Bob CollinsSorry, Minneapolis. You’re not in the top 10 of funniest U.S. cities.
The good news: You’re not in the top 10 of least funny cities, either.
A humor research lab — seriously — at the University of Colorado Boulder surveyed the 50 largest U.S. cities and evaluated them based on these criteria:
- visits by community members to comedy websites
- number of comedy clubs per square mile
- traveling comedians’ ratings of each city’s comedy club audiences
- number of native-born famous comedians
- number of local funny tweeters
- the number of local comedy radio stations
- frequency of humor-related Web searches originating in each city
We never stood a chance, which makes it all the more surprising Minneapolis finished 11th.
Here are the top 10:
1 Chicago, IL
2 Boston, MA
3 Atlanta, GA
4 Washington, DC
5 Portland, OR
6 New York, NY
7 Los Angeles, CA
8 Denver, CO
9 San Francisco, CA
10 Seattle, WA
As usual, Minneapolis is chasing Seattle in one of these surveys.
According to the “lab,” Seattle’s forte is “snooty, intellectual humor.”
Seattle residents are proud of themselves, and that comes through in their humor. The city’s youthful, intellectual strain of comedy involves jokes about technology, start-up culture, and yes, coffee. Sometimes, the gags are at the expense of all the poor schmucks who live somewhere else. As one resident cracked, “With our above-average intelligence, many, especially those in the South, never quite understand when we are being funny and/or sarcastic.”
Representative jokes:“What does one computer say to the other? 010101010101010101”
“Why does California have all the lawyers and New Jersey have all the hazardous waste dumps? New Jersey got first choice.”
