Pittsburgh is one of the worst places to live for single people. Wow who would have thought?
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07235/811583-100.stm
Pittsburgh near bottom of best cities for singles
Thursday, August 23, 2007
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The annual Forbes.com rankings of best cities for singles is out, and Pittsburgh ranks 35th out of 40, down from its 32nd placement last year.The No. 1 spot to be young and unattached is San Francisco, followed by New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. The worst place for the lonely hearts – a spot Pittsburgh occupied from 2002 to 2004 – is Providence, R.I.
Forbes.com arrives at these admittedly subjective placements by measuring the 40 largest U.S. metropolitan areas according to calculations of culture (the number of museums, pro sports teams, live theater and concert venues per capita, as well as the university population), nightlife (number of bars, restaurants and nightclubs per capita), job growth (projections for the next five years), the cost of living alone (the sum of the average apartment rent, a Pizza Hut pizza, a six-pack of Heineken and a movie ticket), online dating (number of profiles on Yahoo! Personals), the number of other singles (people never married over 15) and “coolness” (derived from a nationwide poll of adults by market research firm Harris Interactive).
In the Pittsburgh area, the percentage of people never married is 29 percent.
Pittsburgh’s best performance is in culture and coolness, where it places 22nd and 24th respectively. Its worst area remains projected job growth (as determined by Moody’s economy.com and Woods & Poole Economics), where Pittsburgh is 36th out of 40. Forbes.com also cites prior stories ranking Pittsburgh as America’s eighth drunkest city and the 21st best city for young professionals - but neither measure was part of the best-cities-for-singles methodology.
In a new feature this year, Forbes.com handpicks the most eligible bachelor and bachelorette in each city, admitting the selections were “a bit subjective and somewhat eclectic” and based on nominations from locals. Forbes.com “held a newsroom poll to determine the winners.” The winners here are 25-year-old Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger ("a regular at charity events around town’) and Michele Fabrizi, the 54-year-old chief executive officer of advertising firm Marc USA “known for her fabulous fashion sense.” To determine eligibility, Forbes.com “merely confirmed that our selections were not married. We did not check to see if they had a ‘serious’ boyfriend or girlfriend.”
