Enough with these bogus magazine “Best Of” magazine scams…
What’s the best city to live in, the best go to college in, to raise a family, maintain your girlish figure, to visit, to retire, to start a biz – the options are endless. And each and every year some magazine nobody ever heard of shows up with the “best,” “fattest,” “richest,” you-name-it category and chokes out a list of dozens of”competing” cities for everyone to get bent out of shape about.
Not.
I mean seriously, how long does it take for readers to clue into the fact that these are publicity scams intended to get whichever magazine a bunch of free PR from area newspapers, television and radio stations. More publicity means more magazine sales and more magazine sales means more advertising dollars. It’s pretty simple, really.
Trick is for the zines to try come up with the most interesting methodology to spin whoever they say is the best, worst, fattest or fittest. Then the local media chimes in about how accurate or how bogus it all is and…voila…mission accomplished. We media types fall for it every time – some worse than others.
Take the Lawrence Journal World‘s front page story headlined, “Best College Town? Manhattan Tops Lawrence, Study Says.”
Talk about pimping locals about something that simply isn’t true.
Let’s get real for a minute.
Forget K-State football and KU basketball, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that Manhattan, Kansas sucks in comparison to Lawrence.
Of course you could posit that since I live in Lawrence, I’m biased.
And you’d be correct kinda, but for the wrong reason.
Because after two years living in what I like to call LA, I’m one of the town’s biggest critics. There’s just too much shallow college basketball worship, too little civic involvement, too many sweetheart deals for a small handful of fast talking business dudes and precious little public accountability, owing to a sleepy media and dearth of civic and political leadership.
Other than that, LA’s a charming town…especially if you like sleepwalking.
Get my point? No pom-pom swishing here from me.
On the other hand, for all my many deficiencies, I’m not a complete fool and I’m acquainted with the differences between what passes for good, better and best,
And Lawrence blows away Manhattan as a college town by just about measure. It just does…unless maybe you’re a farmer of have some kind or aversion to the trappings of modern life.
Now let’s get back to this ridiculously bogus survey.
What criteria did the website Wallethub use to rank Lawrence behind the Little Apple?
“Wallet Wellness,” for starters:
In other words, housing costs, tuition fees, average cost of pizza and burgers.
Lawrence ranked 64th out of 280 college towns, Manhattan was 27th on this front.
Allow me to try and explain:
When you’re trapped in the middle of nowhere, deep in Flyover, Kansas, of course everything’s gonna be cheaper. The operative word being,”trapped.” Who in their right mind would want to be stuck in the flatlands of Kansas that didn’t have to.
Next we have “Youth Oriented Environment:”
This breaks down the number of students per capita, the percentage of swinging singles, the number of bar and nightlife options and the crime rate.
Lawrence ranked 75th, with Manhattan in 40th place.
Hey look, of course there are going to be more bars in Mad Town, what else is there to do? And fewer students and a larger percentage of single students – and fewer people tends to mean less crime.
What did anybody expect? Wall-to-wall beautiful people running around robbing each other?
Some of you are maybe going to hate me for saying this, but who wants to live in Loserville? Far fewer folks likely accounts for less crime – maybe in part cause, where do you go to make your getaway in the middle of nowhere? May as well turn yourself in and hope you meet somebody single who’s nice while you’re in the caboose.
But who really wants to deal with all that rural somnambulance when you’re in college?
It’s in category number three – earnings potential, unemployment, and university ranking – that Wallethub finally cuts Lawrence a break in 46th place versus Mad Town’s 62nd.
“It’s in the middle of nowhere and it’s not very progressive,” echoes Kansan Ann Thompson of Topeka. “Living in Manhattan is like being trapped in a bubble. And it’s hard to get out of that bubble. Whereas Lawrence is part of a much larger community, including Kansas City and there’s so much more to do.”
That my friends, is why Lawrence smokes Manhattan.
The bottom line: according to this contrived, unimportant ranking, Manhattan is No. 12 and Lawrence 44.
Totally lame.
But hey, it’s front page news in Lawrence, so congrats to Wallethub or whoever the heck they are. They’re now on the local map.
And wait till you get a load of Wallethub’s Best & Worst Cities for Singles and active lifestyles.
I hate to spoil it for you, but Boise topped the singles chart, with KCMO poking along in 89th place behind – wait for it – Wichita in 76th place”
And believe it or don’t, Omaha topped the active lifestyle cities chart. I mean, I know it gets cold up there and they’ve got the zoo and Tom Becka, but Numero Uno? Kansas City placed 56th.
And for the record, Oxford, Ohio took top honors on the college town list.
Oxford, Ohio, Oxford, Ohio – where have I heard that name before?
Oh yeah, that’s where the other Miami University is located.
Who wouldn’t want to party down and graduate from a school who’s band plays Neil Diamond’s song Sweet Caroline on ice?
Oh yeah, the Journal World forgot (?) to tell readers that Mizzou also kicked KU’s butt, with sleepy Columbia, Missouri placing 21st. So yeah, these Best of / Worst of surveys and studies are full of – you know – pretty important stuff.
Very newsworthy.
truth is both Lawrence and manhattan are falling down badly.
neither has anything economically happeninig.
Maybe if one of the shifted to the sec conference their little quaint towns
might become something to be proud of.
Look at mu…..huge expansion…money flowing in….quarter billion dollars
fpor athletic department improvements and ku plays in a barn and
and is almost broke when the man cuts evn more money from the school.
yes….yes…..miz zou SEC……..
You are going off 10 year old assumptions. Manhattan has never stopped growing in those years. When the KC housing market was dead, Manhattan housing couldn’t keep up with the growth. Fort Riley expanded, as well as the University. The landscape of Manhattan has changed more in the last 10 years than any other city in KS. My guess is Hearne hasn’t even been there in that time. There is a reason more kids are enrolling at KSU every year than KU. (And don’t give me “tougher requirements because that isn’t or wasn’t in affect the last 5 years)
Your guess is wrong, Bug D
Like I said, my wife worked there for a year, ending two years ago. So I’m only a couple of years out.
The way I see it, there are a million nothing towns like Manhattan that one can make polite, equivocal comments about. They’ve had nice housing growth. The pizza and beer are cheaper. They win more football games.
But common sense tells you that it ain’t the 12th coolest college town in the country. I doubt it’s the 120th coolest.
In fact, it’s not even cool at all.
Look we all ave to live somewhere. I spent a year living in Mayfield, Kentucky in a dry county and had a ton of fun.
You know, soaking up the locaL vibe and alternating between Memphis and Nashville on weekends.
But I wouldn’t want anyone to think it was one of the hippest places on earth because it isn’t. Just like Manhattan.
I assume that you are trolling for views much like the magazines you scorn. However, let me take the bait and make a couple of observations.
Lawrence definitely beats Manhattan in Farm Equipment dealers (2-0), seed and feed distributors (5-1), horse and tack outlets and has the biggest truck terminal I have ever seen. The outlet stores are awesome and it is a shame the fertilizer plant can’t find a new owner.
However, I’ll take Colbert Hills over Alvamar, Manhattan CC over Lawrence CC and the football stadiums are not even in the same universe. There is more construction and new buildings in the Manhattan downtown area than any town in the state. The Aggieville bar district, in my opinion, is better than Westport.
Now, all that being said, for anyone to distinguish between 2 Kansas rural towns 90 miles apart as being sophisticated or farm oriented or different in any meaningful way is a stretch.
Both schools draw primarily from the Johnson County/Wichita/Topeka areas in roughly the same proportion. Both schools have similar undergraduate populations and both are located in charming, prosperous towns.
Your column reminds me of when my kids tell me the rich kids go to high school at Blue Valley North, the party kids go to BVNW, the farm kids go to BV and the jocks go to BVW. They all look the same to me.
I’ve got three words for you;
Location, location, location
True. Lawrence is almost in the KC Metro although I understand the locals dislike that assertion. But can you get a direct flight out of Lawrence to Chicago or Dallas daily? You can in Manhattan. It isn’t as backwoods as you may think.
That’s true Big D…
However my wife got stuck working there for a year and I got a more in depth picture of the place.
Look, if you have to go to school there, you can make the most of it. It sure beats Topeka (which is kind of a half ass college town).
But if you don’t HAVE to live there, who would want to?
And a turd with corn in it is better than one without. Who cares? They are both still crap.
Yeah, you are asking us to pick which is better between a douchebag and a turd burger. Decisions, decisions.
That’s a bit harsh
The truth hurts sometimes admin.
That’s fair…
Then again, truth is often in the eye of the beholder, dude
Look its Glazer, Hearne and Wilson you figure out who’s who in the top picture. Then roll on down the page for a posing shot of harley trying to convince people amongst many other things, he can pick a banjo as well. But don’t stop there, continue scrolling and next you see what chuck really looks like clinching his fist as he posts the latest black crime stats. The next shot is where Hearne really out does himself, posting a picture of the road leading to Craig Glazers career. You don’t have to look very hard to see the road leads to nowhere. Next is a shot from harleys workplace where he slaves as he would have you believe, five days a week making sure the largest ball of twine stays rolled up tight. Then we have a shot of Tom Becka who fits in perfect here at KCC as another compulsive liar whose career has tanked. Last but not least we have Neil Diamond really singing “The Last Thing On My Mind” after being asked his opinion of KC Confidential.
Says the woman who spent 2 hours fashioning a third grade slander and testament to mediocrity and predictability in the form of a comment a blog she pretends not to like but knows every single commenter and every word they write. *bolts out of her chair, spilling the bed pan as she realizes that the Beanie Weenies have been on the stove for 2 hours*
When they cool down, she eats them anyway an gives one to her cat.
“…stuck in the flatlands of Kansas…”. well, point of fact, hearne that manhattan is just on the edge of the flatlands. around town, and especially to the south in the Flint Hills, it’s pretty hilly around there.
this doesn’t mean I’m defending the place. my personal experience has been that the people there aren’t terribly friendly.
I gotcha mike t…
It’s just that having driven I70 West so many times, once I get past Topeka my brain kinda flatlines with the overall topography
Snob Hill VS Silo Tech.
Not exactly an in depth study, but whatever
Trying to moderate you time moderating.
Distilled to the Nth degree.
Having lived in both, I prefer the city of Manhattan. Manhattan is far more charming and doesn’t have the congested traffic. I’ll take Aggieville over Mass Street, I like Kansas State’s campus better than KU’s.
Lawrence does have that it’s closer to Kansas City (sports teams, shopping, KCI, etc), but that really says more about Kansas City than Lawrence. Why live “near” Kansas City rather than just living in Kansas City?
I dunno, No Way….
It does say a lot about KC but basically being a close in suburb says every bit as much about Lawrence. Being in the middle of nowhere basically sucks. No two ways about it, and being super close to tons of cool stuff is a HUGE advantage.
There are a myriad of ten and fifteen best, from best city to live in to worst city to lose your underwear in, and the criteria for each is ADVERTISING. Even in the on-line versions, where the advertising scripts are so long as to require you to literally watch the formation of 27 advertisements before you can advance to the next city, the one you probably were waiting for. And, whether on-line or in print, the publisher has sought out their newest hire to determine the criteria of the comparison, rendering Pareto’s Nobel Prize in Economics, an unlearned lesson of greatness over the last 65 or longer years. Comparing Columbia to Lawrence, to Manhattan to East Anglia appears to be more of a study of culture, a useless study, than it is testimony to the courage of the reader to wade through the advertising in determining the ten best cars that should never have been produced. For those of us old enough to remember, Lawrence and Manhattan will live on as inferior cities, probably because for a century, both cities failed to realize that a complete city, one with a college, restaurants, haberdashers, and barbers, all practicing their trade, they were shown up by Bozeman, Montana, which along with the same tradesmen realized, quite early, that a college town is not a college town without a bar.
you got that wrong….I’d give you a D for that little comment.
at least the rest of the commenters on here are entertaining..
with so few readers hearne needs some exctiementfrom the
commentators because these stories being written by
his writers are b o r I n g….who cares about Lawrence or
manhattan….they’re small town college campuses fighting
for their economic lives.
and from glaze we get one of two stories….I hate the chiefs..or
I love the chiefs.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!\
too many trailer trash GIs from Ft Riley drunkenly prowling around Aggieville
Went to K-State and live right outside lawrence now, just today driving through I thought about all the cool places to eat in manhattan and couldn’t think of one unique place in lawrence. Manhattan has small town feel with the amenities of a large town. Aggieville is 100X better then mass st. Too much traffic in lawrence, have to drive everywhere. About the economics, with the biodefense lab being set up it is supposed to bring 15k jobs to manhattan, while Lawrence is turning into commuter town with people working in Kansas City and Topeka.
I won’t argue your points, Taylor…
If you’re happy being in the middle of nowhere in rural Kansas, go for it!
Just don’t count on having an ocean of hipsters from all across the country as your neighbors
“Just don’t count on having an ocean of hipsters from all across the country as your neighbors.”
You don’t make your case against Manhattan well with that statement. Seems more of a positive then anything else.
810 scoops 610 once again…
OMG, there’s that catchphrase again!
Well, let me just say this; I’m sure there are plenty of folks out there who the last thing they’d want is to be surrounded by young, hip, fun people. However, allow me to remind you that this was a study of the best college towns.
It was not a study of the best upscale suburban bedroom communities.
If you’re going to college you’re probably in your 20s and – judging by the fact that you read KCC – I’m going to assume that many if not most of you are fairly hip people. Whatever your age.
So given that basic fact, you’d rather be trapped in the middle of Kansas at an ag school?
If getting cheap rent and eats was the guiding force for cool college towns, I guess Manhattan (and plenty of other middle of nowhere towns) is high on the list.
I think it’s fairly obvious that that’s not the case.
Was the hipster comment a threat? Or do you implying that people actually want gentrifying hipster d-bags to come and ruin their neighborhood?
That’s what I was thinking too Dude.
What’s next, don’t count on an ocean of Section Eight housing and welfare recipients as your neighbors?
810 scoops 610 once again…
Don’t count on an ocean of Beemer driving drunken soccer fraus from all across Joco and SLeeze Summit as your neighbors!
Yeah, but to live in either one of them you have to move to Brownbackistan.
All hail Der Guv. Brownshirt!!