Lol I’m from Detroit. Possibly the worst big city in America.
You say that? Yet I seriously considered relocating to Flint, even after watching Roger & Me. To you? Tucumcari is a fictional armpit. To me? It's where you get gas on your way to Dallas, where you stop in Amarillo because there's a Bennigan's there that doesn't card. Detroit certainly has its detractors. It also has its boosters, and holy shit are they vocal. The regional pride around Detroit is possibly greater than the regional pride around Chicago, and that's saying something. I haven't been to Detroit? But I've been to Chicago and I get where they're coming from. It's lovely. I had to drive two hours to get to Breaking Bad. There are shittier places in the world than those I've been. There are shittier places in the world than those I've lived in. There are definitely shittier places than those I've visited. But is the police department whose SWAT team raided your babysitter by mistake subject to a Netflix docudrama? Yeah, yeah. Detroit sucks blah blah, rah rah Detroit rah rah rah. There's an extremely cozy upscale white loathing of Detroit that's very much like a Philly Cheese Steak: "This is so bad you have to try it." People disposed of dead bodies in my neighborhood in LA. The cops would fly over it in formation, six birds in vee, as a show of force against the place that gave birth to anti-gang statutes. Detroit is the Hamburglar - a pretend villain who mostly giggles and steals snacks to increase consumption of Midwest whiteness. Sorry for not having a sense of humor about this? But you don't have any friends who scared off the skinheads by slashing his own tongue with a switchblade and saying "I'm not afraid to die, are you?" and I'll bet you didn't know what a curb smile was until American History X. So I maintain - you've never lived somewhere truly shitty.
I fully trust you that NM sucks...never been; have no reason to go. But to argue that LA is worse than Detroit just doesn't square with my experience. Detroit's murder rate is about 10x LA's. Detroit has little to no cultural influence, and there's no geographically interesting shit either (beach, mountains, other things that make for a nice existence, etc.). I've never lived in LA, but I've visited many, many times, and while I'm not going to say that visiting is anything like living, I don't even put them in the same league. Fuck, I lived in the nicest part of Detroit and a girl got stabbed literally on my doorstep for telling some youths to turn the music down. And the cops told her not to talk that way to hoodlums and didn't even bother investigating. Whether this place or that place is worse is maybe not a great argument, but Detroit is a straight up shithole, and no rah rah attitude from any well-meaning suburbanites is ever going to change that.
There's a creative scene, for sure. Some people really like it. Almost none of those people are homeowners or parents. Which I guess is just not cool by some definitions, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I enjoyed my time there, but not under any illusions that I wasn't at the top rung of a giant shit ladder. It' certainly nicer than at any point in my life, but that's a really low bar to clear.