Wait till Paul Bunyan hears about this.
A recent study purporting to rank "America's Manliest Cities" has put Minneapolis at 36th out of 50. That is so, so wrong.
First, we must assume they folded St. Paul in there, because it's not mentioned anywhere else on the list and there is no way that a city brimming with Vulcans and pro hockey bruisers would not crack the top 50.
Commissioned by Combos, a basic food group of convenience stores, the ranking names Nashville as the nation's studliest metropolis and Los Angeles as its least. Now let's move on to what we really care about.
Despite having no NASCAR track, Minneapolis achieved its highest rank in the sports category, 13th. The city ranked lowest in "manly occupations," at 44th (excuse me, who could possibly employ more Zamboni drivers?). What really did us in, though, was being placed 13th on the "emasculating criteria" list, which docked points for being home to a lot of "modern" male apparel stores and sushi restaurants.
Sam Fehrenbach, manager of the popular men's apparel and toiletries store MartinPatrick3, disagrees.
"I catch a lot of flak from my friends about working in fashion, but so far, none of them have been able to articulate what is unmanly about $325 polka-dot short shorts," Fehrenbach said.
If we were inclined to sputter defensively about studies that promote delicious salty snacks, we might lob a charge of regional bias, since so many Southern cities made the top 20. Are cities with names like New Orleans, Louisville and Charlotte more macho than us? Fat chance, we might say, after burping loudly and shaving for the second time today.
Minnesotans have it on good authority (our own) that, like Combos, the dudes of the Twin Cities are just the right kind of manly -- hard as Channing Tatum's abs on the outside, soft on the inside.
