_____ Which US Places Have a Dropout Culture? _____

[drealm]

It's hard to describe "dropout culture" but it's easy to recognize in person. I know that when I stumble into some unique twilight zone there's a sense of freedom in the air. The characteristics of a dropout culture vary in degree but usually includes a place where time slows down, people have a "don't care" mentality and are probably too lazy or uninterested to vote, people lack ambition, most probably work odd jobs instead of having a career. These places are few and far between. Every place that has this mystical detached feeling seems to result from some unintentional amalgamation of ethnic, historical, corruption, crime and geographical forces.

Let's take a place like El Paso. El Paso is geographically uncategorizable. It's not the south-west, the south or even "Texas". It's unable to cling to any of these identities. It's a sliver of no man's land that's been forgotten. It lives at the corner of a state where nothing important happens. Across the river is Mexico and it's past of drug gang killings. Normal people are scared away, freaks are attracted. In every other direction is a long drive of nothing. To leave the city going into the rest of the US you need to go through a secondary border checkpoint. In spite of the US government being seemingly all powerful the reality is they acknowledge that El Paso is basically a town run by illegal Mexicans and they can't do damn thing about deporting any of them back. There's no money to do it and no one cares to either. You end up with a zone of tolerance where a Mexican city is unofficially living in the US.

As you go more south you see more cities of the same. I read Laredo is like this but I've never been there.

San Antonio has less of this but still feels detached. No one is on the rate race here. If people want to make money they go to Austin or Dallas. The downtown is a tourist destination, but at least the core is Mexican.

New Orleans was an escape for all sorts of Characters. It's isolated by the ocean on one side and puritanical states on the other. So if you wanna have fun this is a pitstop sort of like Vegas was for GI's. People here are more concerned with having a good time than working out the problems of the world and trying to fix anything. This is probably the most corrupt city in the US.

I'm not sure if I'd call vegas a drop out culture. It's a town built for one night stands and living excessively. The crowd that settles here are those catering to everyone else's vices. The visiting aren't so much dropping out as just binge drinking for a few days. So it has a revolving door party culture but no one ever stays. The people who do stay look worn out.

Places in remote Alaska strike me as being the last raw frontier.

Humboldt county has always had a rebellious drug culture. The natural beauty seems like a barrier with the rest of the world.

Puerto Rico is probably a mix of things. I have a hard time imagining it as just a regular US place. Seeing that it's an island with an entire population more or less on welfare, I'm curious about it.

Thoughts?