DISCLAIMER: Most of what I have to say pertains to the Phoenix area, where I lived for 6 years. And I will give credit where credit is due.
1) Education (or lack thereof): AZ is constantly at the bottom when it comes to public spending on education. For example, in 2006 they were ranked 50th out of 51. What was #51, you ask? Louisiana. Post-Katrina Louisiana, that is. In other words, a state has to be devastated by a hurricane in order for their public education to be worse than Arizona's.
And it shows. Most of the intelligent or semi-intelligent people I met there were either educated out-of-state, or they went to private schools. Basic knowledge I've taken for granted since elementary school is apparently not taught to people in Arizona's public education system. And nobody there seems to get sarcasm or irony.
2) Weather: "It's a dry heat", people say. Yeah, so is Hell. 120+ degrees is just too damn hot no matter how humid it is. I will say, the winters are very nice. But summer there lasts about 6 months out of the year and the place is just a goddamned furnace. I have fainted due to heatstroke there, and plenty of people die every summer in AZ due to heatstroke.
I like my summers to be full of outdoorsy activities and so forth, not staying inside all day, every day with the AC on full blast. I don't like sweating the instant I leave my house, I don't like having to take 2 or 3 showers in a day unless I'm working out, and I don't like having to drink a gallon of water in a day just to stay properly hydrated.
3) Racism: Sweet Holy Jesus, Arizona is one of the most racist places I've ever been to. And I've been to over 35 US States and more than a dozen countries. I've never heard so many people (some of whom are themselves minorities) openly use racist language on a daily basis, towards Mexicans, African Americans, Native Americans, you name it.
People wonder how Sheriff Joe Arpaio stays in office year after year. The simple answer is: He keeps winning re-election in landslides. Most voters in Maricopa County know all there is to know about him, like his criminal abuse of prisoners, his attempts to round up anyone with dark skin, and his ties to Neo-Nazi and white supremacist hate groups. That's why he keeps getting re-elected. Which brings me to my next point...
4) Police: My cousin is a good and honorable police chief and it bothers me when people disparage the police as a whole. In Phoenix, however, the reputation seems to be mostly well-earned with few exceptions. I have personally been harassed by the cops on a few occasions, either for absolutely nothing or because of an incredibly minor offense (like jaywalking). I knew a lot of people there (most of whom where minorities) who had many horror stories about police harassment.
There are all sorts of news articles about the cops harassing minorities, beating them up, shooting them, planting drugs and/or guns on them, etc. over there. And 9 times out of 10, these atrocities are covered up and the victims have to file a civil suit to get anything done.
5) Water: The tap water is simply godawful, has all sorts of minerals in it, and leaves a white film on everything. I could still feel it on my skin after a shower, and around 2005 I remember there being a contamination scare where they were telling people to boil their water before they used it.
Of course, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that Arizona is one of many states draining the Colorado River basin, and even more so by the fact that people there think nothing of wasting gallons upon gallons of water so they can have a green lawn or a golf course on every corner.
6) Politics: They might as well put a sign up on the border saying "liberals not welcome". Because that's definitely what it felt like the entire time I lived there. I remember having one - and only one - bumper sticker on my car that said "Attack Iraq? No!" and this resulted in my car getting keyed, tires punctured, nasty notes left on my windshield, people honking just so they can flip me off, etc.
To top it off, I lived in Tempe, a college town and one of the more liberal places in the entire state. Yet we Democrats were always fighting losing battles there, it seemed. The mayor, Hugh Hallman, called ASU students "bums" before the election, and he still won, because most ASU students were too busy getting drunk and going to parties to bother voting or getting out the vote. Canvassing and phone-banking were often met with hostility and there were typically few volunteers.
I will give credit where credit is due, though: in 2006 and 2008 it was a bit different. More volunteers, less hostility, my car wasn't vandalized, etc. And Harry Mitchell (D-5th District) won office in 2006, beating J.D. Hayworth (who was basically Rush Limbaugh Jr.), only to be voted out in 2010.
7) Driving: Again, I'll give credit - the roads in the Phoenix area are in tip-top shape. Some of them even have rubberized cement so that it's a quieter drive. Which just makes it that much more puzzling that the drivers seem to be the biggest bunch of dipshits in the universe. Phoenix and its suburbs (Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Avondale, etc) constantly rank near the top of the list when it comes to running red lights, carjackings, speeding, and all sorts of other traffic-related mishaps because people there simply can't drive worth a damn.
Arizona also has one of the most lax requirements for getting a driver's license of any state as far as driving tests go, and once you get a license, it doesn't expire until you turn age 65. Never mind if you got a license while still in high school and you look nothing like you did back then - you can literally hang on to the same license for almost 50 years without having to get it renewed.
They also had traffic cameras there for a while, which do not improve traffic safety in the slightest, but they did generate revenue for the state. I was quite happy when I heard they got rid of those.
8) Economy: Phoenix's economy is based almost entirely on real estate and construction. Real estate moguls have significant influence in both parties, and the main goal seems to be to bulldoze as much desert scenery as possible to build more McMansions. Of course, since the housing market collapsed, the local economy has likewise taken a dive and unemployment there has gone up pretty significantly.
9) Culture (or lack thereof): For a city that's the 6th largest in the country, it's an incredibly boring place to live. For starters, there's not much actually in Phoenix - and if you walk around downtown when there isn't an event going on, you'll notice that there are hardly any people milling about. They have an art festival on the first Friday of every month, but if you go there once, you've seen all there is to see.
What there is to do in Phoenix is mostly found in the suburbs, like Scottsdale and Tempe. They did construct the Musical Instrument Museum since I moved away, which is pretty neat - but I've seen much smaller cities with far more of a cultural scene than what Phoenix has.
10) Everything looks exactly the same: Pretty self-explanatory. All the houses look the same, all the neighborhoods look the same, all the strip malls have all the same nationwide chains of stores in them, etc. It's like in cartoons where they are driving in a car past what looks like the same row of houses over and over. There was a Blockbuster, an Applebee's or Chili's, a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Jack In The Box, a Safeway and a Fry's on what seemed like every corner - and it's very easy to get turned around in a residential neighborhood because everything looks exactly the same. All in all, an exercise in uniform blandness.
Now, to be fair, these are just my experiences, and mainly of the Phoenix area. I really enjoyed spending time in Sedona, Flagstaff, Prescott and Tucson (that's really all AZ has for cities, the rest of the state is pretty much flyover country), but then again, I never lived in those cities - I only visited. If I was ever to live in AZ again, I'd probably want to live in Sedona or Flagstaff - but I will never live in Phoenix, or any suburb of Phoenix, again for as long as I live.
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