Daniel sent us this one — he's been thinking about the whole subculture of people who deliberately seek out the worst-rated restaurants, hotels, and attractions. Not as masochistic punishment, but almost as a way of trolling the tourism industry itself. His argument is that the highly rated places are so often mediocre and overpriced that sometimes the transparently bad ones are just more entertaining. He mentioned dragging his wife around the most dismally reviewed spots in Venice, which I deeply respect.
That is a man who understands the value of a terrible vacation story. The best travel anecdotes almost never come from the Michelin-starred places. They come from the hotel where the ceiling caved in or the restaurant where the owner yelled at you for ordering wrong.
There's a whole ecosystem around this now. Vice did that series One Star Reviews, there are YouTube channels with millions of subscribers, Facebook groups, subreddits. Daniel's basically asking — if someone wants to plan a trip around this, what are the landmarks? What are the places that have become genuinely famous for being terrible?
Before we dive in, quick note — today's script is being written by DeepSeek V four Pro.
All right, let's see what they've got. So Herman, where do we even start? What's the canonical list of famously terrible places?
You have to start with the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam. This is probably the most famous example of a place that leaned into its own awfulness as a marketing strategy. Their advertising slogans over the years have included, and I'm quoting directly, "It can't get any worse, but we'll do our best" and "Now with beds in every room.
Wait, "now with beds in every room" was a real slogan?
They also ran ads saying "Sorry for the convenience" and "Now with a door to keep the hall out of your room." The Hans Brinker has been proudly terrible since the nineteen eighties. It's a budget hostel that basically said — look, you're paying almost nothing to sleep in Amsterdam, what exactly did you expect? And somehow that honesty made it legendary.
There's something almost admirable about that. Most bad businesses are in denial about being bad, but these people just owned it completely.
The place is still operating, it's been written up in every travel publication, and people specifically book it because they want the experience of staying at the famously terrible hotel. One reviewer wrote, "The elevator is basically a vertical coffin with commitment issues.
The Hans Brinker is almost the godfather of this whole genre. What else is on the list?
If we're talking about hotels that have achieved genuine infamy, you can't skip the Congress Hotel in Chicago. It's right on Michigan Avenue, prime location, beautiful old building from the eighteen nineties — and it's become famous almost entirely because of its labor disputes. There's been a continuous strike and protest outside since June of two thousand three.
Since two thousand three? That's twenty-three years of continuous picketing.
It's considered the longest active labor strike in American history. The union has a giant inflatable rat that's been stationed outside so long it's practically a Chicago landmark. And because of the strike, the hotel's maintenance has completely deteriorated. Reviews mention bedbugs, broken heating, mold, peeling wallpaper. But here's the thing — it's also incredibly cheap for its location, so budget travelers keep booking it.
You've got the labor dispute making it notorious, the physical deterioration making it terrible, and the prime location making it tempting. That's a perfect storm.
The reviews are something else. One Tripadvisor reviewer described their room as "a crime scene with complimentary soap." Another said the hallway carpet had what appeared to be "decades of human suffering ground into the fibers.
That's almost poetic. So those are two hotels — one that's comedically self-aware about being bad, and one that's just a genuine disaster. What about restaurants? Daniel specifically mentioned the Vice One Star Reviews series.
The Vice series was hosted by a guy named Taji Ameen, and the whole premise was that he would find the lowest-rated restaurant in a given city on Yelp and go eat there. What made the show work was that Taji wasn't mean-spirited about it. He wanted to understand why these places had such terrible reviews, and sometimes he'd discover that the reviews were unfair or that the owner just didn't understand how Yelp worked.
That's actually what Daniel mentioned — he said sometimes these places aren't as bad as the reviews suggest, and sometimes the owners don't even know their place has been panned online.
There was one episode where he went to a Chinese restaurant in New York that had something like one and a half stars, and it turned out the food was actually decent but the owner had gotten into arguments with customers in the review section. The owner didn't understand that responding to every negative review with "you are a liar and a fool" was making things worse.
There's something almost touching about that. Someone who's just completely out of their depth with how online reputation works.
Then there are the places that are, spectacularly terrible in ways that make them tourist attractions. The Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas is probably the most famous example. It's a hospital-themed burger restaurant where the waitresses dress as nurses, you wear a hospital gown, and if you don't finish your meal they spank you with a paddle.
I'm sorry, they what?
They spank you. With a paddle. It's part of the gimmick. The menu includes items like the Quadruple Bypass Burger, which is about ten thousand calories, and they serve butterfat milkshakes and flatliner fries fried in pure lard. They literally have a sign that says "Taste worth dying for." And several people actually have — there have been multiple medical incidents, including at least one fatal heart attack.
That's dark. A fatal heart attack at a restaurant called the Heart Attack Grill?
In twenty thirteen, a man had a heart attack while eating a Triple Bypass Burger. The owner, Jon Basso, has leaned into this completely — he calls his customers "patients" and himself "Doctor Jon." It's performance art about American excess that's also an actual functioning restaurant.
Is the food actually bad, or is it just the concept that's outrageous?
The reviews suggest the food is exactly what you'd expect — enormous, greasy, and not particularly good. But nobody goes there for the food quality. They go for the experience, for the photos, for the story. The Heart Attack Grill has a four-star rating on Tripadvisor, not because the food is good, but because people rate the experience highly. It's terrible in exactly the way people want it to be terrible.
That's an interesting distinction. There's a difference between places that are bad in an entertaining way and places that are just depressing. What about places that are bad in a more authentic, uncurated way?
For authentic awfulness, you have to look at the Hotel Carter in New York. This place was legendary. It was a hotel near Times Square that, for decades, was consistently rated the dirtiest hotel in America. TripAdvisor ranked it number one on their dirtiest hotels list for years running.
What made it so bad?
Bedbugs were essentially a permanent feature. The rooms had peeling paint, stained carpets, broken fixtures. The bathrooms were described as biohazards. There were multiple reports of used needles being found in rooms. The hotel was also notorious for being a suicide destination. It was grim.
That moves past entertaining into something much darker.
And that's where this whole genre gets complicated. The Hotel Carter wasn't funny-bad like the Hans Brinker. It was sad-bad, dangerous-bad. It closed down eventually, but for years it was famous specifically because of how awful it was. Travel bloggers would stay there just to document the horror.
I feel like there's a taxonomy emerging here. You've got places that are in on the joke — the Hans Brinker, the Heart Attack Grill. Then you've got places that are terrible but in a way that's still entertaining to read about — the Congress Hotel. And then you've got places that are just grim, where seeking them out starts to feel exploitative.
That's a fair breakdown. And I think the best version of this kind of tourism sits in that middle category — places that are authentically bad but not dangerous or tragic. There's a restaurant in Bangkok called Cabbages and Condoms that isn't bad at all, but it's built entirely around a condom theme — the decor is made of condoms, you get condoms instead of after-dinner mints — and that's its own category of weird tourism.
I want to go back to something Daniel raised, which is the idea that this is partly about trolling the tourism industry. He suggested that the highly rated places are often mediocre, and there's something almost protest-like about deliberately seeking out the worst.
I think there's truth to that. If you look at how tourism ratings work now, there's so much manipulation. Hotels and restaurants pay for reviews, they pressure customers to leave five-star ratings, they game the algorithms. A place with a four point eight rating on Google might be excellent, or it might just be aggressive about review management. The rating itself becomes almost meaningless.
The one-star places become almost more trustworthy, in a perverse way. You know what you're getting.
A one-star review is almost always authentic. Nobody's paying for one-star reviews. When you see a restaurant with two hundred one-star reviews, those are real people who had a real experience, and there's something almost refreshing about that honesty.
It's the same dynamic as Amazon reviews, where the three-star reviews are often the most useful because they're the most balanced. The one-star and five-star reviews are often useless — either ranting or gushing — but the middle is where the truth lives.
With these famously terrible places, you're often getting a more genuine interaction. The owner of a terrible restaurant isn't performing for you. They're not trying to optimize your experience. They're just being who they are, for better or worse. There's a kind of authenticity in awfulness that you don't get at a polished, focus-grouped tourist trap.
That's a philosophical point about tourism. People travel to experience something real, and a terrible restaurant where the owner yells at you is, in some weird way, more real than a restaurant designed to maximize Instagram appeal.
There's a place in Tokyo called Kagurazaka Saryo, a tea house where the owner is legendarily rude. He'll yell at you if you use your phone, he'll tell you your tea order is wrong, he'll lecture you about proper tea etiquette. And people line up for this experience.
They're paying to be berated about tea?
They're paying for an authentic interaction with a difficult person who really, truly cares about tea. The reviews are polarized — some people find it transformative, others find it abusive. But nobody denies that it's genuine. You're not getting a customer service script. You're getting the real person, and the real person is kind of a jerk.
I have to admit, I respect that more than the fake friendliness you get at chain restaurants. At least you know where you stand.
That connects to something broader. It's not just about the novelty or the story. It's about feeling something genuine in a world of curated experiences. A terrible hotel room with a stained mattress and a broken air conditioner is an experience you actually feel, as opposed to another anonymous Marriott where every room is identical and nothing surprises you.
What are the resources for people who want to do this? Daniel mentioned "beyond our trusty Google Maps lists" — where do people actually find these places?
The subreddit r slash one star has about a hundred thousand subscribers, dedicated entirely to finding and documenting terrible reviews. People post screenshots of the most entertaining one-star reviews, and sometimes they organize pilgrimages. There's also a Facebook group called "One Star" with similar content. But the real resource is actually Tripadvisor itself — you just sort by lowest rating instead of highest. The worst-reviewed places in any given city are often concentrated in tourist-heavy areas, which makes them easy to visit in a single day.
You could actually plan a terrible tourism crawl through, say, Times Square or the Las Vegas Strip.
Times Square is perfect for this because it's dense with tourist-trap restaurants that have terrible reviews. You could easily visit five of the worst-rated restaurants in Manhattan in a single afternoon. And the reviews themselves are entertainment — people put real creative effort into describing their terrible experiences.
I've noticed that. There's an art to a well-written one-star review. The best ones are miniature short stories with a setup, rising action, and a devastating punchline.
There was a review of a hotel in Blackpool, England, that's become legendary. The reviewer described it as "a place where hope goes to die" and claimed the breakfast sausage "tasted like it had been boiled in regret." Another reviewer said the bathroom was "so small you had to go outside to change your mind.
"Boiled in regret." That's good writing.
That's part of the appeal. The one-star review has become its own literary genre. People compete to write the most devastating, funny takedowns. It's almost like a modern version of the restaurant critic, except anyone can participate.
We've covered hotels and restaurants. What about attractions that have become famous specifically for being terrible?
The most famous is probably the Museum of Bad Art in Boston, dedicated to art that is, sincerely terrible. Not intentionally bad, not ironic, but art where someone tried very hard and failed spectacularly.
I've heard of this. They have a painting called "Lucy in the Field with Flowers" that's become iconic.
"Lucy in the Field with Flowers" is their Mona Lisa. It's a portrait of an elderly woman that's so anatomically bizarre it's captivating. The museum's motto is "Art too bad to be ignored." And the collection is fascinating — not because the art is good, but because you can see exactly what the artist was trying to do and exactly where it went wrong.
That's almost more interesting than good art, in a way. Good art can be opaque. Bad art wears its intentions on its sleeve.
The museum has been so successful that it now has multiple locations. They have a rigorous acquisition process — they reject about ninety percent of submissions because the art has to be sincerely bad, not deliberately bad. There's a big difference between someone who can't paint trying to paint a landscape, and someone who can paint choosing to paint something ugly as a joke. The museum only wants the former.
They're curating for authenticity in failure. That's sophisticated.
It connects back to what we were saying about authenticity. A painting by someone who tried and failed tells you something about human aspiration and limitation. A deliberately ugly painting just tells you someone's being clever. The first is interesting, the second is boring.
What about places that aren't deliberately curated like the Museum of Bad Art? Are there landmarks that have become famous for being underwhelming?
The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen consistently tops these lists. It's much smaller than people expect — only about four feet tall — and it's often crowded with tourists who've walked a long way to see something that's frankly underwhelming.
I've heard the Mona Lisa itself is like this. People expect this massive masterpiece and it's actually quite small, behind bulletproof glass, and you can barely see it through the crowd.
The Mona Lisa is the ultimate example of a disappointing attraction that people still line up for. It's about thirty inches by twenty-one inches. You're kept about fifteen feet away. Most people spend about fifteen seconds looking at it before moving on. And yet everyone who goes to Paris feels compelled to see it.
There's something almost religious about that. You're not there to actually look at the painting. You're there to have been in the presence of the painting.
That gets at something deeper about tourism in general. A lot of what we do as tourists isn't about the experience itself — it's about the checkbox. You went to the Eiffel Tower, you saw the Mona Lisa. Whether you actually enjoyed any of it is almost secondary.
Which brings us back to Daniel's point about trolling the tourism industry. If the checkbox is what matters, then checking off the worst-rated restaurant in Venice is just as valid as checking off the best-rated one. Maybe more valid, because at least you'll have a story.
You'll have spent less money. The Hans Brinker is one of the cheapest places to stay in Amsterdam. The Congress Hotel is a fraction of the price of other Michigan Avenue hotels. If you're going to be disappointed either way, you might as well be disappointed for thirty dollars instead of three hundred.
That's a practical argument. The expected value calculation is actually better for the bad places because your expectations are calibrated correctly. You know it's going to be bad, so you're not disappointed when it is, and you might even be pleasantly surprised.
There's a concept in psychology called expectation disconfirmation theory — satisfaction is the gap between what you expected and what you got. If you expect a five-star experience and get a four-star experience, you're unhappy. If you expect a one-star experience and get a two-star experience, you're delighted. The terrible tourism approach is almost a hack of your own psychology.
You're engineering your own satisfaction by deliberately lowering your expectations.
People who stay at the Hans Brinker often leave reviews saying it wasn't as bad as they expected. The bar is so low that basic functionality feels like a win. "The shower had hot water — five stars.
I want to circle back to something we touched on earlier — the places where the owners don't know they're famous for being terrible. Daniel mentioned this happening in Venice. Are there documented cases?
There are quite a few. There's a restaurant in Rome called Da Marcello that had terrible reviews for years, and when a journalist finally tracked down the owner, he had no idea his restaurant was even on Tripadvisor. He'd been running the place for decades, serving mostly locals, and suddenly tourists were showing up and leaving angry reviews because the menu wasn't in English and the waiter didn't smile enough.
That's actually kind of tragic. This guy is just running his local restaurant the way he always has, and the global review economy descends on him.
It raises questions about whether these ratings are even fair. A restaurant that's perfectly fine for its local clientele might be terrible by the standards of international tourists who expect certain things. The one-star review is often more about the reviewer's expectations than the actual quality of the place.
There's a cultural dimension to this. What counts as terrible service in one culture might be perfectly normal in another.
In Japan, a restaurant where the chef doesn't talk to you is considered normal. In Italy, a waiter who's brusque and efficient isn't being rude — that's just the pace of service. But if you're an American tourist expecting the "hi my name is Kevin and I'll be taking care of you tonight" experience, you might interpret cultural differences as bad service.
Which means the terrible tourism approach requires a certain amount of cultural literacy to do well. You need to distinguish between "this place is bad" and "this place just doesn't cater to my expectations.
That's where the Vice One Star Reviews approach was actually quite smart. Taji Ameen always tried to understand the context before passing judgment. He'd talk to the owners, learn the history. Sometimes the one-star rating was deserved, sometimes it wasn't, but the investigation was the interesting part.
If someone wants to do this themselves — plan a terrible tourism trip — what's the practical advice?
First, pick your targets carefully. You want places that are entertainingly bad, not dangerously bad. Read the actual reviews, not just the star ratings. A one-star rating because the food is mediocre is different from a one-star rating because of food poisoning. You want the former, not the latter.
That's an important distinction. There's a difference between "the pasta was bland" and "I spent three days in the bathroom.
Second, go in with the right mindset. This isn't about mocking people or being cruel. The best terrible tourism is done with curiosity and good humor, not meanness. You're there to experience something unusual, not to feel superior.
Tip well, presumably. If the service is terrible but the server is clearly doing their best in a bad situation, you should still take care of them.
The server didn't design the menu or set the prices. Be generous with the people, even if you're critical of the establishment.
Third — document everything. The whole point is the story you get to tell afterward. Take photos, save the menu, write down the best quotes from your server. This is material for years of dinner party anecdotes.
Fourth, don't just stick to the famous ones. Every city has its own hidden gems of awfulness. Part of the fun is discovering a place that hasn't been written up yet. Be the person who finds the next legendary terrible restaurant.
There's something almost like urban exploration about that. You're discovering the overlooked, the unloved, the places that the guidebooks ignore.
Sometimes you find something good that's just been misunderstood by the rating system. I've heard multiple stories of people who visited one-star restaurants and discovered the food was actually excellent, but the owner had alienated reviewers by being difficult. Those are the best finds — a place that's secretly great but publicly panned.
It's like a treasure hunt where the map is written in complaints.
The internet has made this treasure hunt accessible to everyone. Twenty years ago, you'd have no way of knowing that a particular hotel in Amsterdam was famously terrible unless you read about it in a guidebook. Now you can find the worst-rated places in any city in the world in about thirty seconds.
Which raises the question — does this kind of tourism actually change these places? If a restaurant suddenly starts getting visitors because it's famously terrible, does that change the experience?
It definitely can. Some places, like the Hans Brinker, lean into it and make it part of their identity. Other places get overwhelmed and confused. Imagine running a small family restaurant for thirty years, and suddenly busloads of ironic tourists show up because your Tripadvisor rating is one point two stars. That would be disorienting.
There's an ethical dimension there. Are you exploiting someone's struggling business for entertainment?
I think it depends on how you do it. If you show up, spend money, treat the staff with respect, and leave a fair review, you're actually helping the business even if you found the experience amusing. The problem is when people treat these places like human zoos.
You're not there to gawk at the locals. You're there to have an unusual experience and pay for the privilege.
The money matters. A lot of these places are struggling. The Congress Hotel is losing money. The one-star restaurants in tourist areas are often family businesses that are barely hanging on. If you're going to make entertainment out of their situation, the least you can do is pay your bill and be kind.
All right, let's pull together a concrete list for Daniel and anyone else who wants to try this. If you're planning a terrible tourism trip, what are the canonical destinations?
Starting with hotels — the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam is the classic. It's self-aware, it's cheap, and it's in a great city. The Congress Hotel in Chicago is the American equivalent, though it's more grim. The Hotel Carter in New York is closed now, but it was legendary while it lasted.
For restaurants, the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas is the obvious one. It's a theme park version of terrible, but it counts. And there are countless one-star tourist trap restaurants in major cities — Times Square in New York, the areas around the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum, Las Ramblas in Barcelona. Anywhere tourists congregate, you'll find terribly reviewed restaurants.
For attractions, the Museum of Bad Art in Boston is the gold standard. The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen if you want to be underwhelmed. And honestly, any "world's largest" roadside attraction in the American Midwest — the World's Largest Ball of Twine in Kansas, the World's Largest Prairie Dog in Texas. These things are objectively terrible and absolutely worth visiting.
There's a World's Largest Prairie Dog?
In Oakley, Kansas. It's a giant concrete prairie dog. It's magnificent in its pointlessness.
I need to see this. And what about resources for finding more?
The subreddit r slash one star is the best starting point. Tripadvisor sorted by lowest rating. The Vice One Star Reviews series is worth watching for inspiration, even though it ended a few years ago. And there are several YouTube channels dedicated to this now — people who travel to the worst-reviewed places in each city and document the experience.
The genre has matured. It's not just a weird hobby anymore — it's a whole subculture with its own canon and its own ethics.
Its own philosophy, honestly. The core idea is that travel doesn't have to be optimized for enjoyment. You can optimize for interest, for stories, for novelty. A terrible experience is still an experience. Sometimes it's a better experience than a pleasant but forgettable one.
Daniel said something similar in his prompt — that as someone who sometimes resists the sightseeing agenda, this is almost a way of making travel interesting on his own terms. You're not following the guidebook. You're creating your own weird itinerary based on what's interesting to you.
That's a more honest way to travel, I think. The standard tourist itinerary is someone else's idea of what's worth seeing. The terrible tourism approach is you deciding what's worth your time, even if what's worth your time happens to be a restaurant with a one-star rating and a menu that's only in Italian.
There's a kind of freedom in abandoning the pursuit of the best. Once you stop trying to optimize every experience, you can actually enjoy whatever happens.
Now: Hilbert's daily fun fact.
The average cumulus cloud weighs approximately one point one million pounds, roughly the same as eighty elephants floating above your head.
If someone's listening and wants to try this themselves, where do they start? Pick a city you're visiting anyway, pull up Tripadvisor, sort by lowest rating, and find three places within walking distance of each other. Make an afternoon of it. Go with friends — this is better as a group activity. Be nice to the staff. And write your own review afterward, because the ecosystem runs on reviews.
Calibrate your expectations. You're not looking for the worst experience possible. You're looking for the most interesting experience possible. Sometimes those are the same thing, but not always. The goal isn't to suffer — it's to have a story worth telling.
The best terrible tourism trips end with you laughing about what happened, not regretting that you went. The sweet spot is a place that's bad enough to be funny but not bad enough to be traumatic.
If you find a place that's secretly good despite the terrible reviews, you've hit the jackpot. Those are the best discoveries — the restaurant that everyone's been avoiding because of one angry review from six years ago, and it turns out to be excellent. You feel like you've uncovered a secret.
It's the travel equivalent of finding a stock that the market has mispriced. You've identified an inefficiency in the reputation economy and profited from it — in this case, the profit is a good meal that nobody else knows about.
Which is satisfying. There's a thrill to going against the crowd and being right.
One thing we should probably mention — if you're traveling with a partner who's not into this, like Daniel's wife Hannah, maybe don't make the entire trip about terrible tourism. Mix it in. One weird terrible restaurant for lunch, then a nice normal dinner. You don't want to be the person who dragged their spouse to five one-star restaurants in a row.
That's relationship advice disguised as travel advice, and it's correct. Terrible tourism is a spice, not the main course. A little goes a long way.
To sum up — the canon includes the Hans Brinker, the Congress Hotel, the Heart Attack Grill, the Museum of Bad Art, and any number of one-star tourist trap restaurants in major cities. The resources include Reddit, Tripadvisor sorted low to high, and the Vice One Star Reviews archives. The philosophy is about authenticity, lowered expectations, and the pursuit of interesting experiences over pleasant ones. And the ethics are about being a good customer even when you're at a bad establishment.
That's a solid summary. The only thing I'd add is that this whole approach works because the rating economy has become so distorted. When everything is four point five stars, the one-star places become the only honest data points left.
There's something almost dystopian about that, but also kind of beautiful. In a world of fake five-star reviews, the one-star review is truth.
People respond to truth, even when it's uncomfortable. Even when it's about a hotel with bedbugs and a hostile front desk clerk. There's something refreshing about knowing exactly what you're getting into.
This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop for keeping us on track, and thanks to Daniel for another great prompt.
You can find all our episodes at myweirdprompts dot com. If you enjoyed this, leave us a review wherever you listen — it helps people find the show.
We'll be back next time with whatever Daniel throws at us.
