A city in Staffordshire,
England. Stoke is famous across the world for it's pottery industry. Many
fine brands such as Wedgewood and Spode originate from Stoke.
However, the pottery industry is currently dying a sorry and painful
death, due to
Mexican sweatshops being a far cheaper source of plates and cups than
England, with all it's health and safety laws and 'minimum wage' bollocks.
This has resulted in Stoke, formerly a haven for academic under-achievers due to the thousands of manual jobs in
pot-banks, becoming a ghost town populated by recently redundant, now-unemployable, skilless (unless you see 'Fettling and Sponging' as a skill) troglodytes wandering about having fights with each other and/or students from the two local universities.
'Stoke-on-Trent' is also Mockney rhyming slang for 'Bent'. If you ever visit the place, you will see what a splendid aptronym-cum-epithet this is.