re: What’s the dirtiest US city you’ve been to?

Abq sounds like the area around the bus station neighborhood in El Paso. The few times I been there it really felt like I may be killed at any minute and I have never felt like that anywhere outside of combat deployments.

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Abq sounds like the area around the bus station neighborhood in El Paso. The few times I been there it really felt like I may be killed at any minute and I have never felt like that anywhere outside of combat deployments.

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I haven't been to that part of El Paso, but the other areas I thought were fairly clean. Surprisingly so for a border town.

Sorry to hear that about El Paso. It's one of the American cities that I'm secretly rooting for (along with Detroit, Memphis, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Beaumont, and Jackson).

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My goal is to avoid cities, but NOLA is by far the dirtiest I’ve seen.

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New Orleans is really bad. I think there's a cultural element that doesn't value cleanliness. And New Orleans also has a very poor philosophy around maintenance, which doesn't jive well with their recent refusal to enforce the laws. That all just makes a broad swath of the city feel so neglected and run down. That city would be so much more competitive if their leadership just sweat the small stuff and actually tried a little.

San Francisco, Atlanta, and Seattle have all felt much cleaner in the 1990s than they do today. At least their downtowns and major parks all are filthy right now. That's an unfortunate trend nationwide, but those towns are leading the race to the bottom IMO.

Memphis always felt dirty unless you stuck to the Poplar/Walnut Grove/Union corridors. Which is weird because their eastern suburbs like Collierville, Germantown, Olive Branch, and Arlington are all quite clean and nice.

Los Angeles went from okay to downright disgusting in the past 25 years. They have massive homeless encampments and huge open drug markets - possibly the worst in the country right now.

Detroit is really run down, but they've done excellent work to the area around their downtown and towards Wayne State on that new transit/street car line. I think that's Woodward Avenue but not sure. Their airport is phenomenal too but I think Wayne county runs it and not Detroit. Go any farther out beyond Wayne State, and the city features astounding garbage and decay until you get to the suburbs.

Chicago was surprisingly clean to me. Far cleaner than NYC and Los Angeles at least. I suspect the winter clears out the homeless in Chicago, and they also use alleyways for public services so it hides the garbage out of sight.

San Diego, Tampa, and Clearwater were also surprisingly clean given their size and demographics. I hope that hasn't changed in the past few years. I haven't been back to any of them since the pandemic.

Pittsburgh was surprisingly clean although it had some run down sections too. I'd put the Hill District up against the worst neighborhoods from St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincy, or Detroit. But they also have a huge variety of older middle class neighborhoods that have neither gentrified into expensive housing nor have declined into total crap. Rare for an American city.

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I love the downtown Chicago area. For all of its issues, it’s always one of the nicest cities I travel to.

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Everyone seems big on Chicago now. I feel like I need to go back because I don’t remember it being that great. I remember it was decent to visit but not a place I would go back to.

Portland. I didn't hate it there actually, but jfc there was just trash everywhere and walking by the river downtown you'd run into tweaker hot spots with hundreds of needles. It was depressing not being able to enjoy a walk when all I could think about is one wrong step = hepatitis.

New Orleans is also up there. Just a total shithole at this point sadly. No nature to at least mask it like Portland has.

Philadelphia

Cairo, IL had to be where ‘Life After People” was filmed.

When I rode through there 10 years ago, only a liquor store was in business.

Fat City

Odessa