Nutty Boston drivers, snooty R.I. diners & proud Portlanders

I don’t read Travel + Leisure magazine. But I’m always intrigued by its online rankings of various tourist destinations because, invariably, they seem kind of goofy.

Take the recent survey of America’s cities, which rated 35 of them in dozens of categories that ran the gamut from the attractiveness of the locals and the quality of cafes to hotel options and how "charming" the hometown accent is.

So how reliable are the rankings? Not very, if the results on driving ability are any indication. The magazine’s readers ranked Portland, Maine, No. 1 in that category. As a Maine resident, that struck me as sensible. But Boston, which is universally recognized as having the worst drivers in the known universe (and possibly beyond), placed 32nd out of 35 cities, according to visitors.

That means tourists are making the preposterous claim that three cities  - New York, San Juan and Miami - have drivers who are even more reckless and demented than those to be found careening through the streets and along the highways of Beantown. (As a Massachusetts native who went to college in Boston, I love the city more than I can say. But worse drivers somewhere else? Please!)

To their credit, Bostonians know they’re lousy drivers, although they don’t realize just how bad they are. Boston residents who took part in the magazine’s survey placed their city in 27th place, meaning they have deluded themselves into believing that the drivers are even worse in eight other cities on that list of 35.

Some of the rankings are on the money. For example, visitors placed Portland, Maine, in 6th place in the “proud of their city” ranking, and Portland residents were not far behind in their own evaluation of city pride. Visitors and residents alike also scored Portland very high in the “gay friendly” category. As a Maine resident, I can attest to the accuracy of both of those rankings. Deservedly, Portland also scored well in affordability, cleanliness, environmental friendliness, intelligence, family vacations, safety, microbrews, ice cream and pizza, among other categories.

But elsewhere in the survey, things took a predictably weird turn, and not only in the misguided belief that Boston’s drivers could be even worse than they are now.

In the fine-dining ranking, San Francisco, Providence, Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon, all fared better than New York, which placed fifth. No doubt there is fine dining to be had in each of the top four cities, but simply in terms of size, how could Providence (population 182,000) possibly have more high-end restaurants than New York, whose 8.3 million residents make it the largest city in the country?

And then there are the categories that are just plain silly, such as the attractiveness of each city’s residents. That surely varies from day to day depending on the weather, the season, how people are dressed, who is out and about and who happens to be doing the watching. For the record, San Francisco came in at No. 1, followed by Providence; Nashville; Portland, Maine; and Savannah.

As a former resident of Providence and a frequent visitor to Maine’s largest city, I’d have to say that the subjectivity of magazine readers may not be the most accurate way to evaluate who looks good where. Then again, how could anyone participate intelligently in a survey like this unless he or she had visited all 35 cities on the list? And what are the odds of that?