Which is the worst state in the United States of America

xp: JD truth bomb right there, my in-laws drive people to polling locations every year and have many stories about how polling stations for ppl who might vote lefty are put in inaccessible places and will get moved at the last minute without any notification

xpost to iatee man take a walk through Lubbock & think of Buddy Holly in his garage listening to blues records and thinking "man I gotta play music like this somehow" and making those beautiful records

Texas is sweet whatever else it has to answer for and there are a lot of awesome creative people from there & still there doin awesome things.

florida but maybe virginia

Uh, VA is awesome, used to go hiking all the time in Shenandoah when I lived there. Also, my mom's family first settled there, in what eventually became West Va., back in the 1710s.

it would be nice to have a thread where we all had to find three good things about each state

and south Texas is so weird and cool too, has one of the best & raddest recording studios in the country

xp to dan - You said on the original thread that you went with Florida. If you're going for LA this time I can totally understand given the circumstances. My ire is more directed towards people like the guy who said he voted LA b/c of Katrina.

I am voting LA because of Mardi Gras.

it would be nice to have a thread where we all had to find three good things about each state

Yes, all of the negativity is boring.

haha my trip to Tallahassee must have been way worse than I remembered

also I am totally fine with this thread being a total US State lovefest regardless of the title/poll results

This is why you can't vote TX, despite all of the despicable things about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnx3fWJHkUo

Shakey Mo, do you dislike NM, and if so, why?

Was that jokez, Laurel??!

Probably 60% joeks.

Delaware isn't a state, it's the Grand Duchy of Citibank.

Rather than blame a place for a natural disaster that it didn't deserve, and after which it got totally screwed by the supposed "support systems" it was counting on, I'm blaming LA for hosting a giant drunk-fest and encouraging tourists to behave like animals regularly. Also I dislike crowds and loud noises. And fun.

noodling and whatever traces remain of woody guthrie's "spirit" are not enough to save you from my vote in this poll, oklahoma

hmm, connecticut maybe

Shakey Mo, do you dislike NM, and if so, why?

nah I just don't know much about it apart from a trip to Santa Fe as a child

New Mexico – is that the one with all the sand?

gut feeling is florida

i kinda impulsively voted for RI even though i can find plenty of nice things to say about providence at the least

delaware's probably worse tiny-state-wise but i haven't spent any time there, only driven though it.

im feelin south carolina as worst right now

Charleston is fantastic – some of the best restaurants and best-looking people in the country. I dunno about the rest of the state.

My first instinct is to say my home state of NC. However, my view of it is skewed from having lived there for so long and under such dire circumstances. And they have good BBQ, so that's a plus.

Delaware has tax free shopping and nice beaches.

I would have to go with Oklahoma.

Wow, kind of funny that the deadly combination of a big yearly celebration of life and one street's worth of girls-gone-wild-frat-fest located in a neighborhood with one of the richest musical traditions in world history is the worst thing that America has to offer.

makes you think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWmVTbWHgFc

I might have to pick Wisconsin/Iowa because of lol state rivalries

Don't worry, I'm blaming LA for other things, too. Like okra.

I might have to pick Wisconsin/Iowa because of lol state rivalries

it's why I voted for both Minnesota & Missouri lol

I'm blaming LA for other things, too. Like okra.

Okra is from Africa, I thought.

Much like everything else that people like about Louisiana!

Okay, jazz. I don't know about anything else really. Voodoo?

Indiana really doesn't have much going for it (sorry people from Indiana.)

Also thinking that Idaho is pretty bare, but I could be convinced otherwise I guess.

Really the I states in general (outside of Illinous) are no great shakes.

idaho does not have one single mellencamp, only a handful of cougars and a decent selection of johns

Indiana really doesn't have much going for it (sorry people from Indiana.)

OTM - that's why this sorry person from Indiana voted for it.
(nb - I don't live there now and visit as infrequently as possible.)

yeah, it's not like Ledbelly, gumbo, ca$h money, boudin, Britney Spears, Tabasco, Lil' Wayne, the Meters, or boiled crawfish are really anything worth mentioning, since giving the world jazz isn't enough to redeem anything.

My knee-jerk reaction to this is usually Florida; my family's from Orlando and growing up it just seemed like the worst place, terrible weather, nasty bugs, strip malls, no culture. But embarrassingly reading "The Orchid Thief" helped me appreciate Florida's unique aspects a lot more, and last time I was in Orlando it didn't seem as bad I remembered. So yeah, probably like Indiana I guess.

Voted Oklahoma.

(PS, I'm not ever going to spend a lot of energy defending Mississippi, but people who slam it based on stereotypes and not on personal experience are the worst kind of disgusting savages imho.) (PPS, Fetchboy I don't mean you.)

hosting a giant drunk-fest and encouraging tourists to behave like animals regularly. Also I dislike crowds and loud noises. And fun.

― Let's see how tough Aquaman is once we get him in the water. (Laurel), Thursday, February 18, 2010 3:52 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Good thing you live in NYC, an area devoid of drunken parades/celebrations, tourists, crowds and loud noises.

My first instinct is to say my home state of NC. However, my view of it is skewed from having lived there for so long and under such dire circumstances. And they have good BBQ, so that's a plus.

Delaware has tax free shopping and nice beaches.

I would have to go with Oklahoma.

― Jeff, Thursday, February 18, 2010 10:00 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

NC would be a seriously ridiculous answer. beautiful mountains, BBQ, credit unions, indie rock, and like way more progressivism than the rest of the former CSA.

Exactly!

does your family still live in Orlando, n/a?

florida and texas have some good stuff going for them, yeah, but they have SO MUCH bad stuff going for them. indiana-type places have no good stuff going for them but significantly less bad stuff too. it's like...serial-killer who's also a fantastic novelist vs. petty crook w/ pretty much nothing going for him.

Tupelo, MS is the only place I've been where someone has explicitly told me that I was not the right kind of person to move into the ritzy neighborhood. I was partially offended and partially like "wtf, this is Tupelo"

A lot of my extended family does.

South Florida seems a lot more fun, don't know why I've never made it down there.

xp to myself: your "ritzy neighborhood" is basically just like Burnsville, stfu

Isn't that DFW essay about watching 9/11 on TV set in Indiana? It's the only sympathetic portrayal of IN that comes to mind, and I think I'm more sympathetic to DFW and his viewpoint in all of that than the locale itself.

Full disclosure we were also big fans of Dubtribe Soundsystem back then.

Do It Then

Oregon may have overly rosy public relations, but it is far from the worst state on any measure, including racism.

Full disclosure we were also big fans of Dubtribe Soundsystem back then.

Do It Then

Ha thank you! I wanted to pull some meta zing out of that but I just didn't have it in me.

(For what it's worth, Earthtone Soundsystem was nowhere near as trendy/cultish as Dubtribe. All of them that I met were genuinely cool people, much like Cloudfactory in the SF Bay Area for example.)

Regarding Oregon, it's not just the historic white supremacy. As was briefly mentioned upthread the demographics continue to be quite monochrome compared to most of the South etc. According to the US Census, Oregon is 87% white, 2% Black; Mississippi is 59% white and 38% Black. (It is best to only capitalize "Black", not "white"; or to capitalize both? Genuine style question, no troll.)

So yes on average OR is light years more progressive than MS. But I would guess that even in Oregon on average there is more support for Republicans among whites than among Blacks in Mississippi. Maybe I'm wrong.

why is delaware so high up on this? the tax haven thing? it seems innocuous.

in oregon (along w/ louisiana) you could be convicted of a crime if 10 people on a jury said guilty and 2 said not guilty until the u.s. supreme court outlawed it last year

Oregon is 87% white, 2% Black

There's a reason why the Proud Boys et al. are always marching in Portland and not, like, here.

Kentucky is a tough one. They do have two asshole senators, but they have a democratic governor, and there is tons of cool shit in the state, from the bourbon trail to the Muhammed Ali Center to Mammoth Cave to lots of good music. Plus, the state is really pretty. Also, centrally located, and not too big.

tipsy to thread!

(It is best to only capitalize "Black", not "white"; or to capitalize both? Genuine style question, no troll.)

I'm curious what the thinking is on this as well. lowercase white vs uppercase Black might on some level support the implication that whiteness is "default"

unsurprisingly it seems like a no win situation the more you think about it

Here you go:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html

I noticed just the other day that the New Yorker capitalizes "Black," which maybe they've done for years? No idea what they do with "white."

about what I figured. not really a satisfying answer but that's the nature of style (and change in progress). xp

the New Yorker capitalizes "Black," which maybe they've done for years?

I believe "everyone" (meaning "the media") started capitalizing Black more or less in the last 12 months. I know that's when I started doing it in my own writing, for Stereogum (and in my upcoming book).

I miss Atlanta so much :(

xpost

Here's the revised AP style guide on "Black" etc (it's dated from July 2020 but I saw a Guardian article from June, referencing the AP decision to capitalize Black):

https://apnews.com/article/9105661462

Atl is a legit great city. And if you don’t have to be in the car much its ranking goes way up imo. The urban canopy really is remarkable.

For sure, the predominant car culture is main issue there. But within the city limits at least it looks like they're doing their best to move away from that.

(I was without a car for a few days there taking care of some business, and I have to say it's quite cool how there are little public shuttle buses that go all over the place and which seem to have sliding scale payment. Of course MUNI in SF is also sliding scale if you know how to avoid the driver's eyes as you slip in the back door. I would never!)

*main issue I have

*the

Gonna go against the grain here and say I found Atlanta to be pretty depressing and grey

Apparently it's Alabama, but even that is better than DC:

https://today.yougov.com/topics/travel/articles-reports/2021/04/13/us-states-ranked-best-worst-according-americans

if you look at the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, Alabama is the only state with a mega light-green shade.

why am i not shocked.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0331/3061/products/Mutual-Feelings_60x36_Flag_Photo_1200x1200.jpg

Jersey tied with Iowa and Arkansas.

Been trying to think up what trouble those three states could get into together, with no luck.

I reckon TX has this now

otm

Certainly top contender for worst state that has the most awesome things in it ruined by the shittiness.

Nov, 2022 is when we're hopefully going to get rid of Abbott. If Texas doesn't do something about the bastard I'm going to have to move. Fuck this shit.

If you lose Abbott, you're only going to get somebody worse because he was primaried.