i believe this will be post #3 naming Cincinnati's Montgomery Inn as worst barbecue. Here is why, in my assessment:
cincinnatians, born and raised here, get used to M/I ribs, thereby thinking these are how ribs are supposed to be. what are their ribs like? boiled, then microwaved, if you can imagine; completely covered in a ketchup-like sauce; pick up the wet mess, and the meat slides, not falls, but literally slides off the bone back into the sauce soup. so, cincinnatians get conditioned to thinking this is how ribs should be. then they go to traditional places that smoke their ribs, some don't even put wet sauce on them when bringing the ribs to the patron (gasp!!) and cincinnatians say how horrible they taste, how dry they were, etc. you don't smell any type of smoked wood when you walk into m/i, you smell cologne and perfume. so when i ask someone around here about bbq, their answer is often dependent on the answer to their second question: what to you think about M/I ribs?
M/I is all glitz; it sits on the Ohio River, offers a great view, and is very upscale. they brag that bob hope and other celebs are always visiting, ordering to have the ribs shipped to them, etc. they really know how to "work a crowd". i live in cincnnati, but wasn't born here.
i'll put a second-to-the-last place entry to myself, when i was smoking a pork shoulder using the alton brown/good eats terra cotta smoker, and accidentally put one of the pieces of wood directly on the burner, causing it to melt the plastic housing of the burner. i had headaches for a couple days from that, just from the smoke, didn't even try the meat, what a waste...