Worst area you have been to?

[raskolnikov]

Katowice Poland. Only went through there on a train from Wroclaw to Krakow but it looked rough.

 

[Jane Doe]

In Melbourne, the Werribee 'Birdcage' - a series of streets which all have bird names - is a scary place. It isn't far from the Werribee Railway Station, another place scary enough by day. I wouldn't ever want to go there at night.

In some Australian cities, it isn't far from nice streets with well-kept suburban houses, shops, cafes, restaurants and the like to find yourself in a bad area. For example, I love Sydney city, but its only a short walk south to a really bad area surrounded by Redfern, Surry Hills, Chippendale and Waterloo.

Brisbane is a beautiful city and I mostly feel safe there, but some streets in Fortitude Valley made me feel very uneasy even though it is on the edge of the CBD. Adelaide's southern beachside suburbs are stunning but take one wrong turn then another and another heading away from the ocean, and you might find yourself in a rough area very quickly. In Perth, the large suburb of Bentley in the inner southern suburbs has some nice areas and is a major educational, administrative and business center but there are some blocks of streets that it is wise to avoid or move through as soon as possible.

A few northern suburbs of Perth I wouldn't be comfortable being in during the day let alone at night.

 

[Big Sauce 21]

The Logan area in general where Woodridge and Beenleigh are located seems to be 'disputed territory', but in the reverse of how this usually works. People from Brisbane claim that Logan is part of the Gold Coast, while people from the Gold Coast claim that Logan is part of Brisbane.

Greater Brisbane area is UGE.

 

[JackFlash]

South LA, South Bronx, Tarneit!

 

[Pistol Night]

AAMI Stadium after beating Port in the last minute

 

[errant bounce]

I nearly ended up in the Bronx by mistake once when I went to the wrong train platform.

I got a hint that I was in the wrong place when there were some shady looking black people on the platform that looked like they wanted to kill me but I decided to check with some little old black lady who looked the least likely to kill me and she spat back at me "this train's goin' to the Bronx". I knew then it was time to GTFO.

I went to a New York Mets game and it happened to be on 'bat day' where they hand out little baseball bats. I had a pretty unreliable iPhone that inevitably died in the last innings and had to get from Queens to Bushwick and had no idea what street I was staying on or the subway stations nearby so had to ask a bunch of New Yorkers how to get to some vague area. by the time I got home it was getting pretty dark and it was a pretty industrial part of Brooklyn and wondered why all of a sudden people were afraid of giving me directions – New Yorkers are utter campaigners but the ones earlier were helpful.

After about two hours of wandering about and getting zero help some Mexican dude out the front of a tattoo shop came up to me and asked wtf I was doing and I told him my situation. he looked me up and down and laughed 'you've did well escaping some trouble' and told me it'd recently become one of the worst areas in the city and he and his mates never ventured down the streets I went to and they'd lived there since they were children. he offered me a coke (which I didn't drink) and let me charge my phone and we both worked out where my accomodation was and said 'don't go walking around in tiny shorts (it had been a while since the Kennedy Compound look was seen in America) and swinging around a ****ing baseball bat.'

On the 20 minute walk home some coppers also came by and told me to put it down my back because it was a signal I was up for a bit of it.

The absolute worst moment I've had was a week in lovely Amalfi and we decided to spend a night before a flight close to Naples airport. that city is an absolute scary ****ing shithole even in the middle of the place but we got a cab with a driver who spoke zero English and we were all naive and stupid and had 10% battery and like 50 euros in cash between us. we gave directions and he seemed incredibly confused and we kept going backwards and forwards because we kept seeing we were driving away from the pin we'd dropped, which was the hotel. in the end we just agreed to go where the driver thought we were supposed go and got dropped off in suburban Naples about an hour's drive from the city.

No one spoke English, people shuttered their blinds when we walked past, all the shops were clearly fronts, and kids kept yelling and laughing at us. my girlfriend at the time was in Birkenstocks and kept insisting on 'finding a park and getting a bottle of water' but I knew as soon as we stopped we'd be battling the dark and this was not an area to be just wandering around in.

After the fastest one hour walk of my life where a bunch of skinny teenagers told us there was a hotel in a vague direction and another in the other and we just chose to go in the first direction with no ****in idea, we finally found the hotel and its big open gates were quite like heaven's. it was ****ing nuts.

The hardarse Italian concierge sat us down and put our bags in the room and bought us a beer and a plate of chips and told us we'd done something we should not have.

A couple of years later I was watching SBS and realised a big Soviet, scary looking, literal block we'd walked past is the biggest heroin trafficking site in Europe and the worst neighbourhood in Italy. it's called Le Vele in Scarpia.

 

[HugeJohnson]

Hamburg near the central train station is pretty sketchy. Was staying in a hostel not far from there and felt super uneasy walking the streets at night. Reeperbahn obviously has a reputation too.

 

[Syd]

Hamburg near the central train station is pretty sketchy. Was staying in a hostel not far from there and felt super uneasy walking the streets at night. Reeperbahn obviously has a reputation too.

I ****ing LOVE Hamburg!!
Never felt nervous there.

 

[errant bounce]

Hamburg near the central train station is pretty sketchy. Was staying in a hostel not far from there and felt super uneasy walking the streets at night. Reeperbahn obviously has a reputation too.

Every European's city's worst part is always the train station, hub and hive for African immigrants and dodgy ****ers. half the time you've been travelling in the heat with a few bags and had to deal with pushy tourists for 10 hours so rock up in some new city your mate or girlfriend convinced you to go to and some ghetto is your first view so you go 'yeah ****ing good choice this place, I could've been on that beach still you know?'

Then you settle in, have a shower, and walk out and it's 7pm with the sun teasing it's setting and there's people all walking down high streets and sitting on canals and you walk in somewhere and have a great meal...

'Yeah sorry, it actually is pretty nice... sorry about teeing off before...'

 

[ElectricG]

The tenderloin, San Francisco. People just laying around on the ground with needles hanging out of them

 

[revo333]

The tenderloin, San Francisco. People just laying around on the ground with needles hanging out of them

First ever time overseas was SF in 2009. Stayed a few blocks from the Tenderloin and there were lots of warnings on the travel forums about the area.

It must be pretty bad because the next time I stayed in Chinatown and that was pretty dodgy.

 

[the_interloper]

Bourbon st New Orleans, dodgy as hell, my wife wouldn't let me go back late at night, I'm sure it gets worse.

 

[ElectricG]

Bourbon st New Orleans, dodgy as hell, my wife wouldn't let me go back late at night, I'm sure it gets worse.

When I was there it had a sketchy feel but busy enough to not be threatening. This was in 2015 mind you.

 

[Gough]

I spent ten days staggering around the French Quarter thirty years ago, in that time I saw Koko Taylor, Buckwheat Zydeco, The Band two nights running, the Blues Brothers Band with Eddie Floyd and the Rolling Stones. I f***ing loved that place.

 

[the_interloper]

When I was there it had a sketchy feel but busy enough to not be threatening. This was in 2015 mind you.

I was there in 2014. I might have found it scarier because id never been there before, just a really sketchy place

 

[Sinjin Smith]

Was thinking of going to the US later this year and frankly this thread makes a lot of places there sound like absolute shit holes.

Hell no. USA is brilliant.

Your at risk of hairy situations wherever you go. I mean I've spoken to others who liked St Louis. I was just a bit clueless.

Boston, Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, Corpus Christie, San Fran, LA Philly (I've never been to NY, hanging to go) were all ****ing awesome!!

Hell I jumped on the Carolina Panthers after working in Charlotte because all the people I worked with were ****ing awesome.

Go and have a blast!!

 

[ElectricG]

Hell no. USA is brilliant.

Your at risk of hairy situations wherever you go. I mean I've spoken to others who liked St Louis. I was just a bit clueless.

Boston, Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, Corpus Christie, San Fran, LA Philly (I've never been to NY, hanging to go) were all ****ing awesome!!

Hell I jumped on the Carolina Panthers after working in Charlotte because all the people I worked with were ****ing awesome.

Go and have a blast!!

USA is a “shithole worth visiting”. Parts are great but once you’re out of the few downtown areas that aren’t gross, it really is quite bleak.

NYC is my personal favourite.

 

[Cruyff14]

Yeah USA is great to visit, Boston, Chicago and NYC are incredible.

But I'm not sure I'd go back there with the state the country is in now.

 

[errant bounce]

USA is a “shithole worth visiting”. Parts are great but once you’re out of the few downtown areas that aren’t gross, it really is quite bleak.

NYC is my personal favourite.

I still think about random parks and lakeside areas in Philly, Milwaukee, and Chicago a lot. there's a lot of very very preitty areas.

I also imagine there's a heap of places that look nicer than a Greek island but Americans don't especially love beaches and so they go unknown.

I've always wanted to go to Cope Cod and New England. I bet that's still very similar to what it was in the 80s. not sure an outpost in Puglia is like that.

 

[errant bounce]

Yeah USA is great to visit, Boston, Chicago and NYC are incredible.

But I'm not sure I'd go back there with the state the country is in now.

People say this all the time but what difference does it make to regular white people? I went during Trump's first term and to be honest it was enlightening shit, I had some awesome conversations from very normal people who gave their opinion on the place.

 

[Plugger35]

Central Park is amazing, it's pretty much the only park in Manhattan but it's huge, you almost forget you are in a concrete jungle.

 

[errant bounce]

Central Park is amazing, it's pretty much the only park in Manhattan but it's huge, you almost forget you are in a concrete jungle.

America does really well with parks and having them in the middle of cities. never get it in Europe and the ones we have here are always out of the way and pretty overrated.

Though I did see heaps of creeps in Central Park. Washington Square Park seemed the cooler place to hang.

 

[Plugger35]

America does really well with parks and having them in the middle of cities. never get it in Europe and the ones we have here are always out of the way and pretty overrated.

Though I did see heaps of creeps in Central Park. Washington Square Park seemed the cooler place to hang.

Central Park is almost too big, a lot of people have been mugged or even worse there so it's not all beer and skittles there.

London has big city parks too like Hyde Park where you get weirdos that basically live there but they are mostly harmless.

Most European cities have a big park somewhere but they are usually on the outskirts of the city rather than in the middle.

 

[Catfish Alley]

Yeah, was gonna say. I thought London had some great parks.

 

[The Dice Man]

What makes a great park?

I'll start with free toilets are a bonus. When I first moved to Europe I couldnt understand the concept of crowded cities with no public toilets and those that are around, charging you 50c to have a piss. Of course you can piss on the street and why wouldnt you?

BBQs in parks. Please tell me these still exist in Australia?

Australia do parks well. Europe, or France in particular, do not.