Watch Your Language

• The top 5 cities speak Portuguese, Italian, French, Spanish (all Latin-derived tongues) and Dutch.
• But two bottom 5 cities also spoke Latin tongues (three, if you include heavily Hispanic Los Angeles).
• Beautiful people don’t speak English as their native language.
• In the top 5 beer-drinking cities, order beer, piva, piva, cerveja and bier. In the bottom 5, order beer, beer, beer, beer and bière. See a pattern?
• Overall, the language of the most civilized people was Portuguese, then Russian and French. The bottom scoring was English, by miles.

Regional Biases

• North America scored only two top 5 finishes – for Toronto’s delicious doughnuts and Washington’s cheap and readily quaffable beer – but landed 14 times in the bottom 5.
• New York beat cross-coast rival Los Angeles in every category… except, of course, the Babe and Hunk Index.
• Go abroad, civilization seekers: European cities sampled achieved more top 5 scores (15) than the rest of the world combined and only three scores in the bottom 5.
• Following a Confucian harmonious mean, Asia’s four top 5 finishes balanced its five bottom 5 scores.
• Exuberant Latin America scored six top 5s and only two bottom 5s, both thanks to Havana (Carbohydrate Comparison and Street Life Indicator).

Mind the Gap

• No top 5 city had any bottom 5 finishes; no bottom 5 city had any top 5 finishes.
• All top 5 cities scored high in at least two categories.
• Underachieving Vancouver and Los Angeles scored in the bottom 5 in three categories.
• But Chicago scored lower, overall, than both of them.
• Buenos Aires, Zurich and San Francisco are “mushy middle” cities; none scored in the top or bottom 5 of any category.