Which Places With Bad Raps Are Actually Worth Visiting?

Dylan Thuras: Hi, Lulu. Hello!

Lulu Miller: Hey, Dylan! How’s it going?

Dylan: It’s good. I am very excited to have you joining the show for this week.

Lulu: I’m so very excited to be here.

Dylan: Yeah, I’m a fan. Lulu does amazing work. For people who don’t know who you are or what you do, maybe you can just introduce yourself.

Lulu: Sure. I am one of the co-hosts of Radiolab, and I am the host of Radiolab’s family-friendly spinoff all about nature, called Terrestrials.

Dylan: Yes. And this is a wonderful show that’s both super stimulating for the adults and very fun and playful for the kids. And you’ve got a new season out that’s essentially, it’s all about animals that need PR makeover. Animals who’ve gotten a bad reputation.

Lulu: Exactly. Yes. We’ve just dropped a new season and we’re going goblin mode this season. We’re exploring the monsters around us. So, things like invasive frogs and rats and coyotes that eat our pets and learn that there’s so much more behind that bad reputation, whether it’s perhaps interspecies friendship or literal techniques that can save human lives to even just humor or deeper understanding. So, yeah, that’s what we are on about. And when we were talking about this, we thought, OK, yes, animals, bad reputations. But there’s also a lot of places out there that have a bad reputation. And so we thought, OK, this is a really fun potential collaboration.

Dylan: So this week on the show is bad rap week.

Lulu: Bad rap. But it’s not going to be you and I like making bad raps like Dylan from Madness Obscura. We’re not going to do that.

Dylan: This is a full freestyle. Lulu and I for the next 45 minutes just back and forth. No, we’re going to learn about people, places, animals with bad reputations and the surprising truths behind them. Lulu is going to be with me all week on the show.

Lulu: So excited.

Dylan: We are starting today with a collection of listener stories about places that have a bad reputation, but that people will defend to the death. Do you have a place like this?

Lulu: Totally. It’s a new love. It is the Chicago River, which I don’t know, do you know anything about it? Do you have any images that spring to mind?

Dylan: The Chicago River does have a very bad reputation. Bubbly river.

Lulu: Bubbly, stinky. ‘They dye it green on St. Paddy’s Day, but do they need to?’ kind of vibe of a river that’s already kind of green. It is a sort of reviled river. And yet there has been a lot of quiet cleanup going on over the years, all kinds of organizations. And it’s actually this incredible place for all kinds of things: For spotting wildlife. There are beavers, there are coyotes, foxes. There was an eagle just the other day. And there’s cool ways to see all this stuff. There’s this new park called the Wild Mile where you can kayak and parts of it you can boardwalk along.

There’s ferries that you can take from the middle of downtown to all kinds of cool different—like to Ping Tong Memorial Park in Chinatown. You can rent electric boats and drive them yourself in the summer. So it’s just this place that is like it is alive with animals.

It’s alive with recreation. I hated it when I first moved here and it was the symbol to me of moving away from nature. And now that I’ve looked closer and come to see how many people have affection for it and how many creatures do, I love it now.

Dylan: That’s a good one.

Lulu: So listeners, where are they going to take us?

Dylan : We are going to go all over the place. Let’s go on a little journey of all the places that have very bad reputations that people still love.

Lulu: Can’t wait. Let’s go.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Molly: Hi, this is Molly. I’m calling in about a place I love that in my opinion does a great job of defying its reputation. I’m a huge dissenter of Revere Beach. It’s America’s oldest public beach and it’s the closest one to Boston, the city I’m lucky to call home. It has a reputation for being, due to growth, dangerous, polluted, classic public city beach criticisms that I think you would hear, you know, in any city.

I love Revere Beach because it’s accessible right off the blue line. It’s just a 15-minute transit trip from downtown. And I think the city has done a great job keeping it clean these days. Every day in the summer, you see a ton of families swimming in the water, people picnicking, people taking walks. And there are cute events like this sandcastle competition where international sandcastle sculptors come and make these gorgeous sculptures.

I always can’t resist the many great taco places just a stone’s throw away from the beach. And I love going there when I want to be by the water, even in the snowy Boston winter when it’s super quiet and peaceful. I love the pod and had to give my shout out of Revere Beach. Thank you.

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Jill: Hi, Dylan. My name is Jill and I live in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, and I love laundromats. I love to travel light, which means laundry mid-trip. I have been lucky enough to work on boats helping deliver along the Gulf and East Coast as well as having sailed the Amalfi Coast and boated the Canal du Midi in France.

I’ve met some of the most wonderful folks in marina and coastal town laundries. After all, we all have at least one thing in common: dirty clothes. Even if I’m the only one there, it’s a great time to read or just savor some alone time after being aboard a finite floating space with several of your literally closest friends.

Once, while docked to the side of the Canal du Midi, a friend and I went into a small French town in search of a place to wash our clothes. We asked a lovely local lady about a laverie. There were none in the town. So she invited us to come to her home later and bring our clothes.

How sweet. We brought her a bottle of wine and chocolates for her little boy and passed a lovely hour or so practicing one another’s languages. We left with clean clothes and a new friend. I’ve also been to laundries from Idaho to Florida and many, many points in between.

I’ve always been met with a smile. But of course, people are mirrors, whether in a laundry, a grocery or just on the street. They reflect what you send out. Laundromats are very zen places. Dirt on dirt off, as it were. And though most people cringe when you say laundromat, I actually look forward to them when I travel. I hope you have a wonderful day. Take care now. Bye-bye.

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Vera: Hello, my name is Vera and I live in Sao Paulo. I absolutely love the small museums that tend to be unpopular among travelers or that people frequently don’t even know they exist because they are off the beaten path. I’m sad to say that even my own husband and kids don’t understand why I love them so deeply.

There is a municipal museum in Cananeia, a small town on the southern coast of the state of Sao Paulo, considered to be the first town in Brazil. Some may not see any logic in their collection, but there is a clear line connecting every little piece in there.

The town itself: the colonial architecture of the stone building that houses the collection is already mind-blowing. Very well preserved thick walls, huge wooden doors, irregular steps. Those steps are so worn you can actually imagine the number of people who have climbed them throughout the centuries.

They do have a significant amount of items taking its size into consideration. A giant shark of questionable taxidermy methods, paintings by local artists, antique machinery from sugar cane farms, shackles that bear witness to slavery, string instruments of many different decades, fishing baskets, and the biggest treasure of the collection: the sword that belonged to Martim Afonso de Sousa, a Portuguese colonist, leader of the exploratory expedition that established the first colony in Brazil in 1531.

This museum opens in the afternoons from Tuesday to Sunday and the tickets cost so little I feel sad I can’t contribute with a bigger donation, but I’ll never grow tired of visiting it.

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Deanna: Hi, my name is Deanna. You wanted to hear from listeners about places that have a bad reputation but have exceeded expectations once you visit it. Well, let me tell you about Sacramento, California. In this case, I live in Sacramento area. I’m not just visiting.

Amongst the rest of California, Sacramento has a bad reputation. Most of California looks down on Sacramento as a small, sophisticated farming community. It may have developed as an agricultural area after the gold rush, but it’s a gem.

Over the course of my life, I’ve lived in six different cities in the United States. I’ve lived in France and Germany. I’ve also spent an extended amount of time in Thailand. When leaving Germany, I chose Sacramento based on the diversity. It’s one of the most diverse areas in the nation and the proximity to all there is to love about California.

You can be in the mountains, the redwoods, wine tasting, or at the ocean in a matter of a few hours. It’s a growing area with lots of outdoor festivals and some tasty restaurants. Sure, the restaurants aren’t the same as the Bay Area. They offer more, but at the high prices of the homes there and the traffic, I’m not sure it’s better.

What we really find special about Sacramento is the community. We’ve established amazing friendships here, and Sacramento definitely deserves higher regard.

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