Anonymous wrote:Wilkes Barre, PA.
A lot of my family lives there, and wow... it's just so depressing every time we go up there. Run down streets, closed up coal and manufacturing, tons of people smoking, very little to do. It could be an absolutely beautiful area, but it's just not.
I'm the PP who said Easton, PA and I'd agree with Wilkes Barre and other cities mentioned in central PA. My mom grew up there and at the time it was a huge manufacturing town. Once that dried up, those areas started falling hard. I don't think they'll ever come back from it. I have such great memories of those places as cute, safe little family towns when I was growing up. Everyone knew each other, no one locked their doors during the day, you could run up a tab at the little ice cream shops and your parents or grandparents would walk up and pay it at the end of the week, there were swimming holes that were so fun, etc. Now the amount of drugs is staggering, my few relatives who are still there won't even keep tools in their garages because they've been ripped off so many times, practically every store that's not boarded up is either a porn shop, a vape shop, or a check cashing place, and there are a lot of 40 year old grandparents raising toddlers because the teenage parents overdosed. Awful.