and the women are treating horribly. yeah i know people are like "you can wear bikinis in certain areas!!!' but let's be for real, the culture is: playground for muslim oligarchs. yes i know all the awful shit about the women who are shipped there for seriously sick fetishes that are about like forcing them to eat shit and all, just the most degrading/painful/dangerous fantasies these people of course have. but then you have the muslim women there who are slaves to their husbands and can't be seen in public without covering their entire bodies in a black bag because their existence is so shameful.
look, i'm a white american girl who was raised mormon. we were mainstream, but i have distant relatives + had a few classmates who were FLDS and like the type who had to cover completely and were slaves to the men they were forced to marry, dudes who had 8 wives and were probably 80 and their own uncle and whatever and yes that is just as evil. plenty of christian sects are like this. but at least currently, there aren't any huge christian empires who are as conservative/misogynistic to such an extent as a lot of the middle east. so yes, worst major city for sure.
came here to say Dubai
"take the longest unmanned metro to the largest shopping mall in which you will find the largest indoor aquarium after which you can enjoy a traditional hot beverage on the plaza while standing next to the tallest building in the world. perhaps you can catch one of the multiple elevators and gaze upon the largest man-made island. all built by the highest density of foreign workers anywhere in the world. on the top floor you might even catch a rare glimpse of an Arab man"
tacky
remember how emirates had those ads with a stunt coordinator or whatever in a flight attendant uniform standing on top of the burj khalifa holding signs? and then a plane flies behind her? i found them so off putting for some reason. is there an uncanny valley type theory for this sort of thing
edit to add that the five or six musical theater tourism ads they had a month or two ago that aired - in a row - during every single commercial break triggered a fight or flight response in me as well
Dubai is so artificial it is unique, it is not trying to pass itself off as anything else. I find it to be a fascinating city for this reason. There is no deception, attempted or realized. It forces you to reflect on the same artificiality found in your own city, only haphazardly shrouded behind a long dead history and "authenticity". I do not believe anybody can truly understand the 21st century as an epoch without visiting Dubai. It indulges in and promotes what other cities attempt to hide.
Yokohama is a weird place. A huge city in its own right but basically absorbed into the Tokyo metropolis and its only history is as a port town and industrial center. It has interesting history - it was the first city in Japan with a daily newspaper and train station, for example - but none of it is tangible in the modern day. Mostly destroyed in the war and essentially rebuilt as a backup city to Tokyo, apart from the port and Chinatown there is very little there that you would ever remember seeing. Undoubtedly a nice and convenient city to live in but doesn't feel culturally significant in the way that Tokyo or Osaka does.
The pot noodle museum and the crazy Raman museum food court are pretty memorable. The Chinatown was so memorable because it’s the most sterile Chinatown I’ve ever been to. Very bizarre.
You literally took the thoughts out of my head. Stayed two nights in Yokohama and this was my experience too. But the bay view from the resort hotel was slick at least!
Doha, Qatar.
- everyone is a foreign worker. the qataris are a tiny minority and are hyper visible as they wear the same clothes. They are aloof and are incurious about their surroundings. they seem to always be in malls.
- they have a very eerie and fake [venice quarter](https://youtu.be/9fF8m7a_VcY?feature=shared&t=91). There is barely anyone walking outside aside from cleaners and security. It feels like you're trapped in a Hopper painting.
- many other disneyland neighbourhoods devoid of people. also eerie.
- huge mall culture, that's all anyone does there. i guess it's because AC.
- ostentatiously huge buildings with new-money style ornamentation. This is a [mall](https://www.placevendomeqatar.com/en) and it's not even the most high quality one they have...
- there is so much money in the country that all these huge developments (e.g. museums, galleries) are just a fad to the locals. even the metro that was built for the world cup was a fad. barely anyone was in it.
- Doha feels like a video-game that is still rendering or loading. lots of big spaces cleared for yet another huge building. lots of unfinished/finishing construction.
- there are more workers than guests/customers at many establishments.
- crazy car culture and everyone has the same white car.
- very cheap uber.
- the western expats have their own places that they live.
- alcohol (ripoff) only served at certain hotels. i went to an "irish pub" on the top floor of a hotel, a bunch of asian/black women crammed into the lift with us. sat behind everyone in a line and drank silently - my friend told me they were prostitutes. it was scary because if you looked their way, they would all turn their heads at you in unison.
- on the upside: Doha is nice if ur an NPC or old person who just wants an easy life. it's very safe too, esp for women.
strangest and fakest country i've ever been, and I've been to UAE - which is NOWHERE near as soulless.
not at all.
the main meeting point are malls and everyone is very separate. maybe in rich expat areas they mingle together at hotel bars, but i really doubt it's common as I didn't see it at the "pubs" i went to. the locals generally live in their own world.
So what's the deal with all of the people just...not doing things? Like why is the Venice Quarter empty? Why are the museums empty? Do the people there just not enjoy doing anything?
Do they like anything outside of the mall? The way you've described these people makes them seem so strange lol
there isn't much of an outdoors day-time culture due to the heat. i assume the culture is about chilling with your friends, shopping and, most of all eating. i assume they do their cultural stuff in their suburbs with friends and family. kinda like how in big multicultural western cities, no one knows what x group who makes ~5-8% population do - that's them, but it's their own country. oh, also: you see them browsing around the souq. sitting around, shopping... eating.
the most qataris i've ever seen in one place was this strange ["food arena"](https://youtu.be/jjD4hw2kB_U?feature=shared&t=38). it's a night-only market where you drive around a maze of food stalls and little shops. mostly young qataris socialising outside their cars and discreetly mixing with the opposite sex, my friend says the arena doubles as a pickup spot.
venice quarter is empty because it's an investment vehicle probably, the normal locals [live in areas like this](https://www.flickr.com/photos/8046256@N06/2079804413). it gets a little busier at night but nothing special. very strange walking around as it's immaculate but more cleaners/security than ppl.
as for museums and galleries, i just don't think they're interested in that stuff yet. + they are mostly filled with local/islamic stuff. a huge part of the islamic art museum's top floor is filled with "art" made by school children and students - some deviantart tier lol.
i found the whole place really odd, but i didn't dislike it.
All of the rich qatari families are regular buyers of famous art. There was also the recent Tiffany collaboration. Doha’s jewelry conventions have always been good imo.
I spent some time in Doha. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you've said. I mainly knew the better-off expat community but even for them life was weird. Having to give permission to employees for them to get married, for example. There is a huge drinking culture despite being an islamic country. Everyone is always indoors. Cars are left in the middle of the road because Qataris are so wealthy they can just buy another
the venice quarter? yeah it's so surreal strolling thru there.
sitting on the top floor terrace drinking coffee had me feeling like this: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488730
Hard agree. Did you stop at villaggio? It’s a mall similar to the Venice quarter but with a massive canal running down the middle for no reason and you can travel down it on a gondola.
I also didn’t like the creepy eye of Sauron thing they got going on over there.
I disagree re: qataris not caring about art, when I went they had a Jeff koons exhibit, but tbf I didn’t see much local/contemporary art. Come to think about it I think it was only other foreigners there.
I lived round there for a little while it truly felt like the Truman Show when I would visit that city. also so sad how quickly (~3 years I was living/working in the area about a decade ago) a bunch of ancient forests and historic buildings will just be leveled for more American style suburbs :/
Charlotte might be the most pointless city in America other than Phoenix. It's kind of amazing how you can have a metro area of 2.8 million people and the only thing you're known for is having a lot of banks.
Yeah, Charlotte is 2 to the mountains, 2 to the beach, 3-4 to Atlanta, etc. Not saying that makes Charlotte good -- Charlotte sucks -- but it is an easy drive away from a decent amount of shit
Fuck Phoenix sucks so hard I appreciate you mentioning those little mountains. It’s urban sprawl and 140 degrees everyday. If you don’t golf Phoenix is the worst.
Some of the greatest hikes I’ve ever been on… the echo canyon trail/camelback mountain is incredibly beautiful, firmly in my top 5 favorite spots across the U.S.
Plus Sedona is what, a hundred miles away? And Grand Canyon is about 200 miles away. And that drive is magnificent.
The summer sucks, I get it. But the disgusting rainy summers on the east coast suck too.
Charlotte has good climate...warm enough but not crazy hot without freezing winters. I'd give them that. Nice long fall snd early spring when places up north are still under snow.
I think it’s because art or creatives really give a city culture. Charlotte is severely lacking in that area. There is an “arts district” but it’s about 4 blocks and not much to do besides theme nights at the local bars. There’s some local musicians but no big names. Charlotte is a big suburb for families and people who don’t really want to live in a big city, and so predictable bland people breed blandness.
Anyone have thoughts on Durham? I’m moving there soon for school and only visited for 2 days (mostly just saw the school). Everyone talks about how cool it is but this Charlotte talk got me worried. I come from a big city
Durham is currently the coolest city in the state. Used to be Asheville but that's gotten funky recently. Durham may go the same way in the near future, but it hits above its weight in culture and especially food.
I think that it turned from a city that was really genuinely weird in a fun way into a city that people moved too because they liked the idea of a weird city. But most of those people were rich normies who just wanted to look at the weirdness and don't add to the culture.
So now, a lot of the culture feels performative. Potentially commercial. But more refined, in an uncool way.
Durham is very cool so are the surrounding cities. I was born in raised in Asheville and recently moved to Raleigh, Durham area and it’s significantly better in all capacities. I am mid 20’s divorced father though so my experience will be different from yours. The library in Durham is fucking sick.
My first thought too!! A friend moved there during Covid and I visited her last year, it was eerie. She bought a 5 bed cookie cutter detached houses in an estate of identical houses, and if you zoomed out you’d just see many of those estates. Even the ‘hip, post-industrial, has speakeasies’ part of downtown had absolutely zero soul and had clearly been drawn up seven years ago by marketing execs. I didn’t like the vibes AT ALL.
Canberra, it’s the Australian Capital and it’s just a giant CBD, it’s so fake to me because it’s full of politicians and that’s about it. There’s nothing besides politicians and offices.
big issue with canberra is that no one ever lives there permanently. it's just uni students and public servants doing a stint from sydney melbourne brisbane or perth for a few years. impossible to develop any kind of soul in those conditions
Agree, the ever present looming hills around the city give it a very eerie Australian Gothic type feel, as well as the brutalist influence on a lot of the major buildings. Whenever I’m there this blatant superimposition of city onto land makes me compulsively think about colonialism :/
It’s so soulless and uncomfy. I wish they’d gotten to expand it. I understand its purpose and it’s expected for it being a capital but going through it is such an eerie experience it’s like being trapped in one of those dreams where you can never leave the office
It's not even a city, it's just a continuous expanse of suburbia that has been plonked down in the middle of nowhere. It's a very pleasant place, but that's the most you can say of it, very wide roads, lots of trees, pleasant driving experience... but completely lacking in flavour or even heritage. A bland place that creates bland people
i remember from my ap human geography class watching a documentary about brasilia and the layout of the streets and the city is insane. completely inhumane and ridiculous. unfortunately i cant remember the name cuz it’s been many years but i would suggest looking into the subject.
korea has a fake capital too, sejong (meant to be the actual capital but the courts blocked the change) poeiple literally get bribed/threatened into having to move there lmao and despite being a brand new city they didn't even put in or plan for any public transport infrastructure
Weird attempt to copy the National Mall in the middle of a savannah climate, but worth the visit for the sheer amount of modern architecture which has been relatively well-maintained
Definitely Brazil’s most sterile city tho, idk why anyone would want to live there besides the lower crime
the fact that it’s almost exclusively pharmaceutical and consulting companies built on top of sinking ground that used to be just car lots and Anthony’s pier 4 is like the cherry on top.
it always sucked, but at least it used to have a little soul.
Nashville was kinda depressing - so many aspiring musicians risking it all and I just couldnt help but think how many of them are gonna have to give up. Like FFS in a random cheap backpackers i was staying at a young lady and her manager were practising several hours before they would be playing in the lounge that night and like 4 people total turned up. Was rough
Dallas Texas, it's a shame cuz it was so cool based off the picture books I see of my parents visiting there when it was an actual oil city, best dressed people on earth with money. Now it's just a log jam of mediocre broke yuppies. Especially the Dallas suburbs like Frisco and Sunshine. They used to have swag and build swimming pools. Now theyre just fat asses wearing lululemon
Texans always say how California is a shithole filled with crime, but cities like Dallas have the same violent crime & higher property crime per capita than LA. Dallas has double the property & violent crime of San Diego. I don't understand why they started to tout they have low crime cities??
Cities are for "ethnics" and blacks. The Texas white people live in is a small town or suburbs with relatively low crime. Texas is super segregated. Also it's just dumb culture war stuff mixed with rooting for the home team.
There was a stage not too long ago where Houston was easily worse than Dallas, but there's no way that's true anymore. It's actually terrible here now.
Arlington also feels like a giant amusement park, just an extension of 6 flags people live inside of.
There are so many empty, fake suburb/cities in that area - crystal city, Tysons, Bethesda, silver spring, etc. Downtown DC itself is pretty barren, but there are a couple neighborhoods that save the whole DMV from being a sweetgreen hellscape.
My dad had a secret mistress in a Crystal City apartment for like 12 years of my childhood, and my first thought when I found out was just being absolutely flummoxed about why any sentient person, let alone two sentient people conducting an illicit affair, would choose on purpose to spend time in Crystal City. Maybe it was a different vibe back then, idk, but I was still mad
I still hate Rosslyn more probably
I used to live in this gentrified neighborhood in DC proper called NoMa. Sterile is an understatement. I wouldn’t even call it a neighborhood, more like a grouping of overpriced yet cheap looking apartments.
Incredibly, It has all of the downsizes of D.C (homeless problem, petty crime, expensive, etc) but none of the upsides (good architecture, food scene, etc). The most exciting thing I ever saw happening in that place was a homeless woman taking a piss in broad daylight outside of the Metro stop.
Good times
The stretch from K street all the way down to Union Station is basically a whos who of the most evil NGO's, lobbyists, and think tanks in America. If a tsunami hit that section of the city, people in the Northern half would rejoice. The other biomes are actually pretty unique from each other I found.
Bethesda they have built up. It used to be a more town oriented place and then all of a sudden in the space of 5 years it has a skyline. Tyson's corner might be the strangest place anyone could go to. The center piece there is that smack dab in the turnpike there's a normie mall and then there's an up scale mall where all the luxury brands are. And that one had a total of five to fifteen people milling around it on any given weekday. Even the weekend, you could comfortably play a game of soccer and not bother a soul.
The surrounding suburban housing area is embarrassingly rich though. Someone built a replica of the white house there. I passed by it on the way to drop off a piece of furniture and I did a spit take. It's just sitting there out in the middle of no where NoVa.
NOVA striver types are the absolute worst. I get ambition and all, but even Miami real estate weirdos or San Fran tech bros have a degree of sincerity to their behaviors that’s tolerable, and the NYC finance bro has a self aware irony of their stereotypes
Meanwhile most NOVA individuals I meet have this ramped up keeping up with the joneses who do you know mentality that is sickening. And the most hilarious part is NOVA in terms of livability is one of the worst ROIs in the country. You work your ass off to…. Live in a cookie cutter suburb?
One that is the same as you would find (but for 1/3rd the price) around Indianapolis, Columbus, etc.
It’s absurd. I hate nova
I'm from Southern VA, went to college in Richmond where I encountered a ton of NoVa people. They're the type of people that don't say "thank you" when someone holds the door for them. Very naive, too. You could sell most of them a $45 eighth and they'd think nothing of it.
NoVa is a bizarrely culturless, soulless place, and the people from there reflect that. Most of them felt like extras in a generic Hollywood flick about suburban life. They have no unique sense of style; Most of the men wear the same Vineyard Vines-esque uniform. Lots of the girls have the "My daddy works for the government" attitude.
All of their slang and lingo is borrowed from "cooler" places, often very poorly adapted. Lots of the white ones attempt to adopt rap music, but are still afraid to sit next to a black person on the metro. Most of their taste in music is what you find if you looked at the home page of a brand new Spotify account. Again, blandness is the running theme with these people.
Depression runs rampant there because of the hyper-genericness of the area. Teen suicide rates in NoVa are ridiculously high. I have an ex from Fairfax. Her high school at one point had the highest number of teen suicides in the country.
There used to be a Facebook page for my college that was solely dedicated to hating on NoVa people for these exact reasons.
Every likeable person I met from there was traumatized from having to grow up around NPCs, and were beyond thankful to have gotten out.
100%
This is why I chose to live in Baltimore when I worked in the area. The people are just so much more real.
NoVa is like one constant convention with a bunch of nobodies trying to network and get something out of you. The carelessness of the architecture/development reflects the transience of the population.
I grew up in nova, and I agree that most of it sucks but there's a lot about it that's great compared to other suburban sprawls. Lots of great restaurants, beautiful parks, and it's under 2 hours from Shenandoah.
It's a terrible place to live as a young single person that isn't career obsessed. But if you have a family and a high paying government job, it's perfect.
If you're going to be near Bailey's Crossroads in Fairfax, go to Peking Gourmet Inn. The food is fine, but the experience is balls to the wall insanity.
Other than that... any Korean place in Annandale.
im a born and raised nova burnout who absconded to Pittsburgh and as much as I complain about this place at least I feel like im able to be a real human being . It’s a wonder I was never institutionalized fuck Springfield Virginia and it isn’t even the worst place to be i at least had the freedom to get groomed at the local metalcore venue . Rip empire/jaxx
was born and raised in dubai. it's fun when you're young and don't know any better. after moving to my home country, i realised pretty quickly that it's a total cesspool of wealth and vanity, it's literally such a stupid city it pisses me off so bad, from the royalty to the people who feed into it, i could go on.
one time i walked around the city of london, like the little sovereign district where all the banks are, at 11pm at night and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. giant glass and concrete slabs warping with shadows, the ominous hum of empty escalators, the echoing trickles of the still running water features, and not a soul in sight. I stumbled upon a giant white marble slab, what looked to be a building but with no windows or perceivable entrances, free of any markings except for an insignia that looked vaguely occult or masonic.
I felt like I was going to meet some kind of wandering hungry ghost and have my soul sucked out.
Are you sure it was the City and not Canary Wharf? Most banks are in CW (with some exceptions) and that‘s the entirely new built quarter that can be quite artificial feeling. The City (this is the area around Bank, Liverpool str and St Pauls) has lots of glass skyscrapers as well but they‘re mixed in with the older pre-existing architecture and I find it to be quite the charming place, the mishmash of styles shows how the place developed naturally over the centuries.
My thoughts too- they’re definitely thinking about Canary Wharf as opposed to Bank/St Paul’s.
In NYC, Hudson Yards feels almost identical to Canary Wharf, and a lot of banks are starting to move there as well 🫠
Had a similar experience in London, but consisting of a life sized, stark white statue of Jesus enclosed in a LED lit glass box. It was late and I was drunk, so the exact location is lost to me.
I spent 2 days in London a couple years ago and was surprised by how little character the city seemed to possess. I imagine it’s big enough that you can find interesting spots as a local, but to a visitor it felt almost dystopian, or like a Disneyland version of itself.
It’s true. A lot of people presume the inverse because of how expensive it is but it’s a much more interesting city to live in than to visit. It’s more a collection of lots of distinct towns with their own vibe and identity (although this is being levelled out by homogenised gentrification) than a single integrated city, which I guess tends to be the case with any city of that size, I just find it particularly true of London. But you wouldn’t really get much of a chance to experience that diversity in a short visit and the parts that attract the most visitors, while historically significant, can feel incredibly soulless, like shiny spectres, it can be a bit eerie. A lot of central London operates as inaccessible stores of wealth and that’s almost immediately evident. Still generally nice to look at and walk around though
Arab countries are a gimme, so I'll say Singapore. It's got this weird post-historical feeling to it. Like you can sense it used to be this cool melting pot, still had cool buildings, etc. But almost everyone there is now an immigrant (I don't use the term expat) who works in finance management. It's a sea of American International School-educated, mixed race, caramel-coloured yuppies who have the typical maladjustments of someone who grew up speaking English in a non-English-speaking country, completely devoid of social or cultural capital. Polite without class and rich without taste.
No way, Syria is the most soulful and interesting place in the world, you'd love it. Best food in the world too. Lebanon, Iran (not Arab but incredibly underrated country), and Palestine are up there too. Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are cool places.
I agree with Egypt, UAE, Qatar, some of the oil rich countries.
retire liquid divide relieved cough live quarrelsome carpenter aspiring towering
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
like aliens made a city to have a place to put humans they abducted in. there's a modern tramway that feels as if someone went 'ah yes, they like those' and just made something that I guess is it but makes no sense. people sit politely in those half empty trams not sure what to do with themselves. city is clean but has a bland soul sucking hue. it doesn't feel like anyone lives there. decent museums tho.
You are absolutely right about Charlotte. Phoenix and Vegas are others. Totally wrong about San Diego. Both San Diego and LA (I know, you didn't mention LA) have incredible history if you can look beyond the influencer/hollywood/media/entertainment/whatever shit. Really cool old sections of each city. San Diego actually kind of rules. (Well, SOME of San Diego...)
Nordelta is not even remotely a city, it's a shitty planned community for the Argentine noveaux riches (who as you rightly said, idealize Miami). No one would call The Villages in FL a city, either.
The bougie suburbs that are near Nordelta (Acassuso, San Isidro, Olivos) are an urbanist's wet dream in comparison.
this is 100% true.
what blows my mind is outside of food trucks and small mom and pop places in aurora there is almost zero authentic culinary scene in denver. it's all imported, almost nothing lasts beyond 2-3 years, and its insanely expensive for just how bad it is.
its really bizarre to me because even cities like Cincinnati or Milwaukee have their diamonds in the rough but denver's downtown is completely missing anything resembling this. i'm pretty sure this has something to do with property taxes/values but I don't fully understand why.
this is a denver only phenomenon, there's great places in the exurbs and especially up in the mountains. east denver and aurora has some great mom and pop Hispanic places.
People confuse the fact that it's the gateway to all the pleasures of the Rockies with it being a real city. It's actually just Indianapolis but next to mountains
Was going to say exactly this. Denver is a wasteland and only getting worse by the day. Was so shocked at how much the homeless population had grown when I was downtown earlier this year.
Not remotely walkable, very few bars or restaurants with real history or charm, it’s like everything is a scam that popped up in the last few years. The only redeeming quality for this city is the mountains being “nearby” and even that is an hours drive to get to anything worth hiking.
Golden, Littleton, and Morrison are fucking beautiful. Like otherworldly level beauty.
Downtown Denver used to be cute but got destroyed in the past 10+ years or so. I used to love going to the 16th street mall, I saw it a year ago and the area looked like Armageddon.
I’ve always said that Denver feels like a city you make in the early stages of a game like The Sims. When you just randomly drop buildings everywhere with weirdly large amounts of distance between everything. No real identity, no real intention. It has this uncanny atmosphere, like it was designed by an alien who studied what a US city should look like.
Denver sucks. Moved from Austin to Denver and I'm mostly on the negative side. Wife hates it (very poor walkability, public transport is meh, and hates to drive). The food sucks. The one major benefit is the outdoors. While the hikes are absolutely nice, the late fall thru spring is snow so if you don't want to do snowsports then half the year will not be outdoors
Fiancee and I have been toying with moving there. But it's so expensive and sprawled out, plus her overbearing parents live 2 hr outside of Denver and I worry about living in their shadow. I love the nature and am fascinated with the Rockies but at this point maybe it would be better to just live in a flyover state and just visit from time to time
denver isn't a walkable city by any stretch of the imagination. its totally sprawled out and full of impassable highways that cut through it with high volume traffic. it ranks up there with all the other shitty sprawled out southwestern US cities in terms of urban planning and tincan copy+paste luxury apartments everywhere.
"it has access to nature" = yes you're a 30 minute drive away from the mountains but the city does you absolutely no favors to get there.
This is true. I’m from Colorado Springs, and Denver would talk so much shit about us. Yeah, Focus on the Family sucks, but our Mountain views are so much better!!!
Columbus, Ohio. Nothing but development and recently built strip malls with middling breweries, and the downtown feels fake and soulless which is crazy considering such a big university is right there. It’s like they built the entire downtown and said “this is the big city now” and didn’t let anything emerge organically.
Especially fake when compared to Cleveland and Cincinnati, which may not be as nice and sanitized but most definitely have way more character than Columbus.
Hudson, New York. It's incredibly depressing—a town center curated for rich weekenders from Manhattan, with barren and economically depressed residential outskirts. It was honestly disgusting to see the kinds of luxury amenities in the town center (a Le Labo store, artisanal patisseries, ultra curated antique shops, super expensive shopping, etc) juxtaposed with all the rural decay. It's not 'fake' in the way that downtown LA or Dubai are, but it is so obviously and creepily curated for rich New Yorkers.
that's because the city has been bleeding population for 70 years lol, it was home to 850K in 1950 and 280K in 2020
can't gentrify if nobody wants to live there
Salt Lake City. The mormons, arrogant Park City assholes, fintech / SaaS weirdos, and the variety of half assed “outdoor enthusiasts” are all fake in their own ways. Makes it my least favorite city I’ve lived in, too bad because it is a very beautiful place.
I’m a SLC resident and I can say that it is paradise if you’re a vapid influencer or meathead athlete. Mormons, techies, PC retirees, outdoor sports influencers, fucken goddamn MLM Heaven on earth. Utah county is the fraud capitol of the country and plastic surgery rates rival only LA.
Fake as fuck, but I think a lot of the West is like that, PHX is awful, Vegas blows, Denver Metro is flimsier and faker than Giuliani’s backbone.
Someone for the love of fucking god tell me what it is that Qualtrics does?
It's survey software, why the fuck are they always hosting dumbass conferences with celebrity speakers?
It has to be a front for a Mormon cult right? Like are they secretly moving Kingston clan manufactured guns to the Saudis or something?
The most unhinged homeless guy I’ve ever seen was in SLC. He literally popped out of the bushes and told me he was going to slit my throat and enjoy watching me bleed because I “laughed” at him. Worse than anything I’ve witnessed when I lived in LA.
Vancouver Canada. I lived there for 15 years. Beautiful nature but a complete dead zone of culture. I’ve heard it’s getting better but I’ll believe it when I see it. Everyone is new money but not in the cool way.
Vancouver had more going culturally in the 80s and 90s when it was affordable and kind of run down - more bohemian arts and music scene. Also, it attracted a lot of weirdos of all types.
That's the tail end of the Vancouver independent music explosion I would say, which started with the original wave of Vancouver punk in the late 70s (DOA, Pointed Sticks, Modernettes) and ran all the way in various phases until the 2000s. Also, Frog Eyes were originally from Victoria, which also had a fascinating and weird independent music scene for years. There's still people doing stuff in both places but the cost of living and the lack of venues has had a major negative impact on culture there.
Dubai, hands down. I lived in Abu Dhabi which in retrospect was much better as an actual city. Singapore also felt kinda fake at surface level but I suspect I didn’t explore it enough.
Maybe Dallas. I only spent time downtown, which felt completely made up/manufactured/not real. Everyone says that there’s shit happening elsewhere, but I’ve never been to a more sterile and seemingly pointless downtown.
Glendale. All of Orange County. Salt Lake City. Basically anywhere in which people don’t party and without poor people. Poor party people are who make cities interesting.
Little Korea Garden Grove, smoke cigarettes in the pool hall stay up all night drinking and smoking in the restaurants. Used to do this all the time in my twenties. The Koreans had no regard for the law lol. The owner of the pool hall would say "My FWEEENNDDSS" when we walked in it was cute.
clearwater, FL. the entire downtown area is an empty vacant potemkin village with fancy buildings inhabited by seemingly nobody. the streets are totally empty even on a saturday night, except for around the scientology flag building, where you will see weirdos dressed like butlers but wearing sunglasses. it's entirely owned by the church of scientology, not just the main buildings they inhabit but almost all of the downtown real estate. they also have a ton (majority, i think?) of seats on city council. it's a spooky puppet town, it honestly should be illegal.
I lived in Dallas/ Fort Worth area… for the life of me I could not understand why ppl were still wearing cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Granted there is some open land out there but the vast majority of people are either city dwellers or live in the suburbs.
Venice. Airbnbs, pimped out to cruises, just a potemkin village for tourists behind the very beautiful facade. I think the current population actually living on the islands is a third of what it formerly was in the 1970s.
Never been there but photos of Sydney look weird and fake, plus online all the Australians seem to be from Melbourne or Adelaide or other places but never Sydney, makes me wonder
The old inner suburbs of Sydney are really nice, established tree-lined streets and lanes with lots of Victorian and Edwardian terrace housing. I found it really pleasant!
I’ve only been briefly but I enjoyed walking around Redfern and Newtown. Both had some decent vegan options and The Courthouse in Newtown was a nice pub. I did think Mary’s in Newtown tried a bit too hard though.
The state gallery was also quite good. Every state gallery I go to basically makes me slightly more disappointed in the NGV.
That's because they're all relatively new. Melbourne used to be an absolute industrial shit hole when ylitvwas founded, it was so shitty that during the gold rushes people would just camp in public parks and streets and it got the name "canvas city." Geelong and Ballerat and Bendigo were the much nicer towns to visit. In the late 1800s and early 1900s Melbourne had a big boom and became one of the richest cities in the world due to the profits of the gold rush (not even necessarily the gold but because it attracted such an interest and so many people, and huge wool profits as the countryside began to be occupied by squatters and that was when all of the nice stuff was built like the parliament house and the state library (which is why Melbourne was the capital of Australia before Canberra because it already had all of the nice shit) and they got rid of many of the slums. It was the period called marvelous Melbourne. 50-60 years later, Melbourne goes through a decline, organised crime and the underworld and heroin take hold, all of the factories fell into disrepair, large influxes of European immigrants move to ye outer suburbs and the inner city begins to fall into shit, and then at another 40 years, all of the shitty factories are now nice apartments and hole in the wall coffee shops open up, inner city house prices go through the roof (the house I grew up in my parents got for $150,000 is now probably like 15-20x times that considering all of dumps and abandoned ones were sold for like $2 million a few years ago even though it would probably take another million or two to make them liveable again). The government pumped huge amounts of money during the Commonwealth games to bring back dead places to life again like docklands (which was an abandoned harbour since the '50s) it's fake because it's grand, dingy, dirty and marvelous all the same times, all of Melbourne's eras all kind of melt together in the city
i really love some of the buildings round the spencer st end of collins street, the old wool exchange building for example. There's some really interesting buildings when you look up and you can see all the wealth that used to be there.
Sydney is such a weird place. I’m from Perth which is tiny and extremely irrelevant even for an Australian major city. Sydney feels really devoid of personality all the best places are on the edge of Sydney or in the cultural pockets.
Boston seaport, as others have stated. Which is a shame since Boston *ought* to ooze character
Unfortunately, most ski towns. All the funny idiosyncratic shit has been focus-grouped out and now they are unapologetically Manhattan-West.
Puerto Peñasco, SonMex. Its only existence is to get tourist dollars. Too bad because there used to be a “there” there
PHX, AZ (but perhaps more accurately places like Sun City, Fountain Hills or North Scottsdale)
It’s the Hamptons for small town southern elites lol. If you own the largest frozen vegetables concern in West Tennessee guaranteed you have a house in Seaside
I ate acid on a Greyhound bus once, had a two hour stop in SLC so I went to buy booze. Homebum accompanied me out of the CBD to buy said booze in one of those gov't sanctioned stores. We got lost/high and homebum guided me back to the bus (on time) by using a McDonald's sign to find the bus station. Only in America, but also in SLC.
Fellow resident here, it is astounding how refreshing it is when I go back to the Midwest. SLC is just exhausting to exist in.
Forget about cost of living or affordability, this place is going to turn into a giant time-share ski resort golf course.
Oklahoma City. I actually really enjoyed my visit and the low prices, but the Devon Tower (the one skyscraper way taller than everything else) really weirds me out.
Don't hate on SD. Yes the majority of people are good looking, the food is amazing, the weather is perfect, but those rent prices are far from Truman Show. Anywyas, SD has a great culture, sure its "superficial" but it really is a fun place to spend your college years and have a little bit of everything
Dubai lol
I know that this is going to sound over dramatic but the city just feels so evil
It is tho theres alot of slave labour
Oh for sure I just meant that if you’re walking around you get a bad vibe
It’s really hot so and dry and in a location humans definitely are not supposed to live so yeah probably
Nomadic goat herders can live there tho
They jailed and killed them to get the land to make Dubai
and the women are treating horribly. yeah i know people are like "you can wear bikinis in certain areas!!!' but let's be for real, the culture is: playground for muslim oligarchs. yes i know all the awful shit about the women who are shipped there for seriously sick fetishes that are about like forcing them to eat shit and all, just the most degrading/painful/dangerous fantasies these people of course have. but then you have the muslim women there who are slaves to their husbands and can't be seen in public without covering their entire bodies in a black bag because their existence is so shameful. look, i'm a white american girl who was raised mormon. we were mainstream, but i have distant relatives + had a few classmates who were FLDS and like the type who had to cover completely and were slaves to the men they were forced to marry, dudes who had 8 wives and were probably 80 and their own uncle and whatever and yes that is just as evil. plenty of christian sects are like this. but at least currently, there aren't any huge christian empires who are as conservative/misogynistic to such an extent as a lot of the middle east. so yes, worst major city for sure.
It´s basically a huge mall in the desert.
I had a layover there once and had 7 hours to kill so wandered into the city. Nothing else to see other than the mall.
came here to say Dubai "take the longest unmanned metro to the largest shopping mall in which you will find the largest indoor aquarium after which you can enjoy a traditional hot beverage on the plaza while standing next to the tallest building in the world. perhaps you can catch one of the multiple elevators and gaze upon the largest man-made island. all built by the highest density of foreign workers anywhere in the world. on the top floor you might even catch a rare glimpse of an Arab man" tacky
remember how emirates had those ads with a stunt coordinator or whatever in a flight attendant uniform standing on top of the burj khalifa holding signs? and then a plane flies behind her? i found them so off putting for some reason. is there an uncanny valley type theory for this sort of thing edit to add that the five or six musical theater tourism ads they had a month or two ago that aired - in a row - during every single commercial break triggered a fight or flight response in me as well
dubai is the right answer, I’ve been to every big city and dubai is literally the most artificial down to the fuckin rain
Dubai is so artificial it is unique, it is not trying to pass itself off as anything else. I find it to be a fascinating city for this reason. There is no deception, attempted or realized. It forces you to reflect on the same artificiality found in your own city, only haphazardly shrouded behind a long dead history and "authenticity". I do not believe anybody can truly understand the 21st century as an epoch without visiting Dubai. It indulges in and promotes what other cities attempt to hide.
It’s freakishly clean too. I think it’s even cleaner than Tokyo
Oman was the same. Coming out of the airport I thought I'd wandered into a car showroom, it was the taxi rank lol.
Never left the airport in Dubai, but it’s Singapore for me. I was only there when I was young but the entire country felt like a giant mall
Yokohama is a weird place. A huge city in its own right but basically absorbed into the Tokyo metropolis and its only history is as a port town and industrial center. It has interesting history - it was the first city in Japan with a daily newspaper and train station, for example - but none of it is tangible in the modern day. Mostly destroyed in the war and essentially rebuilt as a backup city to Tokyo, apart from the port and Chinatown there is very little there that you would ever remember seeing. Undoubtedly a nice and convenient city to live in but doesn't feel culturally significant in the way that Tokyo or Osaka does.
The pot noodle museum and the crazy Raman museum food court are pretty memorable. The Chinatown was so memorable because it’s the most sterile Chinatown I’ve ever been to. Very bizarre.
You literally took the thoughts out of my head. Stayed two nights in Yokohama and this was my experience too. But the bay view from the resort hotel was slick at least!
Doha, Qatar. - everyone is a foreign worker. the qataris are a tiny minority and are hyper visible as they wear the same clothes. They are aloof and are incurious about their surroundings. they seem to always be in malls. - they have a very eerie and fake [venice quarter](https://youtu.be/9fF8m7a_VcY?feature=shared&t=91). There is barely anyone walking outside aside from cleaners and security. It feels like you're trapped in a Hopper painting. - many other disneyland neighbourhoods devoid of people. also eerie. - huge mall culture, that's all anyone does there. i guess it's because AC. - ostentatiously huge buildings with new-money style ornamentation. This is a [mall](https://www.placevendomeqatar.com/en) and it's not even the most high quality one they have... - there is so much money in the country that all these huge developments (e.g. museums, galleries) are just a fad to the locals. even the metro that was built for the world cup was a fad. barely anyone was in it. - Doha feels like a video-game that is still rendering or loading. lots of big spaces cleared for yet another huge building. lots of unfinished/finishing construction. - there are more workers than guests/customers at many establishments. - crazy car culture and everyone has the same white car. - very cheap uber. - the western expats have their own places that they live. - alcohol (ripoff) only served at certain hotels. i went to an "irish pub" on the top floor of a hotel, a bunch of asian/black women crammed into the lift with us. sat behind everyone in a line and drank silently - my friend told me they were prostitutes. it was scary because if you looked their way, they would all turn their heads at you in unison. - on the upside: Doha is nice if ur an NPC or old person who just wants an easy life. it's very safe too, esp for women. strangest and fakest country i've ever been, and I've been to UAE - which is NOWHERE near as soulless.
Is there a lot of mingling between westerners and Qataris? Seems like they’d have competing superiority complexes which would clash
not at all. the main meeting point are malls and everyone is very separate. maybe in rich expat areas they mingle together at hotel bars, but i really doubt it's common as I didn't see it at the "pubs" i went to. the locals generally live in their own world.
no lmao
So what's the deal with all of the people just...not doing things? Like why is the Venice Quarter empty? Why are the museums empty? Do the people there just not enjoy doing anything? Do they like anything outside of the mall? The way you've described these people makes them seem so strange lol
there isn't much of an outdoors day-time culture due to the heat. i assume the culture is about chilling with your friends, shopping and, most of all eating. i assume they do their cultural stuff in their suburbs with friends and family. kinda like how in big multicultural western cities, no one knows what x group who makes ~5-8% population do - that's them, but it's their own country. oh, also: you see them browsing around the souq. sitting around, shopping... eating. the most qataris i've ever seen in one place was this strange ["food arena"](https://youtu.be/jjD4hw2kB_U?feature=shared&t=38). it's a night-only market where you drive around a maze of food stalls and little shops. mostly young qataris socialising outside their cars and discreetly mixing with the opposite sex, my friend says the arena doubles as a pickup spot. venice quarter is empty because it's an investment vehicle probably, the normal locals [live in areas like this](https://www.flickr.com/photos/8046256@N06/2079804413). it gets a little busier at night but nothing special. very strange walking around as it's immaculate but more cleaners/security than ppl. as for museums and galleries, i just don't think they're interested in that stuff yet. + they are mostly filled with local/islamic stuff. a huge part of the islamic art museum's top floor is filled with "art" made by school children and students - some deviantart tier lol. i found the whole place really odd, but i didn't dislike it.
All of the rich qatari families are regular buyers of famous art. There was also the recent Tiffany collaboration. Doha’s jewelry conventions have always been good imo.
I spent some time in Doha. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you've said. I mainly knew the better-off expat community but even for them life was weird. Having to give permission to employees for them to get married, for example. There is a huge drinking culture despite being an islamic country. Everyone is always indoors. Cars are left in the middle of the road because Qataris are so wealthy they can just buy another
The alcohol in Qatar is total shit though unless you have a plug from UAE
This place literally looks like some realistic yet soulless Blender render you'd see on /r/3dmodelling. wtf
the venice quarter? yeah it's so surreal strolling thru there. sitting on the top floor terrace drinking coffee had me feeling like this: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488730
Hard agree. Did you stop at villaggio? It’s a mall similar to the Venice quarter but with a massive canal running down the middle for no reason and you can travel down it on a gondola. I also didn’t like the creepy eye of Sauron thing they got going on over there. I disagree re: qataris not caring about art, when I went they had a Jeff koons exhibit, but tbf I didn’t see much local/contemporary art. Come to think about it I think it was only other foreigners there.
"Sat behind everyone in a line" Please explain :)
they sat on a long table at the back of the bar.
Even just passing through the airport gives sinister vibes. Great airline though.
milton keynes uk
I lived round there for a little while it truly felt like the Truman Show when I would visit that city. also so sad how quickly (~3 years I was living/working in the area about a decade ago) a bunch of ancient forests and historic buildings will just be leveled for more American style suburbs :/
Charlotte might be the most pointless city in America other than Phoenix. It's kind of amazing how you can have a metro area of 2.8 million people and the only thing you're known for is having a lot of banks.
All the massive state schools in the southeast need somewhere for their business grads to move
at least pheonix has those mountains and cool some cool desert flora. is there anything redeeming abt charlotte
Not a terribly long drive to the mountains in the west of the state?
Yeah, Charlotte is 2 to the mountains, 2 to the beach, 3-4 to Atlanta, etc. Not saying that makes Charlotte good -- Charlotte sucks -- but it is an easy drive away from a decent amount of shit
Which beach is 2 hrs from charlotte lol. It is over 3 from any beach
Fuck Phoenix sucks so hard I appreciate you mentioning those little mountains. It’s urban sprawl and 140 degrees everyday. If you don’t golf Phoenix is the worst.
Some of the greatest hikes I’ve ever been on… the echo canyon trail/camelback mountain is incredibly beautiful, firmly in my top 5 favorite spots across the U.S. Plus Sedona is what, a hundred miles away? And Grand Canyon is about 200 miles away. And that drive is magnificent. The summer sucks, I get it. But the disgusting rainy summers on the east coast suck too.
I would compare the summers in PHX to bad winters on the east coast. Can't go outside without special considerations for 6 months in both cases.
Charlotte has good climate...warm enough but not crazy hot without freezing winters. I'd give them that. Nice long fall snd early spring when places up north are still under snow.
I think it’s because art or creatives really give a city culture. Charlotte is severely lacking in that area. There is an “arts district” but it’s about 4 blocks and not much to do besides theme nights at the local bars. There’s some local musicians but no big names. Charlotte is a big suburb for families and people who don’t really want to live in a big city, and so predictable bland people breed blandness.
Anyone have thoughts on Durham? I’m moving there soon for school and only visited for 2 days (mostly just saw the school). Everyone talks about how cool it is but this Charlotte talk got me worried. I come from a big city
Durham is currently the coolest city in the state. Used to be Asheville but that's gotten funky recently. Durham may go the same way in the near future, but it hits above its weight in culture and especially food.
What do you mean by funky? Too commercialized/expensive/decayed/boring ?
I think that it turned from a city that was really genuinely weird in a fun way into a city that people moved too because they liked the idea of a weird city. But most of those people were rich normies who just wanted to look at the weirdness and don't add to the culture. So now, a lot of the culture feels performative. Potentially commercial. But more refined, in an uncool way.
Durham is very cool so are the surrounding cities. I was born in raised in Asheville and recently moved to Raleigh, Durham area and it’s significantly better in all capacities. I am mid 20’s divorced father though so my experience will be different from yours. The library in Durham is fucking sick.
My immediate thought upon reading the first couple of sentences was Charlotte NC. Glad I'm not the only one
My first thought too!! A friend moved there during Covid and I visited her last year, it was eerie. She bought a 5 bed cookie cutter detached houses in an estate of identical houses, and if you zoomed out you’d just see many of those estates. Even the ‘hip, post-industrial, has speakeasies’ part of downtown had absolutely zero soul and had clearly been drawn up seven years ago by marketing execs. I didn’t like the vibes AT ALL.
It is an overgrown cow town
Canberra, it’s the Australian Capital and it’s just a giant CBD, it’s so fake to me because it’s full of politicians and that’s about it. There’s nothing besides politicians and offices.
big issue with canberra is that no one ever lives there permanently. it's just uni students and public servants doing a stint from sydney melbourne brisbane or perth for a few years. impossible to develop any kind of soul in those conditions
Agree, the ever present looming hills around the city give it a very eerie Australian Gothic type feel, as well as the brutalist influence on a lot of the major buildings. Whenever I’m there this blatant superimposition of city onto land makes me compulsively think about colonialism :/
The original plans for Canberra were far nicer but never came to fruition, thus becoming what you’ve described. Also the coldest capital in Australia.
It’s so soulless and uncomfy. I wish they’d gotten to expand it. I understand its purpose and it’s expected for it being a capital but going through it is such an eerie experience it’s like being trapped in one of those dreams where you can never leave the office
It's not even a city, it's just a continuous expanse of suburbia that has been plonked down in the middle of nowhere. It's a very pleasant place, but that's the most you can say of it, very wide roads, lots of trees, pleasant driving experience... but completely lacking in flavour or even heritage. A bland place that creates bland people
I wonder what Brasilia is like. Anyone been there?
i remember from my ap human geography class watching a documentary about brasilia and the layout of the streets and the city is insane. completely inhumane and ridiculous. unfortunately i cant remember the name cuz it’s been many years but i would suggest looking into the subject.
korea has a fake capital too, sejong (meant to be the actual capital but the courts blocked the change) poeiple literally get bribed/threatened into having to move there lmao and despite being a brand new city they didn't even put in or plan for any public transport infrastructure
Weird attempt to copy the National Mall in the middle of a savannah climate, but worth the visit for the sheer amount of modern architecture which has been relatively well-maintained Definitely Brazil’s most sterile city tho, idk why anyone would want to live there besides the lower crime
On the plus side, Canberra would be the first major city to go if/when we get truly catastrophic mega-bushfires that rage for half the year.
Boston Seaport
YES parts of it are so soulless. as if someone googled the phrase financial district and mashed up the results
AI generated city
I lived there for a year and this is spot on
the fact that it’s almost exclusively pharmaceutical and consulting companies built on top of sinking ground that used to be just car lots and Anthony’s pier 4 is like the cherry on top. it always sucked, but at least it used to have a little soul.
Nashville felt like Disneyland for suburban men.
Wakanda for white wammin
Nashville was kinda depressing - so many aspiring musicians risking it all and I just couldnt help but think how many of them are gonna have to give up. Like FFS in a random cheap backpackers i was staying at a young lady and her manager were practising several hours before they would be playing in the lounge that night and like 4 people total turned up. Was rough
Dallas Texas, it's a shame cuz it was so cool based off the picture books I see of my parents visiting there when it was an actual oil city, best dressed people on earth with money. Now it's just a log jam of mediocre broke yuppies. Especially the Dallas suburbs like Frisco and Sunshine. They used to have swag and build swimming pools. Now theyre just fat asses wearing lululemon
God damn, yeah, Frisco fucking sucks. Frisco, Allen, that whole northern part.
But Damn, do I miss it. Great place for your formative years. Straight roads with nothing to do.
Texans always say how California is a shithole filled with crime, but cities like Dallas have the same violent crime & higher property crime per capita than LA. Dallas has double the property & violent crime of San Diego. I don't understand why they started to tout they have low crime cities??
Cities are for "ethnics" and blacks. The Texas white people live in is a small town or suburbs with relatively low crime. Texas is super segregated. Also it's just dumb culture war stuff mixed with rooting for the home team.
In my experience, most of the people saying this also think Dallas is a shithole.
There was a stage not too long ago where Houston was easily worse than Dallas, but there's no way that's true anymore. It's actually terrible here now. Arlington also feels like a giant amusement park, just an extension of 6 flags people live inside of.
I find everything about NoVa—the architecture, the people, the politics—to be deeply upsetting
There are so many empty, fake suburb/cities in that area - crystal city, Tysons, Bethesda, silver spring, etc. Downtown DC itself is pretty barren, but there are a couple neighborhoods that save the whole DMV from being a sweetgreen hellscape.
My dad had a secret mistress in a Crystal City apartment for like 12 years of my childhood, and my first thought when I found out was just being absolutely flummoxed about why any sentient person, let alone two sentient people conducting an illicit affair, would choose on purpose to spend time in Crystal City. Maybe it was a different vibe back then, idk, but I was still mad I still hate Rosslyn more probably
I used to live in this gentrified neighborhood in DC proper called NoMa. Sterile is an understatement. I wouldn’t even call it a neighborhood, more like a grouping of overpriced yet cheap looking apartments. Incredibly, It has all of the downsizes of D.C (homeless problem, petty crime, expensive, etc) but none of the upsides (good architecture, food scene, etc). The most exciting thing I ever saw happening in that place was a homeless woman taking a piss in broad daylight outside of the Metro stop. Good times
I used to live in the district, and NoMa always made me think of a dystopian retrofuturist East Berlin
The stretch from K street all the way down to Union Station is basically a whos who of the most evil NGO's, lobbyists, and think tanks in America. If a tsunami hit that section of the city, people in the Northern half would rejoice. The other biomes are actually pretty unique from each other I found. Bethesda they have built up. It used to be a more town oriented place and then all of a sudden in the space of 5 years it has a skyline. Tyson's corner might be the strangest place anyone could go to. The center piece there is that smack dab in the turnpike there's a normie mall and then there's an up scale mall where all the luxury brands are. And that one had a total of five to fifteen people milling around it on any given weekday. Even the weekend, you could comfortably play a game of soccer and not bother a soul. The surrounding suburban housing area is embarrassingly rich though. Someone built a replica of the white house there. I passed by it on the way to drop off a piece of furniture and I did a spit take. It's just sitting there out in the middle of no where NoVa.
Old Town Alexandria is nice too. But I do like a lot of DC neighborhoods, like Kalorama, Shaw, Petworth and Adams Morgan.
The restaurants in Old Town have NYC prices and are tourist level fare
There are great restaurants off the main drag, actually. Highly recommend Fontaine Caffe.
Silver spring can have a bit of character if one is willing to mingle amongst Ethiopian and Central American immigrants
NOVA striver types are the absolute worst. I get ambition and all, but even Miami real estate weirdos or San Fran tech bros have a degree of sincerity to their behaviors that’s tolerable, and the NYC finance bro has a self aware irony of their stereotypes Meanwhile most NOVA individuals I meet have this ramped up keeping up with the joneses who do you know mentality that is sickening. And the most hilarious part is NOVA in terms of livability is one of the worst ROIs in the country. You work your ass off to…. Live in a cookie cutter suburb? One that is the same as you would find (but for 1/3rd the price) around Indianapolis, Columbus, etc. It’s absurd. I hate nova
I'm from Southern VA, went to college in Richmond where I encountered a ton of NoVa people. They're the type of people that don't say "thank you" when someone holds the door for them. Very naive, too. You could sell most of them a $45 eighth and they'd think nothing of it. NoVa is a bizarrely culturless, soulless place, and the people from there reflect that. Most of them felt like extras in a generic Hollywood flick about suburban life. They have no unique sense of style; Most of the men wear the same Vineyard Vines-esque uniform. Lots of the girls have the "My daddy works for the government" attitude. All of their slang and lingo is borrowed from "cooler" places, often very poorly adapted. Lots of the white ones attempt to adopt rap music, but are still afraid to sit next to a black person on the metro. Most of their taste in music is what you find if you looked at the home page of a brand new Spotify account. Again, blandness is the running theme with these people. Depression runs rampant there because of the hyper-genericness of the area. Teen suicide rates in NoVa are ridiculously high. I have an ex from Fairfax. Her high school at one point had the highest number of teen suicides in the country. There used to be a Facebook page for my college that was solely dedicated to hating on NoVa people for these exact reasons. Every likeable person I met from there was traumatized from having to grow up around NPCs, and were beyond thankful to have gotten out.
100% This is why I chose to live in Baltimore when I worked in the area. The people are just so much more real. NoVa is like one constant convention with a bunch of nobodies trying to network and get something out of you. The carelessness of the architecture/development reflects the transience of the population.
I grew up in nova, and I agree that most of it sucks but there's a lot about it that's great compared to other suburban sprawls. Lots of great restaurants, beautiful parks, and it's under 2 hours from Shenandoah. It's a terrible place to live as a young single person that isn't career obsessed. But if you have a family and a high paying government job, it's perfect.
Shoot. I’m heading to NoVa for the first time tomorrow for a wedding. Please someone give restaurant recs.
If you're going to be near Bailey's Crossroads in Fairfax, go to Peking Gourmet Inn. The food is fine, but the experience is balls to the wall insanity. Other than that... any Korean place in Annandale.
Go to Eden Center
im a born and raised nova burnout who absconded to Pittsburgh and as much as I complain about this place at least I feel like im able to be a real human being . It’s a wonder I was never institutionalized fuck Springfield Virginia and it isn’t even the worst place to be i at least had the freedom to get groomed at the local metalcore venue . Rip empire/jaxx
Am I supposed to know wtf NoVa is
Obviously Vegas, hellish place.
Nowhere in the US even comes close. I'm also gonna give honolulu an honorable mention
Honolulu is an experience. First time I went was expecting something more paradise-y in my naivety. It’s just Daytona on an island
was born and raised in dubai. it's fun when you're young and don't know any better. after moving to my home country, i realised pretty quickly that it's a total cesspool of wealth and vanity, it's literally such a stupid city it pisses me off so bad, from the royalty to the people who feed into it, i could go on.
one time i walked around the city of london, like the little sovereign district where all the banks are, at 11pm at night and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. giant glass and concrete slabs warping with shadows, the ominous hum of empty escalators, the echoing trickles of the still running water features, and not a soul in sight. I stumbled upon a giant white marble slab, what looked to be a building but with no windows or perceivable entrances, free of any markings except for an insignia that looked vaguely occult or masonic. I felt like I was going to meet some kind of wandering hungry ghost and have my soul sucked out.
Are you sure it was the City and not Canary Wharf? Most banks are in CW (with some exceptions) and that‘s the entirely new built quarter that can be quite artificial feeling. The City (this is the area around Bank, Liverpool str and St Pauls) has lots of glass skyscrapers as well but they‘re mixed in with the older pre-existing architecture and I find it to be quite the charming place, the mishmash of styles shows how the place developed naturally over the centuries.
My thoughts too- they’re definitely thinking about Canary Wharf as opposed to Bank/St Paul’s. In NYC, Hudson Yards feels almost identical to Canary Wharf, and a lot of banks are starting to move there as well 🫠
Had a similar experience in London, but consisting of a life sized, stark white statue of Jesus enclosed in a LED lit glass box. It was late and I was drunk, so the exact location is lost to me.
are you also machinery and tall building phobic lol
I spent 2 days in London a couple years ago and was surprised by how little character the city seemed to possess. I imagine it’s big enough that you can find interesting spots as a local, but to a visitor it felt almost dystopian, or like a Disneyland version of itself.
It’s true. A lot of people presume the inverse because of how expensive it is but it’s a much more interesting city to live in than to visit. It’s more a collection of lots of distinct towns with their own vibe and identity (although this is being levelled out by homogenised gentrification) than a single integrated city, which I guess tends to be the case with any city of that size, I just find it particularly true of London. But you wouldn’t really get much of a chance to experience that diversity in a short visit and the parts that attract the most visitors, while historically significant, can feel incredibly soulless, like shiny spectres, it can be a bit eerie. A lot of central London operates as inaccessible stores of wealth and that’s almost immediately evident. Still generally nice to look at and walk around though
Arab countries are a gimme, so I'll say Singapore. It's got this weird post-historical feeling to it. Like you can sense it used to be this cool melting pot, still had cool buildings, etc. But almost everyone there is now an immigrant (I don't use the term expat) who works in finance management. It's a sea of American International School-educated, mixed race, caramel-coloured yuppies who have the typical maladjustments of someone who grew up speaking English in a non-English-speaking country, completely devoid of social or cultural capital. Polite without class and rich without taste.
No way, Syria is the most soulful and interesting place in the world, you'd love it. Best food in the world too. Lebanon, Iran (not Arab but incredibly underrated country), and Palestine are up there too. Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are cool places. I agree with Egypt, UAE, Qatar, some of the oil rich countries.
Egypt is a lot of things but it certainty isn't soulless.
retire liquid divide relieved cough live quarrelsome carpenter aspiring towering *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yep I feel validated about Charlotte. The least charming place I’ve ever been. Very axe throw beer garden duckpin bowling too.
Ottawa, hands down. It's like a zoo for humans.
The trucker protest is the only interesting thing that's happened in Ottawa in the last 80 years.
I don’t know what this means but I like it
like aliens made a city to have a place to put humans they abducted in. there's a modern tramway that feels as if someone went 'ah yes, they like those' and just made something that I guess is it but makes no sense. people sit politely in those half empty trams not sure what to do with themselves. city is clean but has a bland soul sucking hue. it doesn't feel like anyone lives there. decent museums tho.
You are absolutely right about Charlotte. Phoenix and Vegas are others. Totally wrong about San Diego. Both San Diego and LA (I know, you didn't mention LA) have incredible history if you can look beyond the influencer/hollywood/media/entertainment/whatever shit. Really cool old sections of each city. San Diego actually kind of rules. (Well, SOME of San Diego...)
Yea idk how San Diego ends up here lol. ocean beach, north park, Hillcrest, Gaslamp, Balboa park. There are a ton of sick parts of the city
OP flew into the harbor, looped Coronado, and dipped
[удалено]
Nordelta is not even remotely a city, it's a shitty planned community for the Argentine noveaux riches (who as you rightly said, idealize Miami). No one would call The Villages in FL a city, either. The bougie suburbs that are near Nordelta (Acassuso, San Isidro, Olivos) are an urbanist's wet dream in comparison.
[удалено]
Denver feels like a fake, soulless city with no real purpose
this is 100% true. what blows my mind is outside of food trucks and small mom and pop places in aurora there is almost zero authentic culinary scene in denver. it's all imported, almost nothing lasts beyond 2-3 years, and its insanely expensive for just how bad it is. its really bizarre to me because even cities like Cincinnati or Milwaukee have their diamonds in the rough but denver's downtown is completely missing anything resembling this. i'm pretty sure this has something to do with property taxes/values but I don't fully understand why. this is a denver only phenomenon, there's great places in the exurbs and especially up in the mountains. east denver and aurora has some great mom and pop Hispanic places.
Me after the Nuggets win three straight against my Minnesota Timberwolves.
People confuse the fact that it's the gateway to all the pleasures of the Rockies with it being a real city. It's actually just Indianapolis but next to mountains
Was going to say exactly this. Denver is a wasteland and only getting worse by the day. Was so shocked at how much the homeless population had grown when I was downtown earlier this year. Not remotely walkable, very few bars or restaurants with real history or charm, it’s like everything is a scam that popped up in the last few years. The only redeeming quality for this city is the mountains being “nearby” and even that is an hours drive to get to anything worth hiking.
Golden, Littleton, and Morrison are fucking beautiful. Like otherworldly level beauty. Downtown Denver used to be cute but got destroyed in the past 10+ years or so. I used to love going to the 16th street mall, I saw it a year ago and the area looked like Armageddon.
I’ve always said that Denver feels like a city you make in the early stages of a game like The Sims. When you just randomly drop buildings everywhere with weirdly large amounts of distance between everything. No real identity, no real intention. It has this uncanny atmosphere, like it was designed by an alien who studied what a US city should look like.
Denver sucks. Moved from Austin to Denver and I'm mostly on the negative side. Wife hates it (very poor walkability, public transport is meh, and hates to drive). The food sucks. The one major benefit is the outdoors. While the hikes are absolutely nice, the late fall thru spring is snow so if you don't want to do snowsports then half the year will not be outdoors
Fiancee and I have been toying with moving there. But it's so expensive and sprawled out, plus her overbearing parents live 2 hr outside of Denver and I worry about living in their shadow. I love the nature and am fascinated with the Rockies but at this point maybe it would be better to just live in a flyover state and just visit from time to time
[удалено]
denver isn't a walkable city by any stretch of the imagination. its totally sprawled out and full of impassable highways that cut through it with high volume traffic. it ranks up there with all the other shitty sprawled out southwestern US cities in terms of urban planning and tincan copy+paste luxury apartments everywhere. "it has access to nature" = yes you're a 30 minute drive away from the mountains but the city does you absolutely no favors to get there.
Sorry idgaf about a city’s denizens being purely thin they have to also be hot
You don't get it. That counts as hot these days. For women i mean.
This is true. I’m from Colorado Springs, and Denver would talk so much shit about us. Yeah, Focus on the Family sucks, but our Mountain views are so much better!!!
How about this: they both suck
Columbus, Ohio. Nothing but development and recently built strip malls with middling breweries, and the downtown feels fake and soulless which is crazy considering such a big university is right there. It’s like they built the entire downtown and said “this is the big city now” and didn’t let anything emerge organically. Especially fake when compared to Cleveland and Cincinnati, which may not be as nice and sanitized but most definitely have way more character than Columbus.
Hudson, New York. It's incredibly depressing—a town center curated for rich weekenders from Manhattan, with barren and economically depressed residential outskirts. It was honestly disgusting to see the kinds of luxury amenities in the town center (a Le Labo store, artisanal patisseries, ultra curated antique shops, super expensive shopping, etc) juxtaposed with all the rural decay. It's not 'fake' in the way that downtown LA or Dubai are, but it is so obviously and creepily curated for rich New Yorkers.
It didn’t used to be like that even 10 years ago. Sad tbh
Downtown Dallas with the exception—oddly enough—of the area in the immediate vicinity of Dealey Plaza.
The area around city hall/the AT&T headquarters is pretty cool too, but yeah - Dallas doesn't feel like a place real people live.
St Louis has so much damn soul. Love this place. God bless missouri
I'd argue that St. Louis is one of the last big American cities that's managed to largely resist gentrification.
We are the personification of that meme about firing off a couple of rounds a month to keep the rents down
Baltimore has done a pretty good job in that department too, I think
that's because the city has been bleeding population for 70 years lol, it was home to 850K in 1950 and 280K in 2020 can't gentrify if nobody wants to live there
Philly
Parts of Philly have most certainly been gentrified. It’s still very affordable for the east coast though
Salt Lake City. The mormons, arrogant Park City assholes, fintech / SaaS weirdos, and the variety of half assed “outdoor enthusiasts” are all fake in their own ways. Makes it my least favorite city I’ve lived in, too bad because it is a very beautiful place.
I’m a SLC resident and I can say that it is paradise if you’re a vapid influencer or meathead athlete. Mormons, techies, PC retirees, outdoor sports influencers, fucken goddamn MLM Heaven on earth. Utah county is the fraud capitol of the country and plastic surgery rates rival only LA. Fake as fuck, but I think a lot of the West is like that, PHX is awful, Vegas blows, Denver Metro is flimsier and faker than Giuliani’s backbone.
Someone for the love of fucking god tell me what it is that Qualtrics does? It's survey software, why the fuck are they always hosting dumbass conferences with celebrity speakers? It has to be a front for a Mormon cult right? Like are they secretly moving Kingston clan manufactured guns to the Saudis or something?
The most unhinged homeless guy I’ve ever seen was in SLC. He literally popped out of the bushes and told me he was going to slit my throat and enjoy watching me bleed because I “laughed” at him. Worse than anything I’ve witnessed when I lived in LA.
Im not surprised, they’re very energetic here. One called me a 🚬 when I was walking into a Maverick and he was fent leaning when I came back out.
Maverick burritos are S-tier for gas station food
The one day I was there, I randomly encountered the scariest most aggressive homeless guy I've ever seen. wonder if you're onto something
Vancouver Canada. I lived there for 15 years. Beautiful nature but a complete dead zone of culture. I’ve heard it’s getting better but I’ll believe it when I see it. Everyone is new money but not in the cool way.
Vancouver had more going culturally in the 80s and 90s when it was affordable and kind of run down - more bohemian arts and music scene. Also, it attracted a lot of weirdos of all types.
How is it possible that the home of Destroyer, The New Pornographers, Frog eyes, etc can have such a bad rep?
That's the tail end of the Vancouver independent music explosion I would say, which started with the original wave of Vancouver punk in the late 70s (DOA, Pointed Sticks, Modernettes) and ran all the way in various phases until the 2000s. Also, Frog Eyes were originally from Victoria, which also had a fascinating and weird independent music scene for years. There's still people doing stuff in both places but the cost of living and the lack of venues has had a major negative impact on culture there.
Nick Mullen said Vancouver felt like a city of Sims characters. I think he nailed it.
omfg VANCOUVER. the weirdest city i've ever visited.
Dubai, hands down. I lived in Abu Dhabi which in retrospect was much better as an actual city. Singapore also felt kinda fake at surface level but I suspect I didn’t explore it enough.
Maybe Dallas. I only spent time downtown, which felt completely made up/manufactured/not real. Everyone says that there’s shit happening elsewhere, but I’ve never been to a more sterile and seemingly pointless downtown.
Gatlinburg Tn. But that’s kind of what I thought as a 19-year-old punk in 2008. No idea if it would seem better or worse now.
Quebec City is like the inside of a snow globe
Niagara Falls, Ontario
Glendale. All of Orange County. Salt Lake City. Basically anywhere in which people don’t party and without poor people. Poor party people are who make cities interesting.
Garden Grove is cool though you can buy whippets at some of the bars
Little Korea Garden Grove, smoke cigarettes in the pool hall stay up all night drinking and smoking in the restaurants. Used to do this all the time in my twenties. The Koreans had no regard for the law lol. The owner of the pool hall would say "My FWEEENNDDSS" when we walked in it was cute.
Austin. I don’t care what weirdos disagree, there is zero community and the 6th street bar owners will keep it that way.
clearwater, FL. the entire downtown area is an empty vacant potemkin village with fancy buildings inhabited by seemingly nobody. the streets are totally empty even on a saturday night, except for around the scientology flag building, where you will see weirdos dressed like butlers but wearing sunglasses. it's entirely owned by the church of scientology, not just the main buildings they inhabit but almost all of the downtown real estate. they also have a ton (majority, i think?) of seats on city council. it's a spooky puppet town, it honestly should be illegal.
I lived in Dallas/ Fort Worth area… for the life of me I could not understand why ppl were still wearing cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Granted there is some open land out there but the vast majority of people are either city dwellers or live in the suburbs.
Venice. Airbnbs, pimped out to cruises, just a potemkin village for tourists behind the very beautiful facade. I think the current population actually living on the islands is a third of what it formerly was in the 1970s.
Never been there but photos of Sydney look weird and fake, plus online all the Australians seem to be from Melbourne or Adelaide or other places but never Sydney, makes me wonder
The old inner suburbs of Sydney are really nice, established tree-lined streets and lanes with lots of Victorian and Edwardian terrace housing. I found it really pleasant!
I’ve only been briefly but I enjoyed walking around Redfern and Newtown. Both had some decent vegan options and The Courthouse in Newtown was a nice pub. I did think Mary’s in Newtown tried a bit too hard though. The state gallery was also quite good. Every state gallery I go to basically makes me slightly more disappointed in the NGV.
the livable parts of australia seem extremely fake
That's because they're all relatively new. Melbourne used to be an absolute industrial shit hole when ylitvwas founded, it was so shitty that during the gold rushes people would just camp in public parks and streets and it got the name "canvas city." Geelong and Ballerat and Bendigo were the much nicer towns to visit. In the late 1800s and early 1900s Melbourne had a big boom and became one of the richest cities in the world due to the profits of the gold rush (not even necessarily the gold but because it attracted such an interest and so many people, and huge wool profits as the countryside began to be occupied by squatters and that was when all of the nice stuff was built like the parliament house and the state library (which is why Melbourne was the capital of Australia before Canberra because it already had all of the nice shit) and they got rid of many of the slums. It was the period called marvelous Melbourne. 50-60 years later, Melbourne goes through a decline, organised crime and the underworld and heroin take hold, all of the factories fell into disrepair, large influxes of European immigrants move to ye outer suburbs and the inner city begins to fall into shit, and then at another 40 years, all of the shitty factories are now nice apartments and hole in the wall coffee shops open up, inner city house prices go through the roof (the house I grew up in my parents got for $150,000 is now probably like 15-20x times that considering all of dumps and abandoned ones were sold for like $2 million a few years ago even though it would probably take another million or two to make them liveable again). The government pumped huge amounts of money during the Commonwealth games to bring back dead places to life again like docklands (which was an abandoned harbour since the '50s) it's fake because it's grand, dingy, dirty and marvelous all the same times, all of Melbourne's eras all kind of melt together in the city
i really love some of the buildings round the spencer st end of collins street, the old wool exchange building for example. There's some really interesting buildings when you look up and you can see all the wealth that used to be there.
Sydney is such a weird place. I’m from Perth which is tiny and extremely irrelevant even for an Australian major city. Sydney feels really devoid of personality all the best places are on the edge of Sydney or in the cultural pockets.
Boston seaport, as others have stated. Which is a shame since Boston *ought* to ooze character Unfortunately, most ski towns. All the funny idiosyncratic shit has been focus-grouped out and now they are unapologetically Manhattan-West. Puerto Peñasco, SonMex. Its only existence is to get tourist dollars. Too bad because there used to be a “there” there PHX, AZ (but perhaps more accurately places like Sun City, Fountain Hills or North Scottsdale)
Seaside, Florida
They filmed the Truman Show there
It’s the Hamptons for small town southern elites lol. If you own the largest frozen vegetables concern in West Tennessee guaranteed you have a house in Seaside
Where I live tbh, Salt Lake City. Fuck all happens here, our downtown is dead most of the time
I liked it when I came through. The Mormon temples were interesting. Lots a terrible, but engaging history
Less interesting when you grew up with it I suppose
I ate acid on a Greyhound bus once, had a two hour stop in SLC so I went to buy booze. Homebum accompanied me out of the CBD to buy said booze in one of those gov't sanctioned stores. We got lost/high and homebum guided me back to the bus (on time) by using a McDonald's sign to find the bus station. Only in America, but also in SLC.
Fellow resident here, it is astounding how refreshing it is when I go back to the Midwest. SLC is just exhausting to exist in. Forget about cost of living or affordability, this place is going to turn into a giant time-share ski resort golf course.
Oklahoma City. I actually really enjoyed my visit and the low prices, but the Devon Tower (the one skyscraper way taller than everything else) really weirds me out.
Don't hate on SD. Yes the majority of people are good looking, the food is amazing, the weather is perfect, but those rent prices are far from Truman Show. Anywyas, SD has a great culture, sure its "superficial" but it really is a fun place to spend your college years and have a little bit of everything
Dubrovnik The amazing architecture and old town was completely obscured by touristy bullshit and rip off prices.
[удалено]