Barnorama All Fun In The Barn
This evocative collection brings together personal narratives that illuminate the depths of human sorrow and resilience.
“The outer suburbs of Paris. It’s really, really grim and depressing. Run down buildings that all look the same.”
“Went through Kensington in Philly not long ago, don’t know if you can get more depressing than that.”
“Killing fields in Cambodia.”
“Ueno Zoo in Tokyo. There was a lone polar bear pacing back and forth in some small dull pen. It looked so helpless.”
“Among places I have visited: Cairo, IL. I drove through there once as a detour. Desolate, abandoned, and decayed. Not a single living being was seen driving through that town.”
“I worked for a while very near a Native American reservation, one of the very poor reservations. I’m a firefighter and we’d respond onto the reservation somewhat frequently for fires or medical emergencies and it was just insane to me how impoverished these people were, it felt like I was walking around a 3rd world country and just a few miles away were people so wealthy they created a private road from the local airport to their gated community because they didn’t want to drive on the roads with the poors anymore.”
“The most depressing places I’ve ever seen are Pine Ridge and the nearby Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. I had no idea such poverty existed in the U.S.”
“Pripyat, Ukraine, near Chernobyl, was one of the most depressing places I’ve ever visited. The abandoned apartment buildings, schools with children’s toys left behind, and an eerie silence made it feel like time had stopped after the nuclear disaster. It was haunting to see how life had been completely erased from an entire city. There used to be 50,000 people there.”
“Stopped to get gas in Baker, California on a road trip. I couldn’t help but think of that quote from true detective, ‘this is like someone’s memory of a town, and that memory is fading.’”
“House of Terror, the former SS and Gestapo headquarters in Budapest. The cells in the basement had shackles on the walls, and drains in the floor. If you went in the room, you did not come out alive.”
“The zoo in Himeji, Japan. If you go, I hope it’s because you are planning to commit some liberation of the poor animal souls.”
“Westbury. It’s a town in southern England, and I don’t have anything against it, it just happened to be the train station I was always at at 10pm traveling home. Maybe it was the closed cafe that looked like it would be nice when open, maybe it was the hanging baskets of flowers under moonlight and artificial light, maybe I was just homesick, but the place always made me sad.”
The downtown, east side of Hastings, Vancouver. I lived downtown there and you could leave an office building that’s full of law firms and walk three blocks to east Hastings which is just open drug use everywhere. The transition is crazy.I left 15 years ago but go back to visit family and it’s definitely worse than it used to be. And it used to be really bad.”
“A trip to Auschwitz. Even finding it not far away, you can feel its aura of pain.”
“I went to Dachau and I know what you mean. We took a 20 minute train ride to the camp, which was filled with 18-20 year old Europeans. Spirits were high, lots of laughing and joking amongst them. Once we got there was a memorial park before you entered the camp and it was deathly quiet. No birds chirping, no insects humming, just an eerie silence and it was in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Majdanek utterly destroyed me. Many of the facilities were still intact. We were in the gas chambers, where the walls were blued from the zyklon b, and you could see prayers scratched into the walls. When you walk out (which, mind you, nobody was ever fortunate enough to get to do), you see the city of Lublin, a mere few meters away. On the other side of the camp, you can find an open monument, with the ashes of up to 78,000 people.”
“When I went to America, Hollywood during the day. So dirty. Homeless people everywhere. Absolutely rammed with tourists but so depressing as it looks like literal filth. If it’s like that during the day I don’t even want to imagine what it’s like at night.”
“Salton Sea. Take whatever backwater, dejected town that makes you think ‘man this place is dying,’ and then kill it and travel 40 years into its future. That’s Salton Sea.”
“Blackpool. I don’t know how British seaside towns end up so bad. Like, who wouldn’t want to live near the sea? They should be the most desirable places. Blackpool is about the worst, though. Old drunks and junkies as far as the eye can see. So much wasted potential.”
“Some dark street with a lone gas station in Hoboken, NJ.”