Either Santa Ana has improved mucho over the past five years or the cultural bean counters at Forbes magazine are under some bipolar spell.
That's because the city that Forbes dubbed one of the top 10 most boring cities in America in 2009 has just been named the 20th Coolest City in the land.
How did Orange County's seat achieve the lofty position?
It's all about the numbers, Count Chocula.
Let's go to the scoreboard:
No. 20: Santa Ana, Calif.
Metro: Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA
Arts & Culture Index: 87%
Recreation Index: 98%
Diversity Index: 75.46%
Local Eats: 74%
Population age 20-34: 28.8%
2010 – 2013 Net Migration: 1.5%
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So does that mean Santa Ana was able to incorporate some of “Anacrime” Anaheim and “Stepford” Irvine coolness, too? Unbelievable!
(Seriously, these rankings are not to be believed.)
Just ahead of Santa Ana was Bethesda, Md., at No. 19. Other California cities were Los Angeles and San Jose, which were tied at No. 16, Sacramento at No. 14, Oakland at No. 12, Riverside at No. 8, San Diego at No. 6 and San Francisco at No. 5.
Washington, D.C., is numero uno in coolness, sayeth the Forbes.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.