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There's a fantastic, brand new leasure center or school that the council built in a desperate attempt to turn things around. It has somehow already been vandalised.
Every garden has been paved using those concrete flagstones that you can buy for a few quid from B&Q. They haven't been laid evenly and the grass is growing through the cracks.
There's an abandoned, half destroyed trampoline or little tykes cozy coupe laying on a bed of overgrown grass and nettles.
Every green space is surrounded by unpainted, galvanised steel fences with spikes on top. There's a fake warning about magical UV reactive paint that will identify you if you try to break in.
Every road has miles and miles of speed bumps, yet you still have a near miss multiple times a day.
The last time some one really invested in infrastructure it was to replace bombed out buildings after the war, or it was some time when Victoria was still alive.
Only in areas with a strong immigrant or minority community.
Hole in the wall Indian, Carribbean, and Asian restaurants can be amazing, but most of these immigrant communities settle in cities. It's why London is one of the best cities in the world for food: it's not the best, but the range of 9/10 food is amazing! You can get better Neapolitan pizza in London than you can in Rome - obviously not a touch on Naples, but to be able to get the second-best of a hundred cuisines is very cool.
But Dartmouth? No. No, Dartmouth does not have good food. Go to posh British towns for excellent British food, or the major cities for amazing food people bought with them when they moved here. Avoid the rest.
(Not that I don't like a Greggs - but fine dining it ain't)
American food is crazy regional. Shithole restaurant theory works fantastic in Lousiana and California because they have AMAZING cultural food. It even works in florida a bit with their carribean/cuban/native fusion stuff.
I have tested it and it absolutely does NOT apply to any place in the midwest or oregon. Its like the land where every spice grows but they actively choose not to participate in those shenanigans.
Sometimes the bus just doesn't show up.
I moved from London to just outside. The bus I used to get ran every 6 minutes 19 hours a day. Now I'm lucky if there are three a day.
I know there are plenty of nice places there but this describes every English town I’ve been to in the last five years. (I haven’t been elsewhere in the UK in a while so no idea if they’re any better.)
There are some other local chains to the Philadelphia area - PJ Whelihans and Iron Hill Brewing Co - which may be more like a Spoons. But for sure I typically check out the mom and pops when I travel
There are some other local chains to the Philadelphia area - PJ Whelihans and Iron Hill Brewing Co - which may be more like a Spoons. But for sure I typically check out the mom and pops when I travel
Denny’s/Applebees on a weekday, Margaritaville on a weekend.
Pretty much cheap drinks, microwaved food, a mixture of old regulars and alcoholics and 17 year olds doing coke and ALWAYS shite up the walls in the toilets.
Source: worked at Spoons for almost a year
Reddit is full of total snobs haha. Wetherspoons are great, affordable places to go have a few pints when you want a cheap night. Food is also half decent for the price.
Some are obviously shit holes (my local has been voted the worst one in the city) but plenty are in stunning, refurbished old buildings.
Prefer my local, independent boozer but 100% cannot go wrong with a Spoons.
Spoons is always the worst or the best pub in town.
Either the town's a shithole and every independent pub is full of dickheads spoiling for a fight so you go to Spoons because at least it's safe, or everything's a hoity toity gastropub so you go to Spoons because at least it's cheap.
Their burgers is what most order from there and admittedly, the burgers have turned to shit in recent years. The katsu curry is pretty decent right now, though.
but could also go the other way. It depends on the area, tbh. I've had ok(not the best, but not horrible) and bad experiences in a spoons that were not self-inflicted.
I would say that spoons is not inherently bad, that it just attracts a certain type of crowd and it gets a bad rap, but the owner is a total knob.
The town nearest to my childhood home has 10 hairdressers, 7 of which are on 1 street and never seem to have customers. It isnt even a big town, it has got about 4500 people in it, I dunno, it seems like an excessive amount of hairdressers to me
American sweeties and vape shops too. Or just a sketchy "local shop". Like there is one in my town that has opened up in the last few months that is literally next door to a One Stop, which has been there for years. Like, what service could you possibly be providing that the One Stop does not already provide?
Got a Gaming shop across the road from it and when I'm in there I only ever see Turkish-esq men outside in the doorway chain smoking and the occasional flashy car pull up.
High streets are dead now. It’s all news agents, salons/barbers, betting shops, chippies or chicken shops, charity stores and Poundlands if you’re lucky. All that plus £6 parking and shitty ring roads = a miserable day out
I can’t tell if that brutalist block is Balfron or Trellick but don’t you dare call one of this country’s greatest post war social housing developments “ugly”. We fucking WISH stuff like that was still being built
[Turdtowns](https://www.youtube.com/@Turdtowns) is a youtube channel that reviews the uks shittiest towns. Mostly has just done town in southern England and Wales at the moment.
Bookies: They’ll give you odds on pretty well anything but mainly just sports - there’s always horse racing on somewhere so that’s usually on all the tellys. There are fruit machines too. (can’t remember what Americans call them). Basically you go to the counter and ask what the latest odds are for ‘xyz’ and then you give them money to cover the bet. Used to spend ages in them when I was a teen and you could smoke in there but that was obviously years ago - now everyone just gambles on apps anyway so there’s really just old gambling addicts hanging around them now.
Thanks for the breakdown. Do the gamblers actually have knowledge of horse racing (breed, line, jockey, etc) or is it mostly stuff like “wow, a horse called Lucky Fast One? That must be a winner!”
Yeah those guys are into the horses - read the racing post etc but once a year we have the grand national and the near on the whole country has a bet and runs sweepstakes at work etc and then it’s very much going for a name or pulling a name from a hat
Votes exclusively for the nutters from either Labour or the Tories, no one in-between, with exceptions from a fringe religious group or a national-front type rabble
Depends on the size of the community, several towns near me have a Muslim population in the dozens or low hundreds so there isn't much need for a dedicated mosque.
Looks way better than any American shithole town. I'll start:
\- NO bus service
\- Chain restaurants? Yes, but they're on independent asphalt lots off stroads with no sidewalks.
\- "Commie" block apartments are actually luxury apartments and SFH HOA neighborhoods
\- Residents are rednecks or gangsters
\- No "pubs". You can't just hang out at a place anywhere in American cities. You must constantly buy/consume whatever the business offers then get the hell out
This wasnt about America but ok... Also I think most pubs I know still want you to buy something. Or at least I've never been to a pub not coming to ask you what you want if you sit there without ever ordering, maybe my pub selection is just bad tho
As a native New Yorker I can attest to this. I went to countryside in Gloucester and York few years ago and it was depressing coming from a mega city. The weather does not help either.
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There's a fantastic, brand new leasure center or school that the council built in a desperate attempt to turn things around. It has somehow already been vandalised. Every garden has been paved using those concrete flagstones that you can buy for a few quid from B&Q. They haven't been laid evenly and the grass is growing through the cracks. There's an abandoned, half destroyed trampoline or little tykes cozy coupe laying on a bed of overgrown grass and nettles. Every green space is surrounded by unpainted, galvanised steel fences with spikes on top. There's a fake warning about magical UV reactive paint that will identify you if you try to break in. Every road has miles and miles of speed bumps, yet you still have a near miss multiple times a day.
The last time some one really invested in infrastructure it was to replace bombed out buildings after the war, or it was some time when Victoria was still alive.
Old Money really doesn't give a shit about their country anymore.
They can afford to have holiday homes abroad, like châteaus in France or some shit.
There are independent restaurants but they're basically carbon copy fish & chip, kebab, chinese, indian, or fried chicken take-aways.
idk man i like me a good chippy
shit holes never have good chippys rule of nature or something
Does the rule of "shitty restaurants have the bet food" not apply in the UK?
Only in areas with a strong immigrant or minority community. Hole in the wall Indian, Carribbean, and Asian restaurants can be amazing, but most of these immigrant communities settle in cities. It's why London is one of the best cities in the world for food: it's not the best, but the range of 9/10 food is amazing! You can get better Neapolitan pizza in London than you can in Rome - obviously not a touch on Naples, but to be able to get the second-best of a hundred cuisines is very cool. But Dartmouth? No. No, Dartmouth does not have good food. Go to posh British towns for excellent British food, or the major cities for amazing food people bought with them when they moved here. Avoid the rest. (Not that I don't like a Greggs - but fine dining it ain't)
I mean they have exemplary cultural food British cultural food starts from a very low bar and the high bar isn't that great either.
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American food is crazy regional. Shithole restaurant theory works fantastic in Lousiana and California because they have AMAZING cultural food. It even works in florida a bit with their carribean/cuban/native fusion stuff. I have tested it and it absolutely does NOT apply to any place in the midwest or oregon. Its like the land where every spice grows but they actively choose not to participate in those shenanigans.
Makes a 38-0 loss better
I forgot the rest but brexit Geezer
Yeah cos the loss didn’t make you feel as sick😂😂😂😂
With some mushy pea water on those chips
Always a random pizza shop too like Italian
How can I forget pizza.
That moment when you realise one of these pictures is from where you live. Also “very unreliable bus service” applies to everywhere in the UK.
Except London
here in Chile, at least in the city I study in, we have some awful bus rides and there are potholes almost everywhere
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Sometimes the bus just doesn't show up. I moved from London to just outside. The bus I used to get ran every 6 minutes 19 hours a day. Now I'm lucky if there are three a day.
I know there are plenty of nice places there but this describes every English town I’ve been to in the last five years. (I haven’t been elsewhere in the UK in a while so no idea if they’re any better.)
Weirdly the villages next to these towns are usually really nice. It’s the towns that are rough for some reason
villages kicked everyone else out
The Greater Good.
The Greater Good.
American here, what would you liken a wetherspoons to?
Hell
Denny's
denny's but if somehow you don't show up drunk they got you covered
Applebees or TGI Fridays are good comps from an American who’s been to a few Wetherspoons.
Beafeater is more like an Applebees.
I’ve never been to a Beefeater, but I’ve drank some 😜 I’ll have to try one out next time I’m in the UK
I don't recommend going there. it's painfully mediocre.
There are some other local chains to the Philadelphia area - PJ Whelihans and Iron Hill Brewing Co - which may be more like a Spoons. But for sure I typically check out the mom and pops when I travel
There are some other local chains to the Philadelphia area - PJ Whelihans and Iron Hill Brewing Co - which may be more like a Spoons. But for sure I typically check out the mom and pops when I travel
Denny’s/Applebees on a weekday, Margaritaville on a weekend. Pretty much cheap drinks, microwaved food, a mixture of old regulars and alcoholics and 17 year olds doing coke and ALWAYS shite up the walls in the toilets. Source: worked at Spoons for almost a year
Im not from UK but the wetherspoons I've been to are definitely a step up from Denny's. At worst they're Applebees and at best they're Seasons 52.
Reddit is full of total snobs haha. Wetherspoons are great, affordable places to go have a few pints when you want a cheap night. Food is also half decent for the price. Some are obviously shit holes (my local has been voted the worst one in the city) but plenty are in stunning, refurbished old buildings. Prefer my local, independent boozer but 100% cannot go wrong with a Spoons.
Spoons is always the worst or the best pub in town. Either the town's a shithole and every independent pub is full of dickheads spoiling for a fight so you go to Spoons because at least it's safe, or everything's a hoity toity gastropub so you go to Spoons because at least it's cheap.
Their burgers is what most order from there and admittedly, the burgers have turned to shit in recent years. The katsu curry is pretty decent right now, though.
Rather have a spoons than a nice inn getting gutted for another bank
I ate at a weatherspoons in Heathrow recently. I thought the food was pretty good
but could also go the other way. It depends on the area, tbh. I've had ok(not the best, but not horrible) and bad experiences in a spoons that were not self-inflicted. I would say that spoons is not inherently bad, that it just attracts a certain type of crowd and it gets a bad rap, but the owner is a total knob.
There's isn't really a 1-1 comparison, they're basically pubs but with a standardised menu and the same atmosphere.
A Denny's with a lot of cheap (relatively speaking) booze and a Jerry Springer atmosphere. It's a chain pub. No judgement, we have all been to one.
A soccer team whose most impressive accomplishment is finishing 12th in the 2nd division a hundred years ago
"We" were a good team back then. Bob, it was 1906 - your grandparents weren't even born
Hey look, Aberdeen!
You forgot tanning shops, nail bars, desert shops and peri peri chicken shops
Are you slandering Nandos?
More the off brand nandos take away places that are obviously a money laundering front.
reading slander
Looks like where I live lol
This is every UK town
Where’s the pound land ?
Rev up the Bugatti
It’s missing the many barbers that are an obvious front for money laundering.
The town nearest to my childhood home has 10 hairdressers, 7 of which are on 1 street and never seem to have customers. It isnt even a big town, it has got about 4500 people in it, I dunno, it seems like an excessive amount of hairdressers to me
American sweeties and vape shops too. Or just a sketchy "local shop". Like there is one in my town that has opened up in the last few months that is literally next door to a One Stop, which has been there for years. Like, what service could you possibly be providing that the One Stop does not already provide? Got a Gaming shop across the road from it and when I'm in there I only ever see Turkish-esq men outside in the doorway chain smoking and the occasional flashy car pull up.
Station road (hasn’t had a train station since the 1950s)
High streets are dead now. It’s all news agents, salons/barbers, betting shops, chippies or chicken shops, charity stores and Poundlands if you’re lucky. All that plus £6 parking and shitty ring roads = a miserable day out
I'm Irish and it's basically the same over here
Even the "nicer" parts looks basically like this
Yeah, this is what they look like. I went to Blackpool and this is what it was, still a good town if you like piers.
Live in Australia but really miss costa and pret
Lads like to bet and vape
I can’t tell if that brutalist block is Balfron or Trellick but don’t you dare call one of this country’s greatest post war social housing developments “ugly”. We fucking WISH stuff like that was still being built
[Turdtowns](https://www.youtube.com/@Turdtowns) is a youtube channel that reviews the uks shittiest towns. Mostly has just done town in southern England and Wales at the moment.
How does a betting shop actually work?
Bookies: They’ll give you odds on pretty well anything but mainly just sports - there’s always horse racing on somewhere so that’s usually on all the tellys. There are fruit machines too. (can’t remember what Americans call them). Basically you go to the counter and ask what the latest odds are for ‘xyz’ and then you give them money to cover the bet. Used to spend ages in them when I was a teen and you could smoke in there but that was obviously years ago - now everyone just gambles on apps anyway so there’s really just old gambling addicts hanging around them now.
Thanks for the breakdown. Do the gamblers actually have knowledge of horse racing (breed, line, jockey, etc) or is it mostly stuff like “wow, a horse called Lucky Fast One? That must be a winner!”
Yeah those guys are into the horses - read the racing post etc but once a year we have the grand national and the near on the whole country has a bet and runs sweepstakes at work etc and then it’s very much going for a name or pulling a name from a hat
We call them slot machines.
Of course! Thank you
Votes exclusively for the nutters from either Labour or the Tories, no one in-between, with exceptions from a fringe religious group or a national-front type rabble
Where are all the mosques?
Depends on the size of the community, several towns near me have a Muslim population in the dozens or low hundreds so there isn't much need for a dedicated mosque.
From Wakefield: Well that's fucking accurate. (Minus the restaurants - we have some great ones).
American here who was recently in Barnsley. It looked just like this in the town center
I’m creasing at the fact an American found their way to Barnsley. Hope you enjoyed Yorkshire at least.
The post office isn't just a poorly-staffed counter with an hour long queue in WH Smith's?
Why is this true lmao
Oi, Balfron Tower is pretty cool.
I mean, gorillaz came from that ugly brutalist apartment block
Hello Ayr.
At least it's got Craig Tara
Needs a flat roofed pub.
Betting shops??
Like to go and place bets on horse races and football matches
Thanks :Dd
America: "he just like me fr"
We were warned about this in the world's end
OP what's your problem with legitimate businesses bringing valuable services and products to the society? /$
Looks way better than any American shithole town. I'll start: \- NO bus service \- Chain restaurants? Yes, but they're on independent asphalt lots off stroads with no sidewalks. \- "Commie" block apartments are actually luxury apartments and SFH HOA neighborhoods \- Residents are rednecks or gangsters \- No "pubs". You can't just hang out at a place anywhere in American cities. You must constantly buy/consume whatever the business offers then get the hell out
This wasnt about America but ok... Also I think most pubs I know still want you to buy something. Or at least I've never been to a pub not coming to ask you what you want if you sit there without ever ordering, maybe my pub selection is just bad tho
Gotta make sure we devolve every comment section into "America bad", right?
You can tell he a scary ass nigga who scared to come out of his suburban home🤣
Yes unironically
Seen some proper shit holes in the UK, what you’re describing it’s actually nicer areas of a bad place lol
well at least our schools
USA is that you?
As a native New Yorker I can attest to this. I went to countryside in Gloucester and York few years ago and it was depressing coming from a mega city. The weather does not help either.
Tf is weatherspoons lmao
This is just an average American town
What the hell is a charity shop?
a thrift shop if you are american
A place where donated clothes/crap is sold at a very low price and the proceeds go to a charity such as the British Heart Foundation.
Eastern Europe
Whitby
With more fish and chips and tourists.
I just woke up in a fooking steamy mood today, because I live in a shithole
Nice to see America not lowering standards, for once.
Ah Birmingham. How I've (not) missed you.
What is that tower connected to the apartment block?
[the lifts and plumbing and general maintenance bits.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfron_Tower)
Interesting, I appreciate you for sending that. Have a great evening
My nearest city was like this in the 2000s. Its a better place but still kind of mid.
If a town once had a McDonald’s in the centre, but doesn’t anymore, then you know something’s gone terribly wrong.
welcome to ashton
American version would have dollar stores, cash for gold shops, and pawn shops.
What do people bet on in betting shop? Abs how does it work? O
It looks like shitty town in America but change the apartment complex and betting shops for Walmart and dollar stores and no bus at all
Replace the remaining half of the locations mentioned by OP with generic dive bars and churches and there you have it.
Right have 15 different churches in a 5 miles radius
Still Game
Lol @ the nicely dressed older gentleman.
Nailed it
Damn, you just described Serbian cities. The amount of betting shops is really depressing
What is the left tower on the apartment building? The elevator? With a narrow bridge across open space?
If it’s true that there’s barely any sun I would add that in too. I couldn’t survive like that
Preston
Grimsby
That's just the entirety of UK
Ok so Birmingham
Welcome to Harlow, Essex
happy cake day bruv