and I swear I saw a woman today who was about four foot tall and had bare, hairy feet...honestly make me want to just hit the road and keep walking. Fucking Hobbiton.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 10:55, 1 reply)

Corby
Ah, Corby. So bad an old work colleague used the word Corby as his own personal term for his meaty mutton musket.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Sat 31 Oct 2009, 10:40, Reply)

Goole, East Yorkshite.
Close your eyes and think, for a minute, of any port town. Felixstowe for example, or Hull, or Grimsby, maybe even Immingham.

Now take away the nice things you get in port towns, this bit may take a bit more imagination, but remove all thoughts of marinas, sailing, romance, fishing, relaxation, profitable industry, uniformed captains, rolling seas, fresh air, seabirds, fresh fish and chips, international culture etc.

You're almost there - you now need to remove anyone who earns more than 60% of the average national wage, as they'll have moved out of the town into a village, or a different town, leaving behind the poor, and the disenfranchised.

Now add all the lovely things that port towns bring - persons for whom English is a foreign language, drugs, alcohol.

Add a few rough pubs and rougher clubs filled with rough young men and rougher young women, all partaking of the widely available drugs and cheap contraband alcohol.

Getting the picture? Brillant, you've almost got a picture of Dover, now move that picture about 4 notches towards "extreme" and you've got Goole - Britain's most inland seaport.
(ymmit, Sat 31 Oct 2009, 7:31, 7 replies)