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According to readers of Travel + Leisure magazine, the publication’s annual ranking of “America’s Happiest Cities” is definitely going to be topped off by some dumb bullshit like Des Moines again.
“Every year they think they’re dropping some bombshell by putting a dumbass place like Fargo, North Dakota or Lawrence, Kansas at the top of the list,” reader Monique Lopez said, flipping through past issues that insist various Midwestern cities are somehow more utopian than the hundreds of quaint beach towns and culturally-rich metro areas also in the running for the title. “So I won’t be at all surprised when they throw Des Moines, Iowa at the top of the list next year and write a rambling paragraph about its miles of paved bike trails and public parks as if I would rather live there than Boston, New York, or literally anywhere else.”
Perusing past issues that, for whatever insane reason, insist Omaha and Kansas City are better than their coastal counterparts, Lopez knew exactly what to anticipate in this year’s ranking.
“Sure, they’ll throw in some towns in SoCal to make the list more realistic,” Lopez continued, predicting that the publication would toss a Palm Springs or San Diego in the mix to distract from their declaration that some stupid fucking place in Iowa is where people lead the happiest lives. “But for some reason, they always revert back to this weird hidden agenda of gassing up lame Midwestern towns.”
At press time, every middle-aged person in Iowa was proudly sharing the article on Facebook.
