LA, for instance, has the strangest "feel" of any major city I've been in. Did even in the early 2000s when it wasn't quite so run down and a bigger percentage of the population wasn't homeless.
I lived there for two years for work. I took a class at a local university to learn something I needed and there was a military recruiter at a table in the front building entry way every day. I told him my cousin is in the PLA and they probably wouldnt want me. He stopped try to talk to me going forward.