Most of North Carolina kinda sucks

This may come as a surprise to the people that have bothered to read my stuff because I am always singing the praises of North Carolina and how I believe it to be one of the better states to live in as far as the United States is concerned. But one thing that needs to be understood is that I tend to, like most people, highlight the really good stuff while bypassing the nasty side of things.

I have lived here my entire life and I am familiar with both the good and the bad and was fortunate enough to be brought up in one of the good parts and my family got land here before New Bern became a super popular spot for people with boats to have 2nd homes in so they can access the shore.

New Bern is incredible, clean, mostly crime free, homogeneous and friendly.

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you'd be hard-pressed to find a "bad part of town" here and even though a lot of us long-termers don't really like it, the gentrification of the area by outside investors actually helped this. We still have Wal-Mart but also have Whole Foods, lol.

North Carolina has some other rather unique and awesome places such as Kill Devil Hills, and Duck, which are beach areas like nowhere else in the US and we also have wonderful mountain towns and cities that are like a postcard most of the year.

Our capitol city is pretty nice too. I don't mind Raleigh because it isn't too huge and it has a nice colonial look to it as well. It can be a bit of a pain during rush hour but like most people with a brain, I avoid that place during those times. The rest of the time it is just fine.

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But again, I will admit, I am cherry picking here. A great deal of this state is actually not that nice and I will focus on two cities in particular that I regularly drive through as examples.

Kinston, North Carolina is a place that people mostly drive through on their way to Greenville or New Bern and people generally don't want to live there.

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it's run down, falling down, and just a downer to be in. I recently stumbled upon a video entitled "The worst hood in North Carolina" and the video was made in Kinston, North Carolina

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Kinston as a whole ranks in the top 3 in both crime and poverty in North Carolina and is also well above the national average in both. Nobody goes to Kinston, everyone drives through it, maybe stopping at a roadside diner on the way through.

Kinston's claim to fame other than crime is that it has turned out more NBA talent than any other city under 100,000 people in the United States but unfortunately for all that talent, they didn't seem to be all that interested in investing in the community that they came from and likely moved their family away rather than improving where they came from.. One out of every 52 basketball players Kinston High School went on to play in the NBA... yet the city remains dirty, impoverished, and crime-ridden. Sad

Then there is Rocky Mount which is another city that everyone just drives through and other than the one time I caught the train to Charlotte just to see what the train system is like in North Carolina (it sucks) I've never really felt comfortable so much as getting out of the car... and I have a concealed carry permit and am always packin'

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One thing you will notice when driving down the street in Rocky Mount is that about a third of the residences and almost all industrial looking buildings are boarded up. Apparently, like a lot of suburban areas in the US, there was a booming industry here in something like textiles and tobacco 60 years or so ago, but when all of that left there was no industry remaining in the area. I found a video called "Rocky Mount, NC... a city left to rot" and honestly, that is a very good summary of Rocky Mount.

They keep the downtown area that you drive though looking polished but the rest of the city is just falling down and dilapidated. The crime rate here is double the national average and also one of the highest in the nation. It is "safer than 4% of all American cities" and that is nothing to be proud of. 41 out of 1000 citizens experience some sort of violent or property crime every year and it is understandable why anyone with the means to leave these areas does precisely that.

There are other places that are just like these two, but these are the ones that stand out the most in my mind such as Wilson, Washington (known as "Little Washington" here), Goldsboro, Fayetteville (known as "Fayatte-nam" in NC) and many many more.

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_{This is a crime overlay for the state with dark purple indicating the worst}

You can get a look at your own state's crime overlay at https://www.neighborhoodscout.com . It's interesting

So even though I regularly praise North Carolina for being a wonderful state and I do believe that is the case, that is not to say that everywhere is a Utopia. Just like anywhere there are going to be good places and bad places and I suppose I should just count my blessings that I was brought up in one of the good places.