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Generally any city in the Rustbelt besides Chicago, Indy, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Columbus and maybe KC or Cincy I don't know about these last two. St. Louis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Akron, Youngstown, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Flint are all fine examples of such cities. Cities which once were booming and then collapsed under their own weight due to hard economic times and also due to "white flight" to their suburban areas experienced when blacks migrating from the South settled down in these cities.
I think a distinction needs to be made between cities with nice preserved historical areas (SF and Charleston) and cities that are stuck in time like Buffalo. SF and Charleston, despite having great historic buildings, do not feel stuck in time at all.
Beaten to the punch....Terrehaute, IN. without a doubt, and Buffalo, as well as other urban areas of upstate New York the general populace may not be so familiar with- try Elmira for example, or Utica, Potsdam, Binghamton: depressing as all hell. I'd half-expect station wagons every where hauling six children around town while attempting to locate a gas station that still had fuel to ration off.
Ah, I know the PERFECT town: Galena, IL. I think its actually billed as "the town that time forgot." Seriously. I believe that 95% of the town is on the National Register of Historic Places or something like that. Most of the town is pristine old Victorians, Italianates, Georgians, Union, Greek Revivals, etc, etc. The floors creek, the places smell old, the doors squeak and moan, etc. Its like an instant time warp back to the late 1800s or early 1900s. Ulysses S. Grants home is in town as well as 8 other Civil War generals. Abraham Lincoln gave several speaches in town, some sites are marked. Its just a town that is completely frozen in time.
Wyoming is undoubtedly a state frozen in time. The place has a wild west feel to it, but even the more "progressive" parts of the state feel like they're stuck in the 70's/80's. Most people there have 80's style hair cuts and still think that Vanilla Ice is all the rage
LOVED those pictures of Galena, although that McMansion at the top in that first picture looks bizarrely out of place...
Thats not a McMansion. In fact, thats an old bonafide early 1900s mansion. Thats an old bed and breakfast actually, now that I think about it. There are no McMansions in that town, in fact Id assume theyre forbidden.
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