Friday, October 27, 2017

How Cool Forbes Ranks Fort Worth With Molly The Trolley

I saw this Seattle ranked nation’s No. 2 coolest city — just behind this West Coast rival article this morning in the Seattle Times, which I found amusingly interesting.

Now, if the Texas town I lived in previous to the Texas town I currently live in had been ranked #2 in anything a city wide celebration would be declared by the town's mayor, which is what happened earlier in this century when some obscure Washington, D.C. lobbying group listed Fort Worth as being a Top Ten Most Livable City, with the criteria being something to do with having neighborhoods develop as urban villages, or some such thing.

Tacoma also got this imaginary prestigious "award". Soon there after I had reason to visit Tacoma's then deputy mayor. I told him Fort Worth had a city wide celebration after receiving this prestigious award. The deputy mayor laughed and said you're kidding, aren't you?

Nope, I'm not making this up. Are you saying Tacoma did not have a city wide celebration?

No. said the deputy mayor, we just politely thanked them and then forgot about it.

Now, should Fort Worth be ranked #2 in anything the town's propaganda purveyor known as the Star-Telegram would headline an article full of embarrassing puffery touting their imaginary iconic town, such as what happened a couple weeks ago, which we mentioned in a blogging titled Imaginary Iconic Fort Worth Downtown Opens New Little Hotel With Molly The Trolley.

Now, when you think about it, shouldn't a town  be considered one of the coolest towns in America when its downtown public transit consists of a bus made to look like a trolley, then called Molly the Trolley?

The first few paragraphs of the Seattle Times cool town article are instructive as to how a big city newspaper, wearing its big city pants, covers such a thing, as opposed to Fort Worth's embarrassing excuse for a newspaper of record...

What a bummer, Seattle; we’re No. 2.

San Francisco is officially cooler than Seattle, according to Forbes and Sperling’s Best Places, which found that the former was “crushing” the competition when it came to restaurants, world-class museums, sports teams, good hiking and reliable mass transit.

Seattle, however, trumped all other contenders when it came to, yes, coffee and beer.

“Seattle won on this front with 83 coffee shops, coffee roasters & craft beer breweries per 100,000 residents,” according to the 2017 edition of America’s Coolest Cities, published on Thursday.

The article also had a graphic showing the location of the top 10 coolest cities in America.

Shocking. No Texas town is in the Top 10 coolest. Not even Austin.


Austin does show up on the full list of Top 20 coolest towns, coming in at #13 coolest.

According to Forbes, the west coast dominates in coolness, which is not too surprising to me, having been in all those towns and finding them all quite cool.

Dallas has always seemed sort of west coast cool to me. Making me surprised Dallas is not on this list of cool American towns.

The entire list of 20 Coolest American towns...

1. San Francisco
2. Seattle
3. San Diego
4. New Orleans
5. Portland
6. San Jose
7. Los Angeles
8. New York
9. Boston
10. Denver
11. Charleston, S.C.
12. Honolulu
13. Austin
14. Miami
15. Madison
16. Houston
17. D.C.
18. Las Vegas
19. Orlando
20. Tampa, Fla.

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