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[djdawg2010]

@the-gipper said:

Let's us know when you are done masturbating to your fantasies.

And quite the opposite is true. I always hear people from outside Cleveland say "Man, I love Cleveland"...you want a reference: see our man Howie Dawg. He lives in the UK. Discuss the matter with him.

And I never hear anyone outside Pittsburgh talk about it.

Perhaps you hear them because you live there and people tell you how they like Pittsburgh.

The same way I hear them say how they like Cleveland because I live here.

Why would someone tell a person from Cleveland how much they like Pittsburgh, and why would someone tell a person from Pittsburgh how much they like Cleveland. Hello! Wake up and use a little logic. Like I said, both cities are essentially the same and no seminal intoxication on your part is going to revise that fact.

I too always hear people say good things about Cleveland. I remember walking around NYC wearing my Browns jacket, getting props for it. In fact the only place I ever caught any crap for wearing anything Browns or saying I was from Cleveland was....... you guessed it...... in Pittsburgh!

Bottom line here, is that while neither city might not be the best place in the country. But we love our hometowns, and nothing anyone is going to say is going to change that. A Pittsburgh fan coming on here saying they hate Cleveland is not going to change my mind, or convince me otherwise about how I feel about my hometown, and vice versus. In fact, much respect to those native Pittsburghers for giving props to their home, as I do the same for mine. And furthermore, the more someone rips my city and state, the more I love where I live! Screw the haters! I am smart enough to draw my own conclusions about a place without having a magazine like Forbes to tell me "how miserable" we all are here.

[The Gipper]

I am going to repost here data that I put together a couple of months back. Several posts will be involved:

OK, so I have been giving some thought to this so called Forbes Magazine listing of Cleveland as the most "Miserable city" in the USA. I have to believe that they came up with a predetermined answer on this because what they say makes absolutelty no sense. They don't follow their own criteria.

Forbes Criteria for determining their most miserable city, they claim was based on the following factors:

1. Location of Superfund sites in an area...this relates to essentially ground/water pollution only. (Superfund has nothing to do with smog/air pollution)

2. Unemployment rates

3. Local tax rates

4. Commute times

5. Crime Rate

6. Weather

7 Sports team performance

Lets look at these in turn (I may make several posts of this so as not to lose continuity in its separate parts):

1 Superfund. I will give you here a map of the Superfund sites in the US:

Reduced: 79% of original size [ 643 x 399 ] - Click to view full image

Look at Cleveland. Not a single red dot. Red Dots are cites that need cleaned up. Green dots are sites that have been cleaned up satisfactorily. There are a few red dots in the Akron/Youngstown area. But compare this area to much of the East Coast which is covered in red dots, or to the likes of Charlotte, St. Louis, LA, San Fran, Seattle, Houston. this area is a garden of eden compared to many of those. And while I could not find a Superfund listing by city, I did find a ranking by state, and the top 10 states are:

New Jersey

California

Pennsylvania

New York

Michigan

Florida

Washington

Illinois

Texas

Wisconsin

the there was Ohio at 11.

Oddly, the state with the least Superfund sites was Nevada with only 1 site. You want to bet they excluded nuclear waste dumping sites for their "pollution index"?

So, obviously, apparently, it is not the location of Superfund pollution sites in Cleveland that spur its #1 most miserable ranking. It must be something else.

I will continue in another post.

[The Gipper]

OK, the next Criteria of Forbes Most Miserable City list I will tackle is that of Local Tax Rates. Now get this: The following is FORBES MAGAZINES list of Highest local tax rates for major US cities (not in order):

Chicago

Los Angeles

New York

San Francisco

Seattle

New Orleans

Houston

Dallas

Charlotte

Las Vegas

Philadelphia

Atlanta

Cleveland is not on this list at all.

ABC News put out a report of the highest tax rates in various cities, including smaller ones. Here were their top 5:

Bridgeport, Conn.

Des Moines, Iowa

Providence, RI

Newark NJ

Manchester NH

Also, of all the state, Ohio has only the 21st highest effective Sales tax rate.

Ohio also ranks only 38th highest in State income tax rates.

So, apparently it is not Cleveland Tax rate which spurs its No. 1 most miserable city ranking. It must be something else.

[The Gipper]

Onward to the next criteria for Forbes Ranking: The Crime Rate

Per the FBI's list of cities with the most violent crimes per capita, the following top the list:

1. New York

2. Los Angeles

3. Chicago

4. Houston

5. Phoenix

6. Philadelphia

7. Las Vegas

8. San Antonio

9. Dallas

10. San Diego

11. San Jose

12. Honolulu

Where does Cleveland sit? 33rd

So, apparently it is not Cleveland's Crime rate that rate's it as America's #1 most miserable city. It must be something else

[The Gipper]

Moving on to the next criteria on Forbes list: Commute time.

Here is the list compiled by...who?....FORBES Magazine on the cities in America with the worst traffic and commute time:

1. Los Angeles

2. San Fran/Oaklan

3. Washington D.C.

4. Atlanta

5. Houston

6. Dallas/Ft. Worth

7. Chicago

8. Detroit

9. Riverside/San Bernadino

10. Orlando

11. San Jose

12. San Diego

Cleveland is not even in the Top 30 of their list.

So, apparently it is not "Commute Time" that puts Cleveland on the top of the "Most Miserable city list. It must be something else.

[The Gipper]

Alright, next up to bat is the following criteria established by Forbes for its list: Unemployment:

According to the March Department of Labor statistics, ALL of the following cities have higher Unemployment rates than does Cleveland, Ohio:

El Centro CA

Yuma Ariz.

Stockton CA

Palm Coast FLA

Ocean City NJ

Flint, Mich.

Bend, Oregon

Santa Cruz CA

Elkhart, Ind.

Riverside CA

Vero Beach FLA

New Bedford Mass.

Las Vegas

Atlantic City

Reno

Providence

Sacramento

Tampa

San Jose

Orlando

Jacksonville

Charlotte

Los Angeles

Miami

Portland Ore.

San Francisco

San Diego

St. Louis

Louisville

Memphis

Cincinnati

Cleveland, Tennessee!!

Milwaukee

Columubus

In fact, Cleveland only ranked 179th in the nation in unemployment rate.

So apparently it is not "Unemployment" rate that gave Cleveland its #1 rank as most miserable city. It must be something else.

[The Gipper]

OK, so let's move along in this analysis. The next criteria on Forbes list is: Weather.

Here are several sources on weather: First, The Farmer's Almanac ( a pretty reliable source, fair to say?) Here are their top worst weather cities in America:

Quillayatte. Washington

Astoria, Oregon

Marquette, Michigan

Syracuse, NY

Elkins WVa

New Orleans

Eugene, Ore.

Hilo, Hawaii. (doing a double take? Yea, Hawaii)

The Farmer's Almanac takes in all criteria: obviously including snow, Cloudy days, and humidity. the Oregon locations suffer from the cloudy, humid issue...as does Hilo. Syracuse and Marquette obviously get the snow and cold.

Another poster noted the cities in America that are cold. I will simply reference that post to show how we here are not nearly as cold as many, many other places around. And I have always said, I would rather spend a winter around here than a summer in Florida. And you can add several other locatins to that phrase.

Citydata.com gave this list of the cities with the worst, hottest/muggiest summer weather:

Brownsville, Texas

Columbia, SC

Ft. Meyers Fla.

Houston

Jackson, Miss.

Laredo Texas

Miami

New Orleans

Oklahoma City

Palm Springs

Phoenix

Yuma

Why on earthe would Forbes not do a list of worst overall weather?

Forbes did do a "Worst Winter Weather" list. Notice they only did "winter". Here was their list:

10. Baltimore

9. Detroit

8. Columbus

7. Indianapolis

6. Minneapolis

5. Chicago

4. Minneapolis

3. New York

2. Boston

1. Cleveland

OK, so they have Cleveland on this list because we get a lot of snow in winter. (I notice that Buffalo, which gets more snow is not on here...but I am not here to pile on Buffalo)

But, note this, the following cities all get more snow in the winter on average than Cleveland: Denver, Anchorage, Portland,Maine; Salt Lake City. So, what? If you get a lot of snow but you have some nice ski resorts nearby they think that somehow the Winter weather doesn't suck just as bad there? Pretty arbitrary in my view.

I am not saying that Cleveland doesn't have bad winters that we would like to do without, but, note, for those areas affected by lake effect snow, Cleveland has about the least amount of snow. Rochester, Buffalo, Sault St. Marie, all up and down the western coast of Michigan there is tremendous snow. And I guess Forbes must exclude Alaska from the "bad weather" thought process...but note: Valdez, Alaska gets an average of 326 inches of snow a year, compared to Cleveland's 57 inches.

So far though, based on their own incestuous ranking, this is the ONLY criteria so far that Forbes can claim that Cleveland has it a bit more miserable than other places.

But still, there must be more to it than that.

[The Gipper]

OK, I see that Forbes final, newly added criteria is "Sports team success".

Now, we know that Cleveland has had poor luck with the success of its sports teams, but what constitutes "success"?

I mean, let's ask this: Is it better to have a team and have it disappoint? Or to not have a team at all?

Let's look at a couple of factors:

1. Yes Cleveland has not had a major team title since 1964...Browns NFL. So, let's compare "misery" along that lines with another city:

Let's take: San Diego!! And compare on all fronts with Cleveland: San Diego has not had a major team title since 1963, when the Chargers last won an AFL title. And San Diego LOST the Clippers to LA. Cleveland kept our team when it tried to move. The San Diego area is quite a bit larger now than the Cleveland, almost twice the size, yet it has only 2 major sports franchises compared to Cleveland's 3.

And how about the others: A. On the Superfund map, San Diego seems to have a couple of major sites. Cleveland has none. B. San Diego has the 10th worst crime rate in the US, Cleveland 33rd. C. San Diego has the 12th worst commute time, Cleveland is not even in the top 30. D. San Diego has a higher unemployment rate than Cleveland. E.On the report that noted that Ohio's tax rate ranked 38th, it also noted that California's effective tax rate was like third highest in the country.

On every criteria...San Diego is worse than Cleveland: pollution, crime, congestion, unemployment, sports team failure, tax rate....every criteria but one: Winter weather.

Does San Diego's nice weather trump ALL the advantages that Cleveland has over it? (Well, maybe...but really?)

On the sports team failure criteria also consider: Is Cleveland's failure to win a title as bad as losing two NFL teams like LA has? I have talked about San Diego which is double the size of Cleveland having only 2 team, and I mentioned LA having no NFL teams, but also consider these:

1. The Seattle area, which is larger than the Cleveland area by far also has only 2 teams, having lost their NBA team (and that city has had no title since 1979).

2. St. Louis..larger than Cleveland... lost their NBA and NFL teams before getting one back.

3. Baltimore...larger than Cleveland has only 2 teams and now has to glom off DC for hockey and NBA.

4. Portland, Oregon, a metro area only about 200,000 people less than Cleve. is a one horse town with only an NBA team

5. The same is true for Sacramento, only about 400K less people than Cleveland.

6. The same is true for San Antonio. If you include the Austin area it is bigger than the Cleveland area...has only 1 horse, the Spurs.

7. Las Vegas, a no horse town is now only about 400K less in population than Cleveland.

8. The same is true for the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area. No teams at all.

Is it better to have a team and lose or to have no team at all?

Then Forbes will having nothing to fall back on except that we are a town that gets some snow in winter, but less than Denver or Salt Lake.

So much for this analysis.

[The Gipper]

I figure that some editor in some building in New York made the decision that because Cleveland was kinda cold and snowy that it should lead the list.

The only other thing the article says about Cleveland is that it is losing population. Yet, overcongestion was one of the factors they cite to make a city miserable. I would think that losing people would lead to less congestion...and thus more happiness.

And I agree. I once spent 4 hours in traffic in rush hour around Washington D.C. Give me a little lake effect snow all winter long as long as I didn't have to deal with that every day

[Vagitron]

@the-gipper said:

Let's us know when you are done masturbating to your fantasies.

And quite the opposite is true. I always hear people from outside Cleveland say "Man, I love Cleveland"...you want a reference: see our man Howie Dawg. He lives in the UK. Discuss the matter with him.

And I never hear anyone outside Pittsburgh talk about it.

Perhaps you hear them because you live there and people tell you how they like Pittsburgh.

The same way I hear them say how they like Cleveland because I live here.

Why would someone tell a person from Cleveland how much they like Pittsburgh, and why would someone tell a person from Pittsburgh how much they like Cleveland. Hello! Wake up and use a little logic. Like I said, both cities are essentially the same and no seminal intoxication on your part is going to revise that fact.

Well you forget that I went to College in Ohio so for the better part of 4 years, almost five because of some class changes I made quite a few friends from the Ohio area. Soooooo yes while I was initially grilled for wearing a steeler hat, shirt, jersey the conversation almost always ended with how much they actually enjoy Pittsburgh but hate admitting it. Either way I think it's hilarious that you spent the time that you did putting together the rest of the stuff above. I haven't read it yet. I just thought you didn't care. lol

[The Gipper]

Note on the "Winter Weather" issue. Of all the cities in the continental US over 50,000, Cleveland is NOT even in the top 101 in terms of average cold temperature. See this data:

http://www.city-data.com/top2/c456.html

[The Gipper]

Homotron said:

Well you forget that I went to College in Ohio so for the better part of 4 years, almost five because of some class changes I made quite a few friends from the Ohio area. Soooooo yes while I was initially grilled for wearing a steeler hat, shirt, jersey the conversation almost always ended with how much they actually enjoy Pittsburgh but hate admitting it. Either way I think it's hilarious that you spent the time that you did putting together the rest of the stuff above. I haven't read it yet. I just thought you didn't care. lol

If you would have read, I stated that I put this data together a few months ago. I just reproduced it here to show the erroneousness of that finding conclusions based on their own stated criteria.

As for liking Pittsburgh, I really have no problem with Pittsburgh itself. Like I said, I find it basically the same as Cleveland.

I told you that I took a trip a couple weeks back, not to Peetown itself, but to Franklin, Oil city, Titusville, Meadville etc. and enjoyed what I saw there. Nope, it is not the city or the area that I have any problem with, it is only the occasional indigeonous ignoramus that pops his head up that I can't abide.

And, take comfort in the fact that The Dude Abides.

[The Hawg]

@diehardbrownsfan said:

Homo is starved for attention. No one cares about the hillbilly shithole called Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is a city of inbred zombies, built over toxic coal mine shafts and toxic waste from the abandoned Steel mills.

Hey! Hey! HEY! Don't insult us hillbillies by linking us to THE PITTS-burgh.