Well... Our own gentle reader Ozboy broke the story in yesterday's comments section... and lo and behold, the story appears right there this morning... on the front page of Emerald City's own home town newspaper:
• Forbes: Ogden area 2nd-most livable in U.S.Here's the link to the Forbes story which has set the Standard-Examiner and the Godfrey administration's hummingbird hearts all a-flutter:
• America's Most Livable CitiesAs city ratings puff pieces go, we swear it doesn't get much better than that.
Unfortunately that's the high point however. Here's the bad news from the Standard-Examiner, regarding the city that touts itself as the world's high-adventure fun-time mecca, straight from the pages of Portfolio.com:
• The Fun IndexNotably, New York City comes in at #1... and Provo* comes in dead-ass last (no surprises there)... and Ogden** scores... (drum-roll)... a disappointing #95, edging out fun-time meccas El Paso, TX and Bakersfield, CA by a nose:
(Click to Enlarge Image)We gotta admit we're heartbroken by this latter low rating. Sadly, the Portfolio.com editors neglected to check out our totally awesome SALOMON FUN CENTER, we suppose. What maroons!
We'll leave it up to our gentle readers to explain the meaning of all this, (if any.)
_________________
*Official Provo City Motto: ""We'll show them what fun is: You won't wake up with a hangover and you'll still have your money in your wallet."
** Official Ogden City Motto: "Well, at least we're still a heckuva lot more fun than Provo."
15 comments:
Bakersfield?
Bakersfield beat out Ogden?
Bwhaha hahah haha.
Bakersfield is, without a doubt, the stage 4 cancerous anus of California, with the central valley towns along the colon of State Route 99 being the pre-cancerous nodes. Fresno and Stockton come to mind.
Of course, Ogden is the atrophied liver of Utah; and we like it that way.
More about those high paying jobs that Mayor Godfrey is crowing about:
Hiring call brings applicants to McDonald's:
"Restaurant managers in Ogden, Woods Cross and Bountiful reported they had conducted 50 interviews by mid-afternoon."
Don't just love Ogden. This is the place that has the lowest crime and yet we are still highering another 10 police officers and I wish that we could hire a new police chief that doesn't break the law. How does this city do this. I just don't understand. This is the number 2 city to live but yet we need to blight the city and we have to use our tax money for more corporate welfare. I wish I could leave this all behind so I could move to Arizona and have my real Identity known to all.
I Know what you're doing, Rudi. You're saying bad things about Ogden so these out of town dopes won't come here and pollute the great place we've mainly kept to ourselves for Oh These Many Years.
You are a VERY bad boy, Rudy, and I salute you.
Hey Stephen, we did in fact beat Bakersfield's ass fare and square and it only took us plunging into a $100 million dollar black hole of debt for things like the Junktion to do it! Don't know about you, but for me it was well worth it cause there just simply ain't nothin like being number one, or the first in the world, or at least beating Bakersfield to make us all (except naysayers of course) just burst with pride! If folks don't believe me, well they're just a bunch of dumb asses, cause all ya gotta do is ask Mayor Tweed - er Godfrey and he will tell you the truth about it.
I live in Bakersfield, and believe me, we got gypped in this bogus "study."
Believe me it's 100X more fun in any day in Bakersfield than the best day in Ogden, Utah any day of the week.
Let me know if you'd like to have me travel up to Ogden to put on a concert.
I'll do it for free, except for this:
Give me five minutes in a back alley with your little socialist putz mayor.
After that, your political problems will be permanently be solved, and we'll all be a happy family, and we'll be drinkin' that green bubble-up and Eatin' that Rainbow Stew.
Does this mean that we can change the city motto to "More Fun Than Provo"? Did the crime stats take into account the quasi legal and ethical violations of the Godfrey Administration?Would we have
earned the number one city without all of the areas designated as blighted?
Question:
Do any of you know, personally, the people who wrote these articles?
Then why do you care what they think?
Why does it matter?
When somebody voices pure opinion, is it not a key issue who is doing so?
I can't even read articles like those. They are irrelevant. What matters, is what do those living here think? What do they value/like/dislike?
This is more important than what the opinions of a handful of people who work for some magazines think.
The newspaper touts things like this simply because they are too lazy to go out and do any real reporting.
Interesting that Ogden rated only #92 in gambling, considering Mayor Godfrey is probably the biggest multi-million dollar gambler in small town history.
Ogden, SLC rated best place in U.S.
City leaders say ranking could help redevelopment effort
By Charles F. Trentelman, Standard-Examiner staff [November 5, 1999]
OGDEN - Ogden’s mayor-elect Matthew Godfrey jokingly took credit for it, but then said this morning that Salt Lake-Ogden being picked the best place to live in the country really is a no-brainer.
“You’ll notice this happened two days after I was elected, so clearly this is the result of the new administration,” he said.
He did take issue with people who say Salt Lake City is really responsible for the selection.
Salt Lake City, he said, “is full of smog and congestion, and we’re clean here.”
He was joined by other development directors and business promoters in Weber and Davis County cheering the selection of the Salt Lake-Ogden metro area as the best place to live in North America by “Places Rated Almanac.”
[...]
Godfrey said the study isn’t telling him anything new.
“It is a great place to live, if you’ve been outside the area at all,” he said. “But we who live here see so much more that can be done.”
Chamber Ogden/Weber director Dick Dahlkemper said the ranking will be a major plus in efforts to market Ogden, which is struggling to improve the business climate in its downtown area.
[...]
He said the ranking will be a useful tool to attract ski groups, businesses and people thinking of finding work here.
“Obviously, the convention and visitors bureau will use it when they’re talking to conventions and ski groups,” he said.
[...]
Nice pick up Dan. It just goes to prove all the hype is nothing more than fluff and filler. Give me my flax seed now please.
Obviously people have different tastes when it comes to ranking cities. I love Ogden's geographic setting, climate, and low cost of living. I also like Ogden's size, compared to the small towns and huge metropolitan areas that I lived in before moving here. I like Ogden's cultural diversity compared to Provo. There's far more good entertainment in Ogden than I have time to take advantage of. I do wish Ogden had a slightly better variety of restaurants, but hey, you can't have everything.
The only thing that would make Ogden really better is a new Mayor, and a different form of government.
A short bike ride or walk is nothing to grab a bite to eat..
Uh oh. Forbes is mainstream business right, not a little local mag that does puff pieces to shill for its advertisers. This is very good ink for Ogden, and so [however much it might annoy some here] very good ink for the administrtion that's been at the helm in Ogden for just about a decade now. Hooting that we ranked low on a party-time index at a much less mainstream site is not much of a counter.
Dan S. pretty much summed up my take on Ogden too. Nice place to live, if you like the out of doors. Can't beat the views. Mountains a stone's throw away, right in the city, actually, provided we don't mess it up by paving over everything up to the forest service property line. Nice and improving mid-city walking and biking trails [River Parkway, etc.] Decent public transit. Good stuff.
Ogden has nice accessible small city amenities, with the advantages of a larger city a comfortable less-than-an-hour away by train. Can't beat that with a stick.
We don't have the clean air anymore the Mayor noted way back when, and there is some concern that we're digging an economic hole for the city that may make it less liveable for ordinary folk in the future [liveability being in no small way tied to having the financial wherewithall, and so the time, to enjoy the city and its amenities].
But, as Dan notes, the major attraction of the Ogden area is its geography, and that is attributable to no particular administration [though a clumsy one can go far to mess up what geography has given us].
Still, heartburning by those not enamoured of Hizzonah's term aside, the Forbes article is very good news for the Mayor. If his PR advisors have even a pulse [a matter of some doubt, given his tin-ear statements in the past], they'll be on this like white on rice and we'll hear a lot about it in the months to come. A lot.
I was amused to note that Forbes thinks Ogden is pretty much the bees knees for liveability... and there's nary a flatland gondola in sight anymore, not even on the far horizon, much less one in place.
Imagine that....
Fun in Provo leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy - well at least fuzzy - or is that furry? Anyway it is too difficult to explain without a picture so click the link below.
What happens in Provo Stays in Provo
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