Shithole Cities

[Clusterfrack]

Birmingham, Alabama.
Extremely high reported property crime. Reporting is very manipulated(downward) by the admin, and the local businesses, media and chamber of commerce cheer leads for the deception.
Ridiculous levels of violent crime...hugely underplayed unless it involves click-worthy subject matter. You know...
An incredibly enabling Juvenile court system, simultaneously overwhelmed and contributory, with beyond lunatic leftist judges who verge on co-conspiracy, and are 100% down for the most hug-a-thug policies and rulings you can't even imagine. Once they "graduate" to the big boy jail, the older, grown inmates live in abject fear of the mindlessly hysterical and utterly pointless violence the kids are capable of.

The Criminal courts are fecally impacted, with every detention facility in the state, from prisons to the local hoosegows so overcrowded(and under consent decree) from a laughably large career criminal population that nothing short of Biblical plague or someone going through with a flamethrower will ever make enough of a splash to wipe up. So the ball rolls downhill from the courts to the district attorney to the screening prosecutors to the detectives to drop every case possible for any reason imaginable...sometimes just by magicking them away. Burglary is trespassing, attempted murder is felony assault pled down to misdemeanor. Sentence suspended, concurrent, split, abeyed, diverted("He smokes weed, your honor, he needs rehab...")
Witness fails to show after the 15th postponement? Toss the case. Detective 15 minutes late? Toss the case. Defendants first time committing this exact crime? Toss.

Two decades plus of "homeless" shite infesting the downtown business areas, parks and all the libraries(you risk cholera, diphtheria, scabies and lice going to the downtown library. Or being assaulted by a "teen" left there as after-school daycare). They were cleared out for the World Games, though. Which was a financial disaster that resembled the 2008 crisis mixed with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. ( it did result in a salutary incident though. A trio of German athletes were jumped by a quintuple set of the Usual Suspects.
Only the timely arrival of West Precinct officers saved the yutes from physical mutilation, though not utter humiliation. To the vast amusement of the coppers.

25 plus years of criminally mismanaged infrastructure, from water to sewage to simple road maintenance.
It's so despised by literally everyone that every city around it is willing to cut off their own nose for spite, merely to oppose or inconvenience it. No one who works for it wants to live there, and the population has shrunk so much so fast that it's now the second largest city in the state, behind Huntsville...which not so long ago was a sleepy town known for the NASA rocket center and nothing else. Soon, it'll be third.
The only reason it exists as a corporate entity is the UAB hospital system. Absent that(and the UAB Emergency Room, which alone keeps the homicide rate under that of Juarez) it would be a burned out post-apocalyptic wasteland in a decade. The parts that already aren't, that is.

In the 90s, Mayor-For-Life Arrington led a city that was consistently placed in the nation's top 10 for per-capita homicides...so he opened a chain of funeral parlors in the Hood.
He was accused of many things, but missing an opportunity wasn't one.

I hung out in downtown Birmingham on a Saturday night when I was out there for the 2021 USPSA LoCap Nationals. I didn't see any homeless, and the downtown looked clean and prosperous. There were no BLM signs, and I saw people chatting nicely with two cops who were on foot patrol. Everyone seemed to be getting along. I ate at a pub full of hipsters (white and black), and had a nice time talking with a bartender about how Birmingham had improved a lot in the past few years.

[Paul Blackburn]

This podcast details why American cities are becoming 3rd world shanty towns.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas...=1000612960905

[fatdog]

I hung out in downtown Birmingham on a Saturday night ....had a nice time talking with a bartender about how Birmingham had improved a lot in the past few years.

Last 10-12 years there has been a significant gentrification and sort of urban renewal with apartments, lofts, parks, millennials moving there. But the underlying stuff Fuedist describes is real and getting worse. There are just these sorts of islands of urban prosperity now in downtown where there is in fact a PD presence and an effort at having some neighborhoods that appear sane. They do seem to sweep the homeless down toward certain areas away from those gentrified areas.

But depopulation is Birmingham's destiny. The numbers of abandoned houses and emptying neighborhoods is starting to remind me of detroit and the city is trying to tear down some of those structures which have no future except to be homeless/drug houses. The place has a now long history of petty government corruption that is also spiraling down just like Detroit. The machine politics means there is no turning back for the place.

The youth violence in that place is stunning, and as fuedist describes, the absolutely feral young gang bangers scare everybody including even the older criminals, and their culture and norms are sadly spreading.

[RoyGBiv]

The problem for me there would be no reciprocity.

LV falls into my category with NOLA and Shanghai:
1) Been There
2) Would Go Back Tomorrow, If I NEEDED To
3) DGAF If I Never Go Back

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

Shanghai? I LOVE Shanghai.... Shanghai is like if Guiliani-era NYC and SFO had a baby.

Beijing? For sure among the worst places I've ever visited... despite the Forbidden City being spectacular. 2 days too many.

[DC_P]

Atlanta - who cares about Atlanta? .

I wish I didn't have to. Fortunately the northern suburbs are like being in a different state (although still not great). Sadly I have to drive through or near the city to get to work.

[mmc45414]

Shanghai? I LOVE Shanghai.... Shanghai is like if Guiliani-era NYC and SFO had a baby.

My trip was quite a while ago (~1998?) and at that point my impression was more like a crappy part of Chicago, with a bunch of in-process construction projects that no one seemed to be actively working on. Also part of my impression was from a different mindset and experience being a customer instead of a vendor, going from one event to the next, eating "delicacies" that were not all that appetizing, while expected to wear a suit to every event, and be pleasant the whole time.

Later on the same trip we went to a resort on Langkawi Island for a series of meetings that I wasn't required to be in many, and that was a whole different story!

[RevolverRob]

Seattle was rather unimpressive and unappealing. This was almost 10 years ago. I would feel safer in Mexico City than Seattle.

Nah. You're safer in Seattle than Mexico City - for now.

But it is the only North American city I've been in where I consistently had to step around piles of human shit, used needles, and smell crack being smoked as I walked to my office downtown. I know I described in a thread around here somewhere the day a pair of shit and blood caked boxer shorts were flying through the air at on a windy, rainy, Seattle day and nearly flew into me. That was but one instance of that kind of stuff.

Chicago sucked. And people burning and looting buildings during the pandemic and burning cars on Halloween all served to remind you that human garbage was there - many places weren't safe, but many many places were. I miss many things about Chicago. I miss a few things about the PNW (mainly specific people), but I don't miss Seattle. I doubt I ever will miss Seattle, to be honest.

[TheNewbie]

Nah. You're safer in Seattle than Mexico City - for now.

But it is the only North American city I've been in where I consistently had to step around piles of human shit, used needles, and smell crack being smoked as I walked to my office downtown. I know I described in a thread around here somewhere the day a pair of shit and blood caked boxer shorts were flying through the air at on a windy, rainy, Seattle day and nearly flew into me. That was but one instance of that kind of stuff.

Chicago sucked. And people burning and looting buildings during the pandemic and burning cars on Halloween all served to remind you that human garbage was there - many places weren't safe, but many many places were. I miss many things about Chicago. I miss a few things about the PNW (mainly specific people), but I don't miss Seattle. I doubt I ever will miss Seattle, to be honest.

It was a shock to me. I’ve never seen anything close to it in Mexico City. Mexico City has its own flavor of crazy, but Seattle was something out there. I’m not saying I’m right, just that even looking like I do, I *feel* safer when I walk alone in Mexico City.

I remember a dude making bird sounds in the street, another guy talking about it and the US mail man didn’t seem to speak English all that well. The train from the airport to the bus station close to the Seahawk stadium was also interesting.

The only time I’ve had to step around human waste was in a homeless camp. Which Seattle seems to be a big version of.

Once we got out of the city, it was nice.

That boxer story is crazy!

[Borderland]

Albuquerque, NM

Parts of Chicago. Some parts are really nice and others not so much. I really enjoyed the Museum of Science and Industry when I was there last time, then turned on the news back at the hotel and some was shot 2 blocks away that day.

Yeah, ABQ. There's a bad side of town. Mostly south of Central east of the river and south of US 66 west of the river. I learned the places to avoid from my cousin who's lived there for 40 years.

I like NM, just not ABQ.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Before we left Portland in 1994, my wife and I noted that parking structures for Portland State University, were a great place for folks to take a dump.