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I don't think I've ever been to a major/larger city that I was disappointed in. I was surprised (in a good way) by Baltimore, I liked the Inner Harbor area a lot. Chicago was surprising because it seemed rather clean for a city that reminded me of New York in many aspects.
I've been to places like Concord, NH, that weren't all that special but I never had great expectations for places like that anyway (nothing against Concord or NH - seriously), so I wouldn't say I was disappointed. When you're used to New York City as being "your city, the city," it's hard to have 1. higher expectations than that (for me, impossible) and 2. it's hard to think anything/anywhere will come close, so, going somewhere, I go in excited to be there but don't really have particular expectations - I just see what happens. I can find good in anywhere, big or small. I really try to not harp on negatives.
Example - I went to Cooperstown for my brother who was playing baseball there (duh). It was boring, too much baseball (obviously, and I like baseball but I guess not that much) but it was such a charming town with great, old architecture in a beautiful setting that I was able to overlook how bored to tears I was. When looking back on it today, I think of the beauty not how bored I was after like two days.
I like Baltimore but damn that city is super dangerous and I have family in the Middle East but we don't have street crime like that, some people have no respect for human life in the inner cities and Baltimore has some really bad parts, even the cab driver called Baltimore Bodymore and told me not too good to this and that part of town, its a shame because their Inner Harbour is really nice.
Oh my gosh, that city is hella freakin cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, C-H-E-A-P, mother-effin hella freakin CHEAP. The wine? Cheap as F. The homegrown (and delicious beer), cheap as F. The awesome (and delicious) food? Cheap as F. Hell even the effing transit fares, cheap as F.
So cheap, so cheap, so cheap. Well gosh, one of my friends traveling with me only set a budget of $250 for five nights in Portland and before we got there, he told me that's all he needed for it. Oh my gosh, so so so cheap. Cheapest city I've ever been to in the United States for almost every single thing except for probably housing and as a tourist, I wouldn't even care about that.
We went ziplining around Mount Hood, it was so cheap. We actively bar hopped, actively took in the nightlife, ate so much, all of it cheap. Hell, even hotels were mad cheap and we stayed in a pretty incredible one too right in Downtown.
SO SO SO CHEAP. SO SO SO CHEAP. SO SO SO MOTHEREFFING CHEAP.
We also thought Seattle was cheap but more cheap in the way that it was cheap as hell compared to San Francisco and San Diego, rather than actually being cheap at a national level like Portland, which is SO SO SO CHEAP. Oh my gosh. Seattle was incredible too and so was San Diego but having seen both before, I already knew that. Portland? What an awesome surprise man, what an awesome surprise.
Disappointment of the trip? That dump Fresno, California. A bum followed us from one gas station to another across the street, then to a third one on the OTHERSIDE of the freeway just to harass us for money. We filled up gas, never gave that city a chance after that and wrote it off forever. It also looked hella ghetto and ugly right in Downtown, no offense to anyone that lives there or loves it but your city sucks major time.
It's not even that I look for cheapness as a quality to a city, it's just that the quality was outstanding and the prices were so cheap, I'm still taken away by it and it's been a few weeks now. It's cheaper than anywhere I've been to in North America to date, seriously.
I like Baltimore but damn that city is super dangerous and I have family in the Middle East but we don't have street crime like that, some people have no respect for human life in the inner cities and Baltimore has some really bad parts, even the cab driver called Baltimore Bodymore and told me not too good to this and that part of town, its a shame because their Inner Harbour is really nice.
I know It is very dangerous but I like any harbor/bay/ocean even river area of a city, because usually it is one of the nicest parts of the city and I like water settings.
Most surprising: Baltimore, Maryland. I actually didn't think I'd like it all that much, given it's seedy reputation in the rest of the country. However, Baltimore really deserves the moniker of "Charm City." The Inner Harbor area was very cool, and I loved going to Camden Yards. I wish I had more time to explore it, but what sticks out to me the most was how nice everyone was in comparison to how a lot of people were in the rest of the BosWash corridor. Not to mention how tasty crab-legs with Old Bay seasoning is. I would come back again.
Most dissapointing: Don't really have one really. Reno, NV is pretty dumpy, which is surprising considering how close it is to Tahoe and how many NorCal tourists frequent the area. It could do a lot better of a job of being a tourist hotspot, but it woefully fails at that. Maybe if Reno was where Carson City was, it would be better since it would literally be 10 minutes from Tahoe as opposed to an hour.
^^
Which reminds me, you were right about Las Vegas man (Lets Eat Candy & I are friends in actual life). Outside of Las Vegas Boulevard (the Strip) and factions of Downtown (like the Fremont East Entertainment & Shopping District), the rest of the city looks like Fresno. It's very seedy, dangerous, borders on run for such a new city.
Some nice suburbs though, especially near Hoover Dam area, and the mountain vistas in that area are surreal but the actual city outside of the Strip and ONLY PARTS of Downtown is a helluva a seedy looking place with so many questionable characters roaming about.
^^
Which reminds me, you were right about Las Vegas man (Lets Eat Candy & I are friends in actual life). Outside of Las Vegas Boulevard (the Strip) and factions of Downtown (like the Fremont East Entertainment & Shopping District), the rest of the city looks like Fresno. It's very seedy, dangerous, borders on run for such a new city.
Some nice suburbs though, especially near Hoover Dam area, and the mountain vistas in that area are surreal but the actual city outside of the Strip and ONLY PARTS of Downtown is a helluva a seedy looking place with so many questionable characters roaming about.
^^
Which reminds me, you were right about Las Vegas man (Lets Eat Candy & I are friends in actual life). Outside of Las Vegas Boulevard (the Strip) and factions of Downtown (like the Fremont East Entertainment & Shopping District), the rest of the city looks like Fresno. It's very seedy, dangerous, borders on run for such a new city.
Some nice suburbs though, especially near Hoover Dam area, and the mountain vistas in that area are surreal but the actual city outside of the Strip and ONLY PARTS of Downtown is a helluva a seedy looking place with so many questionable characters roaming about.
Yeah, I think Henderson off of 515 can be nice because of all the vistas, and a lot of the southern neighborhoods south of 215 can be nice. However, during the foreclosure crisis, nearly every single one of those "nice" neighborhoods were boarded up. I think Summerlin was the exception to the rule, but it was eerie how an area full of nice houses could be empty. If I was a loser, I would have considered squatting in one of them.
Nevada's natural scenery is a lot nicer than where people actually live.
Hell, after travelling around the West so much, I actually believe the areas outside the cities are a lot nicer than the cities themselves, San Diego and maybe Seattle excepting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UKWildcat1981
I take you would not like Stockton CA lol
After college, I used to work in foreclosures up in Northern California. Stockton was, by far, the most depressing city I had ever been to. Ever seen a whole downtown area boarded up? Yep.
The Southern California analogue is San Bernardino. They're pretty much the same city.
Just like Modesto and Riverside. Lateral places all around.
Surprising: Flint, MI. It has a nice little downtown and some nice neighborhoods. Really, the whole city doesn't seem as gloomy as media portrays it to be. It just seems like a small town that's down on its luck but it wouldn't be that far off to see the city stabilize and be a pretty decent place to live. I think it would need just a little bit more to keep from being boring though.
Disappointing: Ann Arbor. Nice city, but the college atmosphere is not something I like. Especially when there's a intellectual pretentiousness mixed with drunken frat boys trying to hump every girl on the street. Thankfully, that seems to only exist in and around the college campus and not the whole city which mostly seems like a regular nice wooded suburb.
Disappointing sort of: Chicago. The Loop specifically. Very clean (almost to the point of being sterile) but lacks the feeling of an aged city. Historical architecture seemed lost in a sea of plain boring skyscrapers (not to say all of them were plain, but there were too many that were). Too many tourists (felt unauthentic). Too much traffic on the main roads and freeways, yet hardly any on any side street. On the plus side, public transport was convenient and pretty easy to navigate. Overall, I wish I could have seen more of the neighborhoods that are outside of the Loop to give me a better idea of Chicago. The Loop just feels like "Downtown Anywhere, USA" and nothing distinctly "Chicago" about it outside several recognizable landmarks. Though, the skyline as a collective whole is pretty cool to look at.
I mean I don't want to come across as a douche because I am mature enough to understand that preference is preference at the end of the day and anyone can prefer anything they want.
Though to answer your question, hell nah, I wouldn't like Stockton in the least bit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lets Eat Candy
Yeah, I think Henderson off of 515 can be nice because of all the vistas, and a lot of the southern neighborhoods south of 215 can be nice. However, during the foreclosure crisis, nearly every single one of those "nice" neighborhoods were boarded up. I think Summerlin was the exception to the rule, but it was eerie how an area full of nice houses could be empty. If I was a loser, I would have considered squatting in one of them.
Nevada's natural scenery is a lot nicer than where people actually live.
Hell, after travelling around the West so much, I actually believe the areas outside the cities are a lot nicer than the cities themselves, San Diego and maybe Seattle excepting.
After college, I used to work in foreclosures up in Northern California. Stockton was, by far, the most depressing city I had ever been to. Ever seen a whole downtown area boarded up? Yep.
The Southern California analogue is San Bernardino. They're pretty much the same city.
Just like Modesto and Riverside. Lateral places all around.
True about Seattle. All of it's suburbs are unworthy compared to the actual city of Seattle itself. Surprisingly, the nightlife in the Capital Hill neighborhood, adjacent to Downtown but across the freeway from it, is pretty stellar, especially around Pike & Pine cross area.
San Diego is fantastic but I think La Jolla takes it to a whole different level, even for San Diego. We ate at George's Terrace in San Diego, the climate was perfect, the views from the rooftop restaurant were so spectacular, heart melted, fell in love with the city at-large. Then went to hike at Torry Pines before sunset and that was a glorious experience all onto itself.
It's sort of why I stopped posting on City-Data for a while, the stuff you read on here is retarded sometimes, if I took it seriously then I wouldn't have given Seattle's nightlife a chance and it's definitely worth experiencing. It's a very classy nightlife scene, the first night there we felt under-dressed, the Russians there particularly have a fine taste in alcoholic beverages.
Yeah, Henderson was the suburb that I had in mind in regards to Las Vegas, there are a few more, especially the ones east of the city before you start seeing the Native American casinos (which start before Hoover Dam comes into the picture). The one knock I have on those suburbs though, is that they take generic to a whole new level, I mean yes, I get that suburban homes in the same neighborhood can have "similarities" but the ones I saw in Las Vegas' suburbs were almost literally the exact same size, color, build, everything as the one next door, then the next one next door, and so on. Haven't seen that anywhere else, takes cookie-cutter concept to a whole grand spanking new level, Phoenix didn't have this problem at all, in fact much of Phoenix, while suburban in character, looked and felt like a much more upscale city compared to Las Vegas and especially interior California (Sacramento excepted). To be honest though, those generic "look-alike" homes in the Las Vegas suburbs were several notches above and beyond the actual neighborhoods in the actual city of Las Vegas, outside of the Strip. That was just a horror show, a nightmare of epic proportions. Cant believe a city so new would be so rundown. We saw way too many lots in Downtown Las Vegas, except they would have chains around them, concrete, but no lane markers to use for parking, they were just abandoned lots. Whole different level of depressing and right in Downtown. The Fremont East area of Downtown was a significant improvement over the rest of Downtown but it was undoubtedly subpar to anything the Strip had to offer.
I will say this though, the ethnic cuisine scene in Las Vegas is spectacular. Probably took a page out of California's playbook there, well done on the food front. Impressed.
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It is very dangerous but I like any harbor/bay/ocean even river area of a city, because usually it is one of the nicest parts of the city and I like water settings. 
