“The city feels like a collection of sports teams with a bunch of highways connecting them.”

I’m an award-winning writer and editor living in New York City, where I currently work at BuzzFeed as the Senior Lifestyle Editor.

"I’m from there. You should have been warned."

"I stopped for gas in Bakersfield once on a cross-country road trip. Saw two fights and a dude get Jazzy Jeff style thrown out of the store in the span of ten minutes. No thanks, Bakersfield, no thanks."

"My grandfather put it pretty eloquently, 'Son, if the world were a hog, Fort Leonard Wood would be its asshole.'"

"I stopped there once, completely oblivious. We parked at a casino and walked to dinner. After we paid, our waitress said, 'Please be careful going back to your car.' We weren’t sure exactly why she said that or what she meant, so we asked. She said, 'I have more friends that have been stabbed here than not.'"

Then it hit all of us. We hadn’t seen a single soul on our half-mile walk there. We didn’t see a soul on the walk back either. That was the eeriest part.

"I stayed in Midland one night when I was part of a traveling drum and bugle corps. Weirdest experience of our tour: It was a Sunday, and there was nobody on the streets. No cars, no people, no animals, nothing. It seriously felt like the entire population evacuated or got raptured the day before.

Luckily, it was just a rest stop on our tour, and we left that evening. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it though."

"Gary is the place that, when my family lived in Detroit, we always said, 'Yeah, it’s kinda bad, but it’s not as bad as Gary, Indiana.'"

"Vegas feels like if Ticketmaster were a city."

"My brother-in-law lives there. He describes it as 'It’s like every day is your 50th high school reunion.' Not my thing."

"It’s like Vegas if it were run by Ned Flanders."

"RoboCop was filmed there… that’s all that needs to be said."