Tomsk
Not somewhere I have lived, but somewhere bad I have been stuck for a night. Really horrid town in Siberia. After failing to get ANYONE in several different types of accommodation to acknowledge me I returned to the train station where I was sold an extortionate bed in a sleeping room where a tramp pissed herself and puked all over the floor in the middle of the night. The ticket lady at the train station refused to acknowledge me until another customer joined the queue. Its the only place I have been where people have absolutely no reciprocal smile reflex.

I met a man called Alexander on the train who told me I should not have gone to Tomsk as they don't trust people who visit because "there is no reason to visit". He was correct.
( bland is bland, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 8:42, 2 replies)

St Austell
locally known as St Awful
Though it might get a bit better with the new eyesore shopping center.
(Captain Spacker I lick windows, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 7:39, 4 replies)

True story*
Just after the July bombings in London a few years ago I was walking down the road towards the bus station and was following behind a Muslim looking gentleman who had a large rucksack over his shoulder.
"He's a bomber, he's a bomber, he's a bomber" was going through my mind.

Just then he dropped a wallet from one of the pockets of the bag. Snapping out of my suspicious mode I picked it up and ran up to him.

"You've just dropped this mate"
'Oh thank you sir, I am extremely grateful, that is very important to me'
We walked towards the bus stop for a few yards and he stopped and said to me 'Were you going to catch the bus to Chesterfield?'
"Yes, why?"
'You did me a kind act, and it deserves another in return. A word of advice, don't catch the bus into Chesterfield'

Straight away "He's a bomber, he's a bomber, he's a bomber" started up again.

"Er, why not?"

'Because it's a shithole'


_{*or a made up one}
(turtles head is touching cloth poked a dwarf on the forehead at, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 6:17, 3 replies)

Dunfermline, surely
It's like some post-apocalyptic film where a potentially nice place is overrun by vicious, apelike mutants and their maggot-children. Natives bang on about how billionaire Andrew Carnegie hailed from there and gifted the place a fine park (which now doubles as a rubbish tip) and an impressive library (mostly empty). The schemie areas are grey concrete hellholes filled with those-who-are-dead-inside. The middle class are all Daily Mail readers silently seething with rage, fear and despair, cowering inside their pebbledash bungalows. The children are evil incarnate, stunted elves of hatred. During the short, grey days, there is literally nothing inhabitants would rather do than wander from shop to remaining shop looking for cellphones, sport gear, charity shit and McDonalds. I lived there for five years. I have nothing humorous to say about the place. There will always be a place in my heart as black and cold as the grave, called "Dunfermline".
(mudskipper, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 6:02, 11 replies)

Shilbottle...
Just outside Alnwick.

Used to drive through it commuting between Newcastle and Edinburgh.

It has the most regularly defaced road sign in Britain.
(Que?, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 4:19, 2 replies)

Sunderland ...
For the sake of a Fuck. WHY!

I have lived in many places in England and Scotland, but Sunderland was the most useless, depressing sinkhole of a slagheap.

I ought to have been tipped off during my first trip to a hairdressers there. A gargantuan elephant-hybrid thundered in and demanded to know what we kin-cunts had done with the perfectly good tattoo parlour that used to be there.

I never understood the idea of entirely different, although physically identical, ethnicities with their own dialect, football team and (supposedly) affectionate collective noun.

Mackems vs Geordies. You live 20 miles from each other! Drop the hate!
(Que?, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 4:14, 4 replies)

Geneva
it's pretty and all, in a chocolaty swiss watch kind of way. but I got stuck there once when my easyjet flight was running it's usual 4 hours late. I went walking around on Friday night over most of the town looking for some action, and it was dead as disco. i ended up in an empty bar talking to the bartender about lebanon for hours. A friday night for fuck's sake. Geneva is rubbish
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 4:01, 5 replies)

Rakaia - South Island, New Zealand
On the surface Rakaia appears a quaint, decent, small rural town. It has a large plastic fish on the village green in honour of the excellent salmon fishing available nearby. However, the people are without doubt the most defilent, ignorant, unhelpful bunch of swede-gnawers I have ever come across. I ran out of fuel once in Rakaia whilst driving an LPG vehicle....events included:

STAGE ONE: GET SOMETHING TO EAT

I started out by popping into the one cafe to get something to eat. It was one of those places where they have big photos of the menu items up on the wall. I saw a picture of a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich.

"Can I have a toasted cheese sandwich please"

"No, we don't sell those."

"Could you make me a cheese and tomato one like that?" - pointing at photo.

"Yes"

"Could you just leave out the tomato?"

"No. I would have to ask the boss and he isn't here"

*sigh* "Ok, I 'll have one of those, and a cup of tea please."

"White tea?"

"Yes"

"Do you want milk in it?"

"How else are you going to make it white?"

"No need to be rude.."

etc, etc.

STAGE TWO: LOCATE TELEPHONE (BEFORE CELL PHONES)

I plod off to the local (only) garage to find that it does not sell LPG. Bummer, but fair enough. The assistant informs me that I will have to get towed to the next town, Ashburton (50 miles away), to fill up. Bigger bummer.

"Does your garage offer a towing service"

"Yes"

*relief* "Great, how much to tow me to Ashburton"

"We don't tow to Ashburton. You will have to phone someone from there to come and get you."

*sigh* "Ok. Do you have a number there I could call"

"Yes" - provides number.

"Could I use your phone please"

"No. There is a phone box just down the road"

"sigh* walk 1km down the road to phone box. It is a card phone. I do not have a card. Walk all the way back to the garage.

"Do you sell phone cards?"

"Yes"

"Can I buy one please"

"Yes. Do you need it for the phone?"

"No, I need it to feed the fucking birds..."

"No need to be rude.."

I could tell you more but I think you get the general idea. Kiwis are generally an excellent bunch, but people from Rakaia..unlovable, dim witted bags of shit.
(Mandrill, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 3:21, 4 replies)

Mostly
harmless.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 3:11, 2 replies)

Basingstoke
'Gateway to Reading'

recently twinned with Milton Keynes
( Captain Tripps is your taxloss lover from Liverpool, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 1:01, 3 replies)

Ooh just remembered one... A village near Clitheroe
In some moment of madness, me and the ex decided to go somewhere random for a weekend break, and instead of being normal people and going to a nice place like parts of Wales or Cumbria and such, we instead decided to go to a place close to Clitheroe. No idea why.

Don't worry if you've never heard of it. I hadn't.

It was more of a village outside Clitheroe really, somewhere near Pendle Hill (Where they burned a Witch once). Anyhooo, me and the ex were engaging in a dirty weekend in the country at a charming guest house.

Although we had arranged to meet at the guest house for 6.30pm (ish) we arrived at 7:05pm (after a swift pint in town and then a cab)and was immediately scolded by the odd woman who occupied the guesthouse.

'You said you would be here for 6.30pm'

'Sorry we er.. had to wait for a cab'

* Frown * - scrutinising my soul with an undead-type of stare, her nostrils possibly detecting booze particles. I was trying not to breath (fearing she may not actually allow us to stay, as presumably we'd missed the advertisement that said - No alcohol to be consumed anywhere ever, and do not DARE to be late).
She also mentioned or now i think about it threatened that she had a husband too, but neither of us ever saw him.

She didn't take too kindly to me and the ex having different surnames but she showed mercy and allowed us to stay (I mean we were in our mid twenties for christs sake.

Anyway, the rest of the stay consisted of plenty of shagging, staining the bed clothes with strawberry juice and red wine, which we for some reason declines to mention to the mad woman and hid under the quilts.

We (and i'm getting to the point here now, and if you're still with me then thankyou) ventured into the village for a pint on the first night.
The pub was quite quaint and homely, i.e everyone watched us from beyond their pints and the ONLY bloke who was talking, and i shit you not here was obviously the local butcher who's only converstion line was steak, gammon, beef and other various meat related topics.

Not that scary at first glimpse, but when you come back to top up your beers after two games of pool in the bar, to come back to find the same man is still talking about beef, gammon, chops, ham etc etc and everyone else was silently engrossed in his loud butchery diatribe.

Not that funny, but it spooked me a little. My girlfriend later visited the ladies room and told me he was STILL talking about meat!

The next day we visited a ruined fort type building in Clitheroe, and had some magic mushrooms and tripped our nuts in the gardens, giggling like kids, then after a couple of hushed, cheek biting pints, sniggering through our noses at the fact that we were off our heads in a strange village that consisted of mostly farmers, butchers and a very strict land lady. We had fun and eventually made it back to our room unseen and passed out after indulging ourselves.

The next morning she drove us back to the train station and started shouting at me because us 'townie types' are "always defending the foxes, have you ever SEEN the mess they leave in a chicken coop!!!??"

'No?'

* Frown*

'Well you should do...........!'

As though it was my fucking fault that foxes killed their chickens.
She finally dropped us off and drove away.
On that conversation alone, i dared not mention the strawberry and wine stains on the bed :)

* Length? - Medium rare.

True story.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 0:41, 9 replies)

everyone's heard of bakewell tarts... well bakewell
this is not so much 'worst' as 'most disappointing'.

you'd think a town that had a cake named after it would have more bakeries. we found one and not a very good one. maybe we didnt look very hard.
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 0:40, 6 replies)

this is even more irrelevant but what the hell
why does everyone think norwich is in the south-west of england?
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 0:39, 4 replies)

i know its not the point of this qotw but i feel the need to defend my township
norwich might be many things. it is small. it is in the middle of nowhere. it is surrounded by countryside. it is filled with yobs and chavs. it did not, until recently, actually have a public library or a public swimming pool. it might be racist, inbred and people do actually say 'ets roight gud' and 'hent et'.

but

it is NOT filled with farms and i am NOT a farmer. i completely resent these allegations. norwich is a city and it would not be a city if it had farms in it.

and scarily enough, most people outside norwich not only mention that everyone from there is a farmer but believe it too.

now great yarmouth... yikes! that is a pit.
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 0:38, 14 replies)

Carnwath
I think this says it all. A town with nothing more to boast than:

1. A reasonably large pile of earth.
2. The pub got torched. Then the school.
3. There was a fair amount of snow one year.

See for yourself:

www.carnwath.org.uk/
(omnishambles ™ has been fucking things up big style since, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 0:27, 2 replies)

I went to Bridgend once...
...I felt hanging in the morning.
(Nilliay ate the last piece of cake on, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 0:22, Reply)

Of all of the places I have been
Luton is the foulest shit hole in the UK, that I have visited. I was insulted and treated to racist abuse by non English speaking factory workers, I stayed in a flea bag B&B that gave me a skin rash and had to use the nastiest chip shop in the world for my evening meal. I vowed never to work in Luton again because it was so horrid. Luton should be bombed to rubble and concreted over to prevent it ever existing again.

I have lived in Swindon and enjoyed it even though it was not exactly a hive of adventure. I have lived in Bath and loved the hippy folk until I grew bored with Dreadlock snobbery. I have lived in Barmouth (North Wales) and really enjoyed the outdoor gear shop. However, the worst place I have ever lived was Plymouth. A run down navy town populated, in some areas, by inbred scum and habitual thieves. Yeah, I lived in the poor sector for a while and would regularly watch the local burglars robbing from each other or ripping out the flooring from a run down council house and selling the debris to buy drugs.

Dartmoor made it worth while for a long time, but even that lost it's magic in the end.

I was walking around ALDI the other day while on my lunch break from work (our only local shops are ALDI or ASDA, totally chav-tastic) when I began to feel homesick. They had a display of German chocolate coated Ginger Bread. I grew up in Paderborn in Germany due to an Army Dad and every now and again I really miss it.
( Rev. Jayneflakes Buy my book, I need the cash for drugs and hookers, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 0:11, 2 replies)

Nostalgia in Bracknell
Looking at soul-less new houses and thinking: "I can remember when this was all discarded shopping trollies..."
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 0:05, 2 replies)

Nairobi
What used to be quite a nice, clean, green city has turned into quite the turd world. Open sewers, cracked pavements, crime, potholes, lack of street lighting, garish large billboards advertising everything from tampons to toothpaste.

While the city collects massive amounts of revenue in the equivalent of council tax there is no garbage collection no road markings and spotty traffic lights. Electricity and water are both rationed.

Has friendly people though. And good beer.
(zero.coke, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 23:54, 5 replies)

I live in Haywards Heath
It's a quiet, middle-class commuter town whose sole reason for existing is the three London-bound train lines which converge there.

Not much happens. It's a bit dull.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 23:43, 7 replies)

Great Yarmouth.
Whats great about it? I go there once a year on business,and really look forward to it all year.Cold,dank,full of pisheads,and thats just the hotel(the Star)
( bane, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 23:34, 2 replies)

A few off the top of my head
1) Watford - for no other reason than I have to work with one of its former denizens, a prize cunt if ever there was one. The way he goes on about the place you'd think they all lived in massive mansions and received a gold ingot personally hand-delivered by the Queen every day just for living there. Well I have been there, and they don't.

2) Reading - but maybe my view of this place was coloured by all the Police posters appealing for assistance on stabbing incidents. Oh, and the two shifty looking fourteen year old boys skulking around the multi-storey carpark looking for somewhere to do the drugs they'd just purchased as I arrived there.

3) Most of Brussels - the Grand Place was nice and I thought the area around Manneken Pis had a certain trashy, kitschy charm. The rest of it is a concrete monstrosity.

And just to prove that I'm not just an acid-filled old git, some places I have loved:
Rome
New York
Dubrovnik
Bruges
Cornwall (yes, all of it)
(Bob Blatt, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 23:30, 1 reply)

Goole, Yorkshire
We entertain ourselves by calling a local man Paul when his name is David.
(Hagbard MacDougal, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 23:21, 3 replies)

New Mexico Has a Lot


Name almost any town, and there you are!

I spent a weekend in San Ysidro once. Shot ducks that were too scrawny to eat.

Gallup is an ongoing nightmare, with its toxic alcoholism run amok.

But at least they survive....

Some Nevada towns are barely holding on, though. Wonder why?:


(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 23:18, Reply)

I'm from newark
Since being one of the last royalist's strongholds during the English Civil War it's not had much going for it: Other than in the 70's Jasper Carrot pointing out it the only place in Britain that's an anagram of wanker.

Since then it raised Fred Barras and Brendon Fearon who went on to get shot at (and in the former case killed by) Tony Martin.

Go team infamy.
( arrangedletters, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 22:59, Reply)

Gloucester.
Shithole.
(dlg, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 22:59, 9 replies)

My town..
I do love it, at times, but recently.. I just sigh at what's happening.

The whole city centre was a building site for two years, with random pedestrianisation causing havoc, drilling and slab cutting (and the dust) permeating all of life, including any thing you had rashly bought to drink, as sustenance. But never mind, the council said, we'll soon have a centre to be proud of. We're still waiting.

In the meantime we suddenly have these odd wide boulevards, with colour-changing lights (that worked for a fortnight) in between the brand new pale granite slabs. Slabs that were imported from China at huge expense, then sent back to China, then repositioned where they could pick up the maximum amount of staining and chewing gum blobs from the Burberry-clad multitudes.

I shouldn't complain, because we have a brand-new shiny (half-empty) shopping centre. The other half of the shops are mostly pointless outlets of herbal hair-care loveliness, watches, and other overpriced tat. A boon to the hopelessly under stimulated denizens who think shopping is a bona-fide hobby, and that don't realise that it's exactly the fucking same as the Westfield in Derby. With only the badly stained granite at the entrance that lets you know you're in Leicester.
The problem is, now that everyone with any disposable income now heads to the Shopping centre, leaving the aforementioned street with the pavement lights to the students with clipboards, poundshops, and empty units.
We still have some architectural gems in Leicester. including the 15th century Guildhall, that was saved from demolition in the 1960s by public campaign. The same cannot be said for the Bowstring Bridge, here it is. Demolition, despite all the protests is due to start any day..

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunstone_Gate_Bridge

*It's only surface rust, on the pic. Final meetings were held in secret, there's still nothing wrong with the bridge, apart from it being in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Also there's a lovely independent, successful pub called the Pump and Tap, the landlord has been told to be out by 27th November. By De Montfort uni, who want all the land to build a sports centre, with very limited public use.

Sorry for the rant. I'm still seething..

*Edit, clarification for the link..
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 22:45, 9 replies)

West Bromwich
I love West Bromwich Albion and there are many many lovely people in the town but it is truly awful. The evidence? I have seen THREE people in West Brom who I recognised from Jeremy Kyle, eight out of nine of my friends begged me to abandon my birthday west brom high street pub crawl 'because they were scared' and the high street is just a whirling maelstrom of chip wrappers, McD boxes and broken glass. However it is the cheapest place in the universe to get bladdered...99p a pint is not especially rare. There is a lap dancing club on the high street which I am sure is full of classy birds(shudders)
(Betty Spencer did a whoopsie on the carpet on, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 22:45, 6 replies)

Aw, I'm getting nostalgic
I went out with a girl from Rotherham for about 18 months, so spent a fair bit of time there. Christ. I didn't think it was too bad at first, certainly 'I've been worse places', but the place seems to have a kind of creeping nastiness in there. Being a) a Southerner and b) a student didn't really help.

I had the pleasure of living in a 'rough' part of York. Yeah, they don't exist.

And the area that I live in in Bristol now (Kingswood, for the interested) isn't too great. My car's been broken into twice in the last six months. I deliver pizzas at the weekend (I'm a teacher Monday to Friday), and I've been to some pretty rapey places as well. Someone got stabbed and killed down the road a few weeks ago.

I actually really love Bristol though.
(Dizzy Steinway, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 22:42, 3 replies)

Prestbury
... an odd choice you may think. It's home to many premiership footballers, Wayne Rooney for one. I believe Noddy Holder lives there also. I would estimate 50% of the population are seriously wealthy, and the 8-10 figure wealthy, not your little 7 figure wealthy either. I mean, considerably richer than YAOU. It has some nice restaurants, a pretty train station that looks like it might only be used by steam trains, they complained when the council put up normal street lights, and the council came back and put up posh faux-victorian ones along the high street. The tarmac has been replaced in some areas with lovely expensive flat cobbles, its very picturesque and very exclusive. And its full of cocks. Old money cocks and worse, new money cocks. (see above). They have a 20 mph limit through the quiet high street with the many pretty restaurants. I enjoy going through there at about 60, windows open, and Rammstein playing at full volume just to look at the faces of the old twats wandering around. Stupid rich people. Also, I find the back roads where the posh houses have their big drives are lovely and dark at night, perfect for a good clean out of all the trash in my car.

Yes I'm quite jealous.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 22:41, 5 replies)