Though based on some recent anti-Fort Worth comments to a previous Travel + Leisure-related Blotch post, I’m not all that surprised that visitors to North Texas find us ugly (we rank 18th in the looks department, according to a Travel + Leisure readers’ poll), stupid (No. 27 on the intelligence list), and mean (No. 23 on the friendliness list). Our highest ranking in any category is 10th. For what? Why, luxury shopping, of course.
I guess our Cowtown heritage is biting us in the you-know-where. Yes, you can still find some big hair down here and big belt buckles and seriously backward ways of thinking. But Fort Worth is also home to three world-class art museums –– the Amon Carter, Kimbell, and the Modern –– and, well, if no one had ever patronized them, they would have closed a long time ago, right? Which makes us kinda smart. And we have a lot of hospitals here, which must mean that we have a lot of doctors, and doctors are smart, aren’t they?
Friendliness? I dunno. I think people down here are pretty friendly, but until I moved to Texas 12 years ago, I’d lived only in really provincial Northern cities (Pittsburgh, Erie, New York City, Philadelphia), places where the yokels would never even dream of interacting in a friendly manner with a person outside of their insular little social circles.
What I can’t believe is that visitors don’t think we’re good-looking. While I can’t speak for the ladies (or for Dallas), I can say with great certainty that attractive women aren’t necessarily scarce here in the F-Dub. I see several every day, and my beautiful wife lives in Fort Worth, after all 😉
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