seamy

Coming of age in this seamy milieu has given him a cynical worldview and a preternatural calm.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 14, 2026

Working with cinematographer Robby Müller, Friedkin puts a Los Angeles on screen that is equal parts glamorous and seamy, where even the palm tree in the movie’s logo looks like a gunshot wound.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2023

There’s no seamy underside to these works, which are both elegant and modern, as if there is no contradiction between the two ideas.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 5, 2023

The seamy district of Moldovanka, filled with low-slung buildings and small factories, was to the Jewish community of Odesa what the Lower East Side once was to New York’s Jews.

From New York Times ● Aug. 19, 2022

And though it would certainly add color to my story to present a descent into a seamy underworld, I can’t fail to mention that the North Beach Strip is only a few blocks long.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

A former private detective, Hammett grounded his narrative in a corrupt Montana mining town, replacing the cozy murders of traditional whodunits with a seamier view of vice.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026

At 69, German had spent 40 years covering the seamier sides of Sin City.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 6, 2022

One night, it became the obsession of one of the guest lecturers, the Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, to bring Adichie to one of Lagos’s seamier nightspots.

From New York Times ● Oct. 16, 2017

Truth Is Stranger Than Florida This new true-crime series explores the seamier side of the Sunshine State.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 24, 2016

My trips were limited, directed, and avoided the seamier side.

From The Huddlers by William Campbell Gault

Those places can harbor the ugliest feelings and seamiest beliefs, yet go undetected if a person speaks and acts otherwise.

From Washington Times ● May 18, 2016

But he imbues even his most marginalized characters with strength, dignity and even wisdom as they boldly navigate the Dream Factory’s seamiest underbelly on their own self-possessed terms.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 15, 2015

By The seamiest affair in Washington this summer, one of the seamiest in many summers, is the aborted appointment of Brett McGurk as ambassador to Iraq—but not for the reason many think.

From Slate ● Jun. 20, 2012

But Season 3 of “The Wire” proved that it was also possible to find suspense and meaning in the seamiest margins of city council meetings and municipal elections.

From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2011

After all, the actress sees the seamiest side of town; you won't mind leaving it?

From Secret Bread by F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson) Jesse