I Went To The Worst Place To Live In Texas

hey every time I go somewhere you know who I take with me you want to know the good Lord he got my back but it's sad but the S thing go down like it going down and I'm 80 years old and I remember the time man we had a lot of things around we ain't got nothing more nothing I have done and it's said if I was in the shape that I was before Oh this thing would be popping cuz i' be popping too baby you know and that's all I can say about that's Shirley and she is a firecracker let me tell you I met Shirley when I was driving around Bowmont Texas one day she was sitting out in her driveway in her wheelchair talking to her sister on speaker phone really loud like I was like hey I'm working on a video about bont can I pull over and talk to you for a bit and boy did she talk we'll come back to Shirley again later but what a lady we were in Texas as part of a month-long road trip I saw a lot of the state and along the way I told people I was coming here and they were like why are you going to Bowmont there's a lot better places you can visit here and I was like well that's why I'm going a lot of people say bont's the worst place to live here so I got to see what that looks like and after spending a couple of days here I can say it's pretty bad but it's not just Bowmont it's the whole [Music] area [Music] so a couple months ago I put out a Craigslist query and I was like hey bont people I have a YouTube Channel and I'm going to be in Bowmont for a couple days I'm looking to talk to people who live in Bowmont to tell me what they think about living there and man the number of replies I got one of the people who emailed me his name's Chris you'll meet him later so we got to talking and I was like Chris okay would you be offended if I made a video about how bad bont Texas is and he was like hell no people need to know how truly terrible it is in bont I was like okay so here we are right in the middle of the neighborhood it's everywhere here so by the time I made it up to Bowmont it was about 2 weeks into the trip in Texas I saw some bigger cities and I saw the border on the coast I saw a lot of poverty and some pretty terrible conditions up to that point there was something about Bowmont that was different it felt so empty and stagnant and just blah sorry bman people but I don't think you could disagree man you turn a corner I'm in just some regular neighborhood and it is burned out abandoned and just whatever this used to be just gone man it wasn't just Craigslist Chris who was quick to throw his home city under the bus it's pretty easy to find frustrated people online I read all about trashy trailer parks poor people strung out on drugs pollution crime somebody called this place a bluecollar gritty social cess poool wow and that's just the beginning of it but is Bowmont that bad and why well it starts with where the place is B wants way out in East Texas about a half hour from Louisiana it's surrounded by rice fields rotting oil fields woods and Bayou parts of town smell like mud and Dead Fish and the whole place smells like Refinery fumes certainly not a very healthy environment mean look at this this is on the far East side of town the part of Bowmont that a lot of people say is the worst side of town it's oil refineries and petrochemical plants right up against the neighborhoods this is also the part of town where I'm at Shirley [Music] all this industrial stuff is old gritty Texas they call this the carcinogenic Coast because of the high cancer rates out this way the air is bad and who knows how nasty the water is here and the neighborhoods on the east side they're pretty bad too I don't think there's a block out here where there isn't at least one boarded up home and almost all the small businesses out this way are gone the whole east side of town just feels so forgotten about there's a whole lot more of that around here too [Music] for a lot of people on this side of town working in these plants just blocks from their home is their only option and they're going to stick to it just like they do in coal mining towns no matter what blue collar forever can't blame them there's some good jobs here you can start out making four to 5K a month working in factories like these but they're not going to be here forever these factories are being automated they're becoming robotic factories where you we only need a few people to make sure things run smoothly there's reminders all over town about how big the oil industry was to this place just down the road is an old oil gusher Memorial it's called spinel toop right here were on standing was the first place oil was discovered the entire Gulf that was in 1901 and it marked the beginning of the modern petroleum industry in Texas was never the same and for a long time after that bont Texas was rolling after they found oil here the population tripled in a year 20,000 people moved here in a year's time all these oil tycoons and business people came in it was a real racket there's still little bit of that stuff around here but the oil bust is real still [Music] pumping it's just quiet in this downtown it is about 1:00 on a Wednesday and I'm on this intersection pretty much Main Street or close to it and I'm just standing right in the middle of their downtown intersection and there is not a lot going on there's another burned out building over there jeez talk about a sleepy downtown the downtown Bowmont is just all kinds of messed up I spent a couple hours here walking around and I was like damn feels like 2/3 of their downtown it's just gone now closed up and not ready for business anymore and keep in mind bont's a big place there's still more than 100,000 people here this isn't just a teeny little one street town but I can't say even though a lot of this is pretty empty it's still really clean there aren't homeless people and poop and graffiti and trash everywhere it all kind of reminds me of a way more happening Pine Bluff Arkansas it's way nicer than my former Hometown downtown just nice buildings and a clean downtown with nothing going on kind of like an old train model collecting dust and somebody's add like this whole building used to be the bank I think it's just got it everything's broken out and the whole block whole block is pretty much gone it's whole block gone and then this block is empty I mean there's really not a lot on this whole part of downtown I don't think that clock's worked in a long long time clock has run out on bont so bont has a bad reputation look at this list everyone this list is why I came here saddest city in America least educated city in America one of the lowest numbers of doctors second worst place to raise a family one of the most miserable places to live one of the least healthy cities one of the worst places for single people and a bunch of other too they have one of the lowest percentage of college degree holders in the country well that's because for Generations you can get a high-paying job in the chemical industry and instead of having to go off to college so a lot of people did that but all these different studies show that bont's bad place to be physical health emotional health Financial Security the unemployment rate here is more than one in 10 people there's just not a lot of great paying jobs outside of the factories we saw earlier that whole building is gone nothing it's their Entertainment District and it's closed I went to their Entertainment District Downtown it's pretty sorry I don't know if any of this is even open anymore that's it that's your Entertainment District the good news is though downtown bont has the world's biggest working fire hydrant or they did I think there's one in South Carolina that's bigger now this one's still pretty cool though it has 101 Dalmations paint on it mhm how long have you lived here here in Bowmont I'm 80 years old you Liv Bowmont your whole life 80 years old yeah and it's just it's changed a l going down down down down women was on the corner set in their body one time we had a woman here I told her I said baby you on the wrong Corner let me tell you about bont when I was coming up they had a lot of eating place on both sides what was it on both Sid eating place oh eating place yeah oh about see I Ain got no Che and uh that Chang plus they had a lot of clubs that changeed but the club ain't nothing because uh I didn't too much go to the club now I used to work down there a whole lot making money but now they ain't making nothing cuz they ain't got no they well some people just ain't got no job and they ain't looking for no job they want to sell drugs but that's other thing from they used to do to now now they ain't got to work they sell you know drugs so people are selling drugs instead of working yeah yeah well are there's plenty of jobs right they just yeah I guess yeah you can go uh but not now but before they they had a lot of so there's less jobs there Less jobs because what what left what business is left let me tell you something I'm just going to tell you the truth tell some of you you you had a job you got a job and if this Mexican come in and get the job where you work at they'll pay him cuz he he working less they don't want to pay you cuz you want more out right so the the Mexicans are taking taking over taking overing over yeah now they good don't give me now they good people I got something there one over there they good people but if they would stop paying these netive people that less money and pay them what they goosed to get an hour man there be a lot of work here lot of work here and some people just don't want to work actually heard that a lot when I was in Texas the damn illegals people said they're coming over here and driving down the cost for work they'll take less money and don't care about unions and Benny's well there's Texas for you last year bont had the highest murder rate in state even higher than crummy Houston that's just crazy and the drug use here is taking over a lot of the lower class but it's not just the poor people involved in drugs I heard there's even people in affluent areas getting busted for making meth a lot of the stuff you read about Bowmont from people who live here is bad crime drugs racial fights corrupt schools corrupt judges mosquitoes humidity hurricanes floods and it's close to Houston God even quora contributors don't hold back vanilla little quora let loose with bont I know people who have been shot stabbed robbed and kidnapped what burned out buildings slum man if quora says these things it must be bad that's like great grandma saying bad things and there's neighborhoods here that are really bad all over town I already showed you some of the east side of town that's the part of town that everybody says is the worst part but I don't know I saw a lot of bad I just started driving around kind of Meandering around through another section of bont and I just had to pull over I was like I didn't even know this part of town was bad abandoned house there one out of five people here technically lives in poverty and it looks like a lot more close to it when you drive around back in the day this part of town wasn't a bad place to live people had good values and worked hard for a living real America stuff then the 70s came and the recession prooof oil industry collapsed and then white flight happened and then drugs and crime moved in I hear when you drove through Bowmont in the 80s and 90s it was junkies blight and poverty all over the place place just went to I don't know if it's as bad as it was then but I don't think it's recovered that much Church abandoned I hear a lot of the kids leave town to join the Marines just to get the hell out of here then they get released they come back and they grab their and bail the kids you stick around have nothing to do Rob and steel the schools here was so bad the state had to take over although we're seeing that all over the country now it's old church burned out Church [Music] all the way down there and there's a church another church that's the third boarded up church I've seen and I just got here and the church is people I must have seen a dozen closed down churches they were all over the damn place that's all a lot of these people have you see a lot of that in the Deep South boarded up churches where nobody gathers anymore I wondered how that happened if there was a long drawn out goodbye or if the pastor just got up one day and said this is our last Sunday here but either way way I'm sure there were a lot of Tears hey there man this isn't even the worst neighborhood yet this just some place I turned down to get to downtown God but it's affordable here though rents under a grand and the average home price is get this everyone 150k that's the cheapest home price I've seen in a long time since like I was in Mississippi and home prices are down 3% in the last year in 33 years these houses will be free guess you can see why here's the cheapest home in town this place was for sale for 30 grand after a $3,000 price reduction get in on that people here's what middle class Bowmont looks like now I can't say that a lot of the city does look like this it's not all bad third places in town where there aren't boarded up on every block and where people can probably walk their dogs something like this on this street would run you close to 200k is all and then here's what the good side of town looks like there's some decent here this is their historic district where the rich people live nice sidewalks and Treeline streets and all I think a lot of this stuff is probably somehow related to the oil and chemical Biz I bet there have been some super successful people in this part of town and no kidding you can get a home on this part of town for about 200k as well and they say there's no affordable left in America it's a pretty nice house look at all that barb wire now we're going to go back to some bad stuff cuz that's what you people want that's the Maximum Security Prison in town it's called the Styles unit everyone around here knows about the damn Styles unit you end up in there it's cuz you messed up big time there's a lot of people from bont in there it once had the third highest rate of incidents of all prisons in the US so if the prison's that bad you know what the outside is like there's shootings in bont all the time not too long ago somebody bumped into a guy's chair at a pizza place in town the guy got up and his friends were like why you bumping our table the and the guy was like hey man I'm sorry and he left the restaurant then the guys got in their truck they caught up to him and shot like 20 bullets into his car killed him that's bont Texas needs to secede from bont that's funny Mappy seems like Texas wants to secede from everybody see you're saying they shouldn't take Bowmont with them what's this place going to look like when all the illegals start moving in happy you can't say that this is YouTube the place isn't completely ruined there's some good stuff going on here I guess no there's a lot of caring and generous people here who still give a about Bowmont and take pride in the place they have a Fourth of July parade and a Christmas parade that's cool and driving around some people here seem to be happy but man oh man sure was hard to find things to do for entertainment for dinner on the first night I went to a Salt Grass for the first time in my life it's a chain it's either chains or Mexican food in Bowmont I'd had a lot of Mexican up to that point so it was time to take a break from the beans anyways Salt Grass is actually pretty cool and I mean super cool boy was it cold in there woo Texans love their AC I tell you I got the crispy chicken sandwich and some fries as well as a lone star duh just the type of middle class meal I was looking for and for one of the few times on the trip I was able to solve the bottle cap puzzle you're awfully nice a thanks Lone Star so are you now the next afternoon I decided to drive up to vder for some good oldfashioned fun now if you don't know about vider well mister you're going to get a quick lesson V's right next door to Bowmont it has this reputation as being a racist trashy poor play face some will even say it's worse in vder than it is in Bowmont and after spending a few hours there I think they might be right I think this whole part of Northeastern Texas Orange Port Arthur Vier bont is to be desired let me tell you that got off the freeway took the first exit the first right here we are there you you go fer Texas everyone this this might be a tie with bont I don't know what is going on here the first exit off the freeway Ander and that's what I found there was a lot more of that vder feels very unw welcoming to put it best when I first got there a lot of what I saw was this big giant swampy trailer land where people look at you like you ain't from here it's indeed very poor-looking and just well kind of Backwoods a lot of Eastern Texas sure does look like Louisiana I don't know if most Texans have actually been to this part of Texas before but they know it's bad and they are not wrong if I was black I think I'd be dead by now this place is pretty different all these we're going to shoot you signs everywhere God they do not mess around back here and the mosquitoes are attacking me as I'm driving like the mosquitoes are getting me out of here what is this place there's literally mosquitoes all in the car and the mosquitoes good Lord as soon as I roll the windows down look at how big they are I have never ever been swarmed with bugs like I was that afternoon iner and I've been to some real swampy Backwoods places too everyone well if this ain't vider Texas for you little barbecue joint Jimmy Nicks I try to find something open to talk to somebody before dark this place look cool I've been to a lot of B back woods back roads places in this country and this has to be top five I mean you got everything here you got cows and farms and trailers and just really mean terrible drivers with big trucks that don't give a so I just asked that guy that we saw working on the car if I could talk to him and he said he's good and I said well where's a good dive bar and he said the red wagon or Waffle House and that's all they got so I'm going to the Red Wagon the Red Wagon wasn't open anymore though damn it I wish it was more eventful and I could report back that I found the coolest back woodst red neckest place in all the lands but I can't the only place to throw down some Suds in town is just regular place not what I expected at all damn it well here's the bathroom it's pretty clean this place is actually not that bad I was so excited to find out what type of bar Vier people go to I'm sure there's some Backwoods place that I missed might even be worth another trip out here just to find it bont Texas's econ economically depressed it's kind of dreary and locals say that folks are unhappy to be here why would things change why would companies come here why would a family move here it's really affordable but they have to find out how to make this a place people would want to come to for more than that and they need more jobs than just the chemical plants as I've seen driving around the whole country things change all these oil days are long gone now even all spindle top is seen better days it's kind of symbolic that this old oil gusher is out of order used to spew water and it was quite the scene from what I hear but it's not even doing that anymore it's a hasb memorial honest Honestly though even though Bowmont ranks so high on all those bad lists there are far worst places I've been to in the US OFA can bont um ever be saved yeah it could be saved if uh they give these people give these people job they could be save sure be sa but they don't want to work though who that the people yeah they want to work but they they can't buy no job what about Shirley I really like Shirley she's spunky and real and honest and tough I wonder what'll happen to her she says she's going to stick it out here till the end bont continues to lose people every month as folks move on to better things but when Shirley's gone well I think that'll make a pretty big void we're here to talk about life in Bowmont and that to me is ah wow this is a different this is a different part of America right here I assure you on that well what makes so different because when I called you you were like I said would you mind going on Zoom to talk about Bowmont and I don't want to offend you but I there's a lot of bad stuff that people are saying about bont I'm going to go there to see if it's true and you said people need to see this and hear what's going on in Bowmont so what what did you mean by all that well I mean um the the division here is not as visible the the people that want to engage versus the people that don't want to engage and I mean that's just like the tip of the iceberg the education system here sucks you know if you look at the stat the statistics for the State of Texas I think bont is actually the worst I I want to say it's down it's way down on the bottom of the list I don't know what it is this year but I know it's been way down on the bottom of the list as far as academics and and uh kids graduating so we have a really low graduation rate here and then you know we also have a high crime rate we have drugs and then we have the petroleum in the oil and gas industry just pumping all kinds of money into that you know what I mean and it goes both ways you know people do good things with money as well I'm not saying you know that it's just the oil and gas I'm just emphasizing that there's money here there's a lot of money to be made here so you know the uh and then you know the the political stuff I you know I won't go too much into that but it is very very prevalent that uh you know you can't really if if you if you don't have the same voice as other people you might as well not even try to be socialable with with people that are around you like co-workers you know people you may want to go have a beer with it's like it's a maybe it's it's a lot of me drawing that line but there is that line regardless when I called you you called it a Cess pool I don't know it's just and then you have the the the drugs are really bad the meth the I don't think people talk about the meth problem nationally like they should be but they should definitely be talking about it right here I mean this is a really bad area for that kind of it's it's but I'm but it's it's it is like that everywhere I have been across the United States I see it everywhere I go I just uh think it's it's pretty bad here too and that didn't add to the cess Bowl you know it's and then you have the oil and the gas with all the money fueling it so in my opinion bont kind of destroyed itself it it kind of engulfed itself with its own excess you know it's it's uh and then you had you know the Hur hricane I can't remember which one it there was two big hurricanes I was I was all over the United States when these hurricanes came through but my family was here so it's kind of hard for me to remember it like they did I had to work you know what I mean so but you had all the the people that came from the New Orleans super doome came this way whenever they had to evacuate so then you had an influx of Po I mean hundreds of thousands of people we're not talking about a few thousand we're talking about a buttload right well they never left you know they where would they go anyway they had to go somewhere so you had an influx in population and then you know unfortunately you add more people you add more crime so that's just how it goes and I don't know any qu yeah you ask the questions man no I I'm just curious to hear what is there a solution like are people in bont is there anybody that cares to try to make the place better is there a plan at all to to make this go away or start to make a dent and everything because everything that I've heard and and seen is is not good well I mean you do have a strong backbone here so I will say something positive about bman you have a strong backbone here now whether or not I agree with their politics you know you do have a strong Workforce here there's a lot of good people here and you know if if anything Bulman is religious I mean we are if we're not the heart of the Bible Belt we're pretty damn close to it because that's what it feels like to me and you know I've lived in North Carolina North Dakota Alabama New Mexico Arizona I've lived across the United States so I've I've seen different types of and there's a there's a high abundance of churches here so and I know people right you talk to people you they tell you they're religious they pray for you and this and that and the other but so the backbones here but I don't see a lot of leadership I don't see man I don't I just don't see hell man and and what are the answers though right what are the answers for any City going through this nobody seems to have the damn answers as far as I'm concerned I've I've seen a couple of your videos and hell I knew this already because you can just look around in the Daily News and you can see Austin's gone to San Diego's gone to crap you know all these cities and LA's been gone New York's you know I mean this we're not new to this you know it's like who who has the answer for any of it I guess that's the big question right what the hell yeah are you looking to move and need advice I do Consulting that's right I'll sit down and talk about where the next perfect place for you and your family should be I do it all the time together let's find you a new home that's safe and checks all your boxes and I can also help you find your new house too email me and I'll work with you I'm not just helping you figure out where to move but I can help you find your perfect home too that's right I know awesome reliable agents all over the country and I'd love to connect you to somebody who can help you search for that perfect home hey guys if you learned something new about America or what it's like to live in America great you should think about subscribing and turning on your notifications you can also click one of these videos or playlists for more this is Sage Nicks manager this has been a cornerhouse entertainment production

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 372,047

Keywords: texas, beaumont, what is texas like, texas poverty, texas oil industry, texas jobs, texas hotels, texas vacations, texas road trips, moving to texas, what is it like in texas, should i move to texas, texas real estate, texas realtor, moving to the state of texas, dallas, houston, austin, san antonio

Id: s3eeXugGPKg

Length: 44min 24sec (2664 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2023