Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby TJ Dizzle » Fri Mar 26, 2010 4:11 pm

In reference to the Travelodge list, I'm suprised to see Wells there. We get plenty of visitors, it's quite the tourist hotspot. The Cathedral reels in the punters, and I think it's status as smallest city in Britain helps a bit. While it's got its low points, I certainly wouldn't call it a shithole. Maybe it's prescence on the Travelodge list is something to do with the total lack of travelodge we have here....

Also, I never planned to visit Hull in the first place, but now I'm extra sure. Thank you.
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby 5 Not Out » Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:02 pm

Clearly I must be attracted to shitholes as the only places I have ever actually lived are Salford and Hull. Add to that only ever having worked in Salford and Bury and for 4 years in Atherton. The threepenny stand at the Boulevard whilst possibly being described as a shithole was certainly one of the earthiest places I have ever been, eh Heartland?
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby TJ Dizzle » Sat Jan 15, 2011 4:26 am

Can I just say what a great thread this is? Well worth reading.
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby Kid Dynamo » Sun Jan 16, 2011 10:28 pm

Raumfahrer wrote:biggest shit hole? its a simple tie between Willenhall and Peterborough


i have spent quite a bit of time in Peterborough. Its an awful place with fuck all appeal. A good pasty shop though...
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby Dr_Dupree » Mon Jan 17, 2011 12:54 am

What's Hayle in Cornwall like these days?

It was many years ago that one summer holiday I walked the coastal path from around Minehead, to Penzance.

Hythe was an ugly boil on the bum, but took less than an hour to get through, and back on the coast.

I expect that it's improved since then.
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby Raumfahrer » Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:07 am

bob falconscotch wrote:Poland is indeed pretty grim.
I remember venturing to Lodz in the early eighties when City played Widzew Lodz in the UEFA cup and have vague memories of endless grey apartment blocks,anonymous dual carriageways that seemed to go nowhere and a dreary,browbeaten populace who drank vodka in vast amounts presumably to obliterate the horror of reality.
It was also about minus 20 in March and the cheery highlight of the visit was a trip to the Ghetto Museum where a sullen woman regaled us with harrowing stories of Nazi atrocities and tyranny.
On a brighter note,we got a 2-2 draw,won the home leg and brought home ludicrous quantities of bison grass vodka for seventy pence a bottle.
I would however still rather live in Lodz for eternity than spend a nanosecond in Hull.


in Lodz's defence, you were there after 40-odd ears of comunism. its much nicer now and certainyl Poland as a whole is slowly but surely getting over that era (economically, mentally and aesthetically).

anyhow, of the places i've been to, nothing was as depressing as the 2 hours spent in Preston (on a stop over to kendal circa DYLRM?). Peterborough is pretty bad, as well as holding some awful memories, and Chesham is pretty shitty, but nothing will beat Preston. maybe Wednesbury.
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby beforetheflood » Tue Jan 18, 2011 6:12 am

I've travelled all over the world and without a doubt the three biggest shitholes I've ever been to are all located right here in the good old USofA.

#1 Poughkeepsie, NY; after 8pm Kevlar becomes part of the curfew code. The last time I was there I saw a man dragging a small child on the concrete whilst also dragging along who I can only presume to be the screaming, disheveled crack addled remains of the mother of that poor child. twas truly awful and all I wanted to do was get out of the train station and cross the fucking tracks to my little white world bouffant school. A mile away and yet a trillion miles apart.

#2 White Sulfur Springs West Virginia; home of The Greenbriar. A resort of presidents and vanderbilts and steel barons and completely and utterly shamefully surrounded by the ruins of a coal mining town/people. No education, no pride and no hope but for next Tuesday's government check to arrive on time. Sick.

#3 The Popeye's chicken at the corner of Parramore and South Street right here in beautiful, sunny Orlando. Ever seen a day laborer camp? Haitian and Dominican Immigrants begging for a seat in the bed of that pick-up no matter what the fuck it takes em to do when they get there. Surround the area with 2 more fried chicken outlets on the same block, 2 liquor stores and a Korean run lottery/quickie mart and yeah....you've got the idea. God I HATE things about this country.
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby bluesman » Mon Jan 30, 2012 11:38 am

Hinckley was great, i lived there for several years when i was in my teens...home of one of the greatest record shops of all times, the aptly named Hinckley Sound Centre, great sports centre and tennis club, and (due to the local shoe and tights factories) a ratio of girls to men of about ten to one.


I do like this post, in fact it's one of my all-time favourite posts 'cos, although I didn't own the sports centre or tennis club, I did own Hinckley Sound Centre. And it was one of the greatest record shops of all times - noisy, friendly (except to the goons who purloined record sleeves for their bedroom walls), informative, cheap and expert. It's a pity that the citizens of Rugby (now there's a shithole) didn't feel the same about the shop I opened there; if they had done, HSC would still be going (my fault...a failed attempt to be Branson). And more.....it had a great Rugby Club, a superb wine bar in Karns run by the beautiful Chrissy (who I saw recently and hasn't changed a bit); some wonderful pubs, in particular The Greyhound and its excellently conditioned Marstons Pedigree on draught; Waltons, the best butchers in the world; Harrison, the greatest indie band to have been thrown out of Muff Winwood's office at CBS; and Gordon's Records, run by Gordon since records were invented and apparently still going strong. PLUS, it's in between Coventry and Leicester and it makes Triumph motorbikes! I rest my case for the defence.

Anyway, what a great topic! Here's some fodder:

Acklington in Northumberland, where I was stationed when in the RAF, in the middle of nowhere with a half-hour walk across open countryside to the nearest station and nothing at all to do except lie in my pit listening to Dylan.
Morton in Lincolnshire, birthplace of Hereward the Wake thousands of years ago and.....that's it, apart from a church and a view all the way to the Broads across the fens. (Great skies, though.)
Tallaght in Dublin before the Luas trams were installed. Sink estates for the whole of Ireland.
Yardley in Birmingham, concrete and clay.
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sorry to hijack this thread

Postby de lacey » Tue Jan 31, 2012 8:16 am

Mr Bluesman - my hat's off to you - no greater compliment that i can give than to say you ran your record shop exactly how i would have given the opportunity eg adverts in the free weekly newspaper, the Hinckley Journal, which listed in Record Collector- style detail new vinyl releases for the townspeople.

Although i didn't particularly hang out in the shop for long periods of time ( i was 14), i did spent quite a lot of time in there wandering through the sleeves of the huge stock of new LPs you carried and hours agonising over how to spend my pocket money in there - some of my earliest record purchases included deepest purple by deep purple on purple vinyl, and my first bowie record - ziggy stardust ( a dutch rca pressing i think), but in the end not buying the Wings Back to the Egg picture disc, which is worth a lot of money today.

Perhaps the biggest single influence on my life was getting into dylan - and it all began with me cycling home from the HSC with a copy of Bob Dylan live at Budokan under my arm - the cultural spider's web which i benefitted from specifically as a result of that purchase is incalculable - and its in large part down to you!

i suspect you may never fully know the degree of influence you exerted over the lives and sensibilities of a generation of teenagers.

Bloody hell - i think you even looked like Richard Branson with your slightly voluminous beard? [or was that just a phase?]

the nearest comparable record store i can think of that is still around today is Sister Ray in Berwick Street, London. But there really is no comparison because your shop was a broader church. many 's the time I've wondered in recent years if a Hinckley Sound Centre could thrive if it was opened in central London - i would like to think it would be incredibly successful, because there is such a void for such pleasures of the flesh.

Nick Hornby would probably have written a book about your emporium if he'd been lucky enough to be living in Hinckley at the end of the 1970s....

It's an honour to say congratulations once again sir to the architect of what was undoubtedly the greatest record shop in the UK( i suspect you knew all the above anyway) - the only only record shop which is still open which i visited which could live with the HSC on castle street is probably Amoeba in Los angeles on sunset and vine.

what a shocker!
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby de lacey » Tue Jan 31, 2012 9:01 am

ps if anyone is interested in going into business opening a new vinyl based record shop in london please PM me

thanks
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby Piggy » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:50 am

I did think about nominating Atyrau in Kazakhstan, mainly because for a couple of months in the Spring the whole place is covered with a few inches of mud. I used to take a daily walk by the Ural where I would see anything from a dead cow floating past to an old bloke sat on a bench tossing himself off. He slowed down as I reached him, obviously saving the 'money shot' for someone more attractive.

On reflection though, my vote goes to Peterhead, a town that seems to consist of little else but seagulls and smackheads.
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby cawseetiger » Tue Jan 31, 2012 12:19 pm

The Good Doctor wrote:Withernsea


Seconded,nothing but charity and pound shops.
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby cawseetiger » Tue Jan 31, 2012 12:27 pm

Reading through this thread I see Hull (my birthplace) has come in for some pounding.I agree its not the worlds greatest place, for which I blame countless City Councils for ignoring its plight. Stuck at the arse end of the M62 with nowhere to go doesn't help.
The once fine city was fucked following Hitlers trips across the north sea but If you can find some old photos of the town it was once beautiful, alas it's nothing now except a mish mash of housing estates,a divided city centre, boarded up shops and a cromartie of a council who for many years have strived to be a 'top ten city'.
Like many towns there are good and bad areas but the bad it all that people seem to notice about it.
Despite all this I'm still proud of the place......(sappy twat)
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby Bastian » Wed Feb 01, 2012 1:23 pm

Morocco and Ennis.
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Re: Biggest shithole you've ever been too?

Postby Airbrushed From History » Wed Feb 01, 2012 2:09 pm

Piggy wrote:I did think about nominating Atyrau in Kazakhstan, mainly because for a couple of months in the Spring the whole place is covered with a few inches of mud. I used to take a daily walk by the Ural where I would see anything from a dead cow floating past to an old bloke sat on a bench tossing himself off. He slowed down as I reached him, obviously saving the 'money shot' for someone more attractive.

Or a dead cow.
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