EDITORIAL : LIFE IN THE DAMP LANE FORTUNE SNUBS CALIFORNIA CITIES IN FAVOR OF SEATTLE.An East Coast wag (his or her name escapes us) once wrote that Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. is a fine place to live - if you are an orange. The same could be said for Seattle - if you are a clam. And that's how we feel about the latest bit of silliness by Fortune magazine: Clam up. Fortune released its annual rating of cities last week. Seattle, if you missed the story or haven't guessed already, came out as the top city in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . No California city made the top 15 - not even San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden , which was ranked No. 1 last year. (Fickle, fickle, fickle). Seattle received high scores in such categories as its cost of living, the quality of its work force (34 percent of the population graduated from college) and public safety. Los Angeles, on the other hand, suffered low marks due to traffic, crime rates, taxes and real estate costs. We don't deny that Los Angeles has problems in the aforementioned areas. But Seattle has some, too. For example, downtown Seattle Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared to other city centers on the West Coast because of its geographical situation: hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by Elliott Bay, and on the south by reclaimed land is pinched between Puget Sound Puget Sound (py  `jĕt), arm of the Pacific Ocean, NW Wash., connected with the Pacific by Juan de Fuca Strait, entered through the Admiralty Inlet and extending in two arms c. and Lake Washington. There can be some monumental rush-hour traffic jams along the I-5 Freeway through downtown. We don't have anything against Seattle - it's a nice town, notwithstanding all that rain. Just the same, even the folks at Fortune should have enough sense to recognize that there's some advantage to living in a city where it's possible to wait out a traffic jam with the top down. |
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