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Nothing infuriates like a silly, useless ranking of angry cities

By SUE CARLTON
Published August 14, 2006

The other day I walked out to my car to find a piece of paper that looked like it had been angrily torn from a notebook and shoved under my windshield wiper.

Scrawled on it in big block letters were the words "NICE TRY!"

The note did not include the word "jerkface," nor cartoon drawings of a skull and crossbones, a bottle of rat poison, and me with X's for eyes. Though all that did seem to be implied.

I had parked more or less within the lines and couldn't recall having sideswiped any pedestrians, so I found this mystifying. Apparently something innocuous I had done on my way to the parking space had made somebody mad.

Which really should have been no surprise. I was in Tampa, after all - the 12th angriest city in America.

Even scarier, I was about to drive across the bridge and into the second angriest city in the whole country. That's right. St. Petersburg.

Exactly what about St. Petersburg would make people angry? The weird shape of that building at the end of the Pier, maybe?

The ranking, under the headline How Angry Is Your City?, comes from a list of PO'd populaces in the September issue of Men's Health magazine. You know, the one with the ROCK SOLID BODY! cover story and the FREE WORKOUT POSTER!

Anyway, they judged 100 cities on high blood pressure, traffic congestion, aggravated assaults, workplace violence and speeding tickets. Come to think of it, the only speeding ticket I ever got was in St. Petersburg. Going 5 mph over the limit. Yes, I am still angry.

Guess which city is No. 1.

No, not the obvious choice, New York, where I once rode in a cab that deliberately rammed into the back of another cab as a protest against some earlier impolite driving. (Maybe finding an anonymous note on the windshield's not so bad after all.)

New York actually scored a C+, the 57th angriest city.

No, the distinction of Most Mad goes to our mousey cousin to the east, Orlando. Grade: F.

Orlando? Land of balloons shaped like mouse ears?

In fact, the magazine snarkily refers to Orlando as "home of the Magic Kingdom and mandated happiness."

Also, and you have to admit this is a good one, "Goofyville." Which, if you happen to live there, really would start to get on your nerves.

I tried to reach Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to talk about what might be making everybody so mad over there, or at least give him a chance to protest. (To yell and throw things, even!) But his staff said he was out of the office and unavailable.

So what is bugging Orlando? Well, they have had some bad news lately.

They just shattered their own murder record, with 37 dead by August. That can't be making anybody happy.

The cost of a Disney ticket just went up to 67 bucks, the second increase this year.

The city recently banned charitable groups from feeding the homeless in parks downtown, ostensibly because of safety and sanitary issues.

No, wait - that one got them on the list of meanest cities, not maddest cities. Boy, they're going to need a new trophy case over there pretty soon.

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker couldn't be reached, either. An aide said he was in Jacksonville, which is the ninth maddest place to be, though way less tempestuous than things back home, list-wise.

When I talked to Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, she said the magazine is wrong about her city's No. 12 billing.

"I say this with complete equilibrium. No anger at all," she said.

Ranked least angry was Manchester, N.H. (yawn). Also Bangor, Maine, where scary book author Stephen King has a home. I'm guessing people there aren't mad, just a little creeped out.

The Men's Health survey concludes with this poke in the nose: "Does your city's rank rankle you? We kind of figured it would."

Rankled?

Smug, overpriced, glossified rag. Can't get us riled.

But hey. NICE TRY.

Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 14, 2006, 01:20:50]