For one, outside of Sacramento, Ca it’s the most aesthetically unappealing place I’ve ever visited/lived
Zero charm (any place without a significant body of water or other geological feature is already starting with 2 strikes)
I moved there at the beginning of one of the hottest/driest years on record when there was also a swarm of locust - like a literal biblical plague- but peoples’ braggadocio about the place was in inverse proportion to how ick it was
But my resonant memory of the place (this is not even like a ‘worst’ memory, just emblematic) was my neighbor coming up to me with a tray of lemonade when I was working on the front garden/landscape- she gets to chatting and soon she gets to my house and the color I painted it (I referred to it as ‘Tuscan sunset’)
Eventually she said this was a free country but to remember that freedom of expression is what let the communists take over this country.
I thanked her for the lemonade and just marveled at how she could pull off a triple reverse irony with a layout while standing right in front of me