We're #15! (Shhh, it's a secret.)

It's "official:" the Durham, NC metropolitan statistical area has just been ranked the 15th-best place to live in the United States by Sperling's Best Places, a firm that specializes in such trivialities. (You may have seen the New York Times feature last weekend on Sperling and his firm.)

The Raleigh-Cary MSA's rank? #63.

Interestingly, in the 2004 edition, Raleigh and Durham were evaluated together and ranked, jointly, as #13. Now split since the Census Bureau divided us into two MSAs, Durham's held roughly its previous place while Raleigh took the tumble.

Now, mind you, Raleighites boast about their public schools being better than Durham's (a statistical fallacy), or about ranking #1 in the country as Forbes' "Best City for Jobs" (complete with N&O snarkiness about how Durham didn't make the list -- ignoring the list's criteria).

And when they so boast, you better believe that the N&O and WRAL cover it fully and well. See for example, this article, or this one (on wired cities), or this boast about Cary.

Yet you can hear the crickets chirping about this one. From what I can find (unless the search engines are broken), not word one from 'RAL or the News & Observer about the Sperling ranking.

Shamefully, for entirely different reasons, not a peep I could find about this in the Herald-Sun, either. (Postscript to the Pickett Road gang: the Herald-Sun ranks #15 on the list of network domains reading this blog since it started, according to Google Analytics. So c'mon, you guys have to know about this story now, right?)

Please note that my tongue is planted at least halfway in cheek over this. I believe these kind of data are authoritative and meaningful about as strongly as I believe that Wool E. Bull will successfully outrace a kid around the bases over that the DBAP these days -- that is, not very strongly.

Yet to the extent that Great Ratings Matter so much to the civic-boosters... why don't we hear about these Great Ratings, too?

UPDATE: OK, so I'm changing the N&O from a full demerit point to a half-demerit, since Barry Saunders' column today makes note of the ratings in asking the have-the-tables-turned on Wake vs. Durham schools? Still, the Sperling rating's getting press from the N&O's Durham-based columnist, and didn't make news headlines the way a Wake-positive story would.

Comments

[JDC]

You know, just once, I'd love to see a disgruntled Wool E. Bull beat a kid around the bases, and then flip off the crowd. It might even make ESPN!

Then again, an episode like that might drop Durham back a few slots on Sperling's "Best Places" list.

[barry]

there's some idiot reporter for the Boston Herald who's supposed to be coming to town for the "Minor League Experience" next month i think. Part of his deal is to do the base race with Wool E. So there's an opportunity for the bull to taste victory.

i think your vision would work better if there's ever a Bull Durham sequel than in real life.

one thing i can't understand. if i were 7 years old, and i had a chance to race Wool E. around the bases in front of a couple of thousand people, you can be damn sure that i'd slide into home plate. but in all the games i've been to, i've never seen a single kid do that.

go figure.

[Dave S.]

I think it's great the Wool E. Bull always lets the kids win. For a lot of these kids, they'll be told their whole lives that they're losers. But they can always look back on that night in the ballpark when they beat Wool E. Bull with pride.

I'm just kidding. I'm actually more concerned about Wool E. Bull's self-esteem. With a lifetime run-the-bases record of 0-423, he's liable to snap one day.

[Michael Bacon]

My friend Jonathan still talks about the day that Wool E. Bull was racing a kid with some serious speed. You know how he normally paces it so they cross second about the same time? The kid beat him there flat. When Wool E. got to second, the kid was close to rounding third, so the Bull just turned and ran, hard as he could, straight across the pitcher's mound. The kid still won, of course.

Back on the original topic, why do I get the urge to channel Ralph Wiggum and go prancing down the sidewalk singing, "I beat the smart kids! I beat the smart kids!"

Seriously, though, I'm not really surprised. I remember there was some hand-wringing in Durham regarding what would happen to us when we lost Raleigh and Cary. But as silly as the things that these rankings are, if you look at what they're based on, we've got a huge advantage over our western neighbors in several categories. After all, what have "Raleigh-Durham"'s high rankings been based on in the past? Excellent research universities! (the two more highly ranked ones are in the Durham MSA) Incredible health systems! (Um, where are Duke and UNC hospitals?) Excellent schools! (Well, we know all about Southern and Hillside, but don't forget that the Chapel Hill/Carrboro schools count towards our score now.) Low crime! (What everyone continue to forget is that Durham's crime rate is only high based on Triangle standards, and is still fairly low when compared nationally.) Biotech jobs! (Concentrated in the Durham County portions of RTP and in Treyburn.)

What Raleigh and Cary are left selling is their vanilla suburbs, NCSU and Centennial campus, proximity to RTP, good but overcrowded schools, lots of traffic, and companies like SAS, Red Hat, and the rest. Not a bad portfolio by any means. But the split has simply illustrated that lots of what Raleigh has been taking credit for for years is actually over here on our side of the line.

[mike]

Hilarious but true Michael. Wait though... we are forgeting about the wanta be 'research' hospital of Wake Med. Of course 95% of their docs are graduates of Duke and UNC residency programs who either decided against or couldn't cut the academic lifestyle.

[allen]

Not really a fan of Barry. Someone who apparently thought Starlite Drive-In was the last place black and white people could "get together" in Durham.

[Michael Bacon]

I've seen a couple different comments on his Starlite column, and yeah, it was a bit silly, but the man's body of work is incredible. I really wish he were at the H-S instead of John McCann, who occasionally manages a decent column, but on the whole is incredibly clueless. He's not even from here, for cryin' out loud, he's from Raleigh!

[Michael Bacon]

By the way, did the H-S ever break radio silence on this? After being out of town this weekend I'm behind on my newspaper reading...

[Bull City Rising]

Yes -- sort of. Bob Ashlet ran his Sunday op-ed piece on the Sperling numbers. Still no news coverage though. Whether that's because the H-S is incredibly gracious/modest or merely incompetent is another question, however.