Vegas is tops at being near the bottom

By Joe Brown

Friday, March 13, 2009 | 2 a.m.

We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!

It’s true: Las Vegas has come out on top in a bunch of recent national surveys.

But before we start tipping over cars and singing “We are the champions,” the fact is that we’re the big winners in some real loser categories.

According to a tsunami of city-by-city, state-by-state national rankings, Vegas and Nevada are the best — at just about the worst of everything.

Just last month Forbes magazine declared Las Vegas “America’s Emptiest City.” We edged out even Detroit. Forbes also recently ranked North Las Vegas and Henderson among America’s 10 most boring cities.

Someone at Forbes has obviously figured out that readers — and journalists — love these kinds of lists.

Continuing with the bringdown countdown:

• Las Vegas, according to Men’s Fitness magazine, is the fattest city in America.

• BusinessWeek recently ranked Las Vegas No. 7 among the unhappiest cities in the nation (factoring in a No. 1 in suicide, No. 6 in divorce and No. 9 in crime).

• According to a recent Sun analysis, we’re the No. 1 consumers per capita of hydrocodone, aka Vicodin and Lortab. We come in No. 4 in methadone, oxycodone and morphine consumption per capita.

• In terms of urban sustainability — a city’s ability to maintain a healthy living environment — Las Vegas is closing in on last place, falling from No. 27 to No. 47 among the nation’s 50 largest cities.

• And we’re at rock bottom — 54th, behind even Guam — in collecting child support payments.

Data often sensationalized

Before we fall into a collective number-driven shame spiral, take heart: Some of the numbers seem to indicate that things are turning around, getting better.

Or at least less worse.

For example, we just lost our No. 1 spot for auto thefts nationwide. And surprisingly — maybe even disappointingly — we didn’t make the top 10 in Forbes’ list of America’s drunkest cities. We came in at a respectable No. 14, behind the champion chuggers of Milwaukee.

So are numbers and lists telling the truth about our town?

This kind of data, collected and crunched by such organizations as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, is intended for state and community health departments to better target money for health programs.

But the resulting statistics are inevitably seized upon, stacked and sensationalized in magazine stories (and Page Eight essays).

These “worst city” lists conjure a patchwork picture of a city in extremis — the movie would be titled “Escape from Las Vegas” — and that dire vision doesn’t match up with the place most of us locals experience.

But it does reinforce the idea of Las Vegas apparently shared by most Americans — an idea formed by impressions of the honky-tonkin’ Strip. Which is like deciding whether Manhattan is livable based on postcards of Times Square.

City not without its benefits

Maybe these nightmare-by-the-numbers labels have a silver lining: It might be said that Vegas needed a breather from its recent rapid, rampant growth streak. Would it be so bad if the looky-lous just visited instead of moving here?

And maybe we should nod along sagely and tsk-tsk and tut-tut about how “unliveable” our town is. And then laugh all the way to the golf course and the plentiful free parking for the locals-discounted headliner show.

Anyway, if you look for them, there are some positive numbers to be found.

Las Vegas ranks high on the list for number of sunny days in a year. And in spite of all the grim numbers, a national study released in January said Las Vegas ranks among the top 20 major U.S. cities in which Americans would like to live.

We’re No. 20, of course. But hey, we’ll take it. No questions asked.