When It Rains, It Poors

When Unreal got done surfing around USA Today's graphic feature on how many jobs are gonna go down the terlet in '09, we surfed over to Forbes.com, which recently published the cheerily titled "America's Most Miserable Cities."

builtstlouis.net

Unreal knows what you're thinking. You're thinking what we were thinking when we saw that headline. You're thinking: "St. Louis is No. 1!"

But it's not!

St. Louis is -- drum roll, please -- way the heck down at No. 10!

The Most Miserable City in the U.S., it turns out, is Stockton, California. We dunno, never having been to Stockton, but it doesn't look that bad from here. Unemployment might be rampant and getting worse, taxes might be astronomical and violent crime troublingly commonplace, but according to the Conference & Visitors Bureau, Cool Hand Luke was shot there. So they've got that going for them.

What St. Louis has going for it, miserywise, per Forbes:

The Gateway City scored in the bottom half of all nine categories we looked at for the Forbes Misery Measure. It was the only metro area to pull off that feat.

The nine categories: commute times, corruption, pro sports teams, Superfund sites, taxes (both income and sales), unemployment, violent crime and weather.

The Top Ten:
10. St. Louis
 9. Miami
 8. Buffalo
 7. Detroit
 6. Flint
 5. Modesto
 4. Cleveland
 3. Chicago (!)
 2.  Memphis (!!)
 1. Stockton