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I've done several pretty extensive road trips throughout the US, and I can verify that Baltimore is about as bad as it gets. It looks like an oldschool Harlem. The hotels will draw a small rectangle box around the financial district (about 2 blocks) and say "don't go outside of this area".
Chicago has really bad areas as well. Driving around at night I saw like 15 boarded up houses in a row, then one with people living in it, 7 more boarded up, and it continues. The one with people living in it? 25 black guys on plastic chairs in their front yard drinking, staring down every car that goes by.
A gas station we stopped at had 2" bullet proof glass and a metal slide-try to pass things through. There was a newspaper pressed against the glass, and the pretty much the entire front page was pictures of black guys wanted for murders. One of the guys it said killed his own mom.
Another time in San Antonio I was with a friend who lived there, and we went to his mom's house. Looked like a nice enough area, fully detached houses and whatnot.. Except that most of them had gang signs painted across them, and were also full of bullet holes from drive by shootings. Not even a main street, this would be like on a Crescent or Court in Toronto, just regular suburb streets. Then every once in a while there would be a crackhouse with no windows left, fully graffiti'd up, shit everywhere.. I went inside one, it was worse on the inside than the outside.. Garbage everywhere, more graffiti inside than out if that was even possible, broken glass, and a bunch of baby stuff - strollers, kids toys, bottles.. Nice scene.
And still, Baltimore stands out for me as being the bottom of the bottom.
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