Denver is Sixth!

A little test.

The Denver Business Journal went on a tear today, twice announcing - twice! - that Denver had come in sixth.  First, we were chosen the sixth most fit city in America by something called the American Fitness Index.  (The site is worth exploring, but navigating it is a sort of exercise all on its own.)

Then, and this is pretty cool, Denver was deigned to have the sixth best quality of life of any city in America.  Number one is Raleigh - it’s almost always Raleigh - and that makes me doubt the list a bit.  I’ve spent a lot of time in the Research Triangle and can say with little doubt that you’d be hard pressed to walk further than the corner of your cul-de-sac before pure fear had you trying to remember where you put your keys.  Now, if you happened to find yourself in Chapel Hill or Carrboro, you’d have ended up somewhere pretty cool.  Raleigh?  Sort of a city, sort of not. 

Still, the criteria is pretty good and the folks at Portfolio.com had this little tiny bit to say:

“Denver attracts young, self-motivated individuals. It has the nation’s sixth-highest concentration of young adults, 30.6 percent. And it’s ninth in the share of self-employed workers, 11.6 percent.”

Okay, so here’s the thing that confuses me: we’re fit, we’re young, and yet Denver has gone from being the best place for singles anywhere to somewhere outside of the top ten.  See how that doesn’t quite compute?

Here’s what I know, though: on a day like today, there’s simply no better place to live.  Take a walk through LoDo.  Skip over the i-25 Bridge and have a margarita on the deck at Lola.  The slide back over for a light dinner on the patio at McLoughlin’s.  Then end the night with an order of churros at Zengo.  That simply cannot be counted in some arbitrary top ten list.

Photo from flickr.