A couple of weeks ago, I chatted with a young woman for a couple of minutes while waiting in a checkout line, and it didn’t take her long to tell me she wanted to move somewhere else. As soon as she could, she wanted to leave.
That particular ambition doesn’t surprise me at all. Some of us who grew up in small towns want to get out as soon as possible — and about the same number want to stay. Some do move from one small town to another, but most who want to leave want to go to the “city.”
Why? The answer is almost always the same — “Nothing ever happens here.” To paraphrase the sentiment — “It’s boring here.” That’s a subjective observation, based on personal opinion. Now, that subjective point of view has some “objective” “facts” to back it up. An article floated through my internet aggregator feed last week — “The most boring place to live in every state” by Talia Lakritz. This article was from the INSIDER website, but it links back to a November article from the Business Insider website and seems to be a recycled version of that article.
Y’all guessed it. Gadsden is the most boring place to live in Alabama.
Lakritz kindly notes that “if you like taking life at a slower pace, one of these ‘boring’ cities might be the place you want to call home,” but plenty of media in these “boring cities” have taken issue with the article, some funny and some serious. I have a few issues with it, too.
First, I’m reasonably sure that Talia Lakritz (who is based in New York, according to her bio on the website) has never visited Gadsden. I’m fairly positive that she’s never visited all the places in all the states that her article deems “boring.” I’d make the same claim for the two authors of the original article. I checked out about half a dozen of the photographs of “boring cities” used in the article, and all were from Wikipedia or its affiliates.
That’s one thing, but I think the “facts” cited also are from Wikipedia. For example, the population of Gadsden is listed as 102,873 in the articles. That is true — if one considers the “Gadsden Metropolitan Area,” which comprises ALL of Etowah County. The population of the city of Gadsden (according to Wikipedia) is 36,856 in the 2010 census. That’s a big difference and significant if one considers the other “facts.”
According to the article, Gadsden has 61 full service restaurants, seven bars, one museum and 16 hotels. Lakritz notes that the original article’s authors “counted the number of establishments for 66 different types of businesses that make a city ‘interesting’ like breweries, art dealers and museums with data from the Census Bureau’s 2015 County Business Patterns program,” but both articles give only the statistics for restaurants, bars, museums and hotels. A point of clarification — does the number of restaurants, etc., count only for the city of Gadsden or the entire Gadsden Metropolitan Area? If using the population statistics for one, it would be inaccurate to use the business statistics for the other.
This is a prime example of “facts” that may be verifiably true (I’d argue a little with them, frankly) that are linked together willy-nilly in service to a thesis whose weight they might not be able to bear. What do these people see as an “interesting” evening? It looks like “interesting” means grabbing a bite to eat, getting drunk, visiting a museum, and spending the night in a hotel.
And if we want to get really persnickety? What restaurants? In bare “facts,” McDonald’s counts the same as any fine-dining establishment. So, McDonald’s, drinks, museum, hotel? Wow, those New Yorkers are sure sophisticated!
What about museums? Does the Spear Hunting Museum down in Summerdale, Alabama count as one? That’s right, Summerdale has a museum about spear hunting. It’s on my list of places to visit next time I’m down that way. I’m sure the article doesn’t mean THAT sort of museum, but museum it is. In Summerdale, then, it’s McDonald’s, drinks, Spear Hunting Museum and a night in a hotel. That doesn’t sound “interesting” so much as it sounds like a recipe for disaster.
The best thing about looking through Lakritz’s article was finding the most boring place in Tennessee — it’s Morristown. Never heard of it until now, but I SO want to visit to see their “overhead sidewalks.” Looks cool. By the way, the article lists ZERO museums in Morristown, but Wikipedia says it has one — the Crockett Tavern Museum, celebrating Tennessee’s own Davy Crockett. Morristown, y’all’re on the list of places to visit.
I do like “taking life at a slower pace,” so I’m good here. It’s boring but kind — where else do strangers waiting in a checkout line strike up a conversation? Not to be snide, but by that article’s criteria, ancient Rome and ancient Athens would have been boring. Just saying.
David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions reflected are his own.