I fully trust you that NM sucks...never been; have no reason to go. But to argue that LA is worse than Detroit just doesn't square with my experience. Detroit's murder rate is about 10x LA's. Detroit has little to no cultural influence, and there's no geographically interesting shit either (beach, mountains, other things that make for a nice existence, etc.). I've never lived in LA, but I've visited many, many times, and while I'm not going to say that visiting is anything like living, I don't even put them in the same league. Fuck, I lived in the nicest part of Detroit and a girl got stabbed literally on my doorstep for telling some youths to turn the music down. And the cops told her not to talk that way to hoodlums and didn't even bother investigating. Whether this place or that place is worse is maybe not a great argument, but Detroit is a straight up shithole, and no rah rah attitude from any well-meaning suburbanites is ever going to change that.