The Absolutely Worst Places to Live in America by Dave Gilmartin

Author:Dave Gilmartin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466893337
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

While Greenville does have an arts organization, and their chamber of commerce is real active ballyhooing that two-bit jazz festival they do, I guess it’s so bad because it’s so poor. Very, very few people there have any financial resources. Then they plopped down two gambling boats, the problem being that the “tourists” (i.e., people from Louisiana or Arkansas) go to Vicksburg, Natchez, or other places closer to the Arkansas state line, about fifty miles north. That leaves no one but locals to gamble in Greenville, as it’s not geographically convenient for outsiders. So you’ve got your poor locals blowing their checks at the casinos. One Greenville casino let people come in every Friday to cash their check and get a free spin. Just imagine the consequences of that.

It’s so racially tense in Greenville that no issue is free of it. My favorite detail was that the public library would keep the black-oriented magazines behind the counter, and you would have to go up and ask for them. Also, every single vote on the city council went along racial lines, even when there was no racial aspect involved. It’s that kind of town, as are most southern towns now. And it is definitively southern. I never saw such scandal, nor eccentricity, as I did there. The people of Greenville are very proud of their two to three bars, their coffee shop, their gambling boats and, uh, their drug and alcohol addictions and messy affairs.

—Delilah DeHaven

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