Civic pride: We don't need no stinkin' Viagra!

Award-winning investigative journalist friend, Barry Yeoman, passes along this morning a fantastic post from awesome local Durham, NC, blog, Bull City Rising.

Heh. Rising.

Now Men's Health magazine has given Durham another trumpeting tribute, having taken a long, hard look at one of the rankings that only such a periodical could bring.

Durham found itself in stiff competition -- one hundred other cities and metro areas, to be precise -- but stood tall to prevail, ranking sixth in the U.S. among...

...cities that don't need Viagra.

Just what we need: another reason for the University-That-Tobacco-Built to recruit and retain more deadwood greybeard faculty members.

Deadwood. Heh.

After examining rates of erectile dysfunction contributing factors like smoking and obesity; exercise rates; and the rates of urologists per capita and the number of ED prescriptions filled per capita, Men's Health came up with their ranking.

Well, what else would you expect from a city whose mascot is a well-hung bull?


i-c130adbb9ebb7b9d33ac3fe11ea8f31c-Durham WGTH.JPG

In all seriousness, let me take this opportunity to plug Kevin Davis who edits and runs Bull City Rising, easily one of the top three blogs in the city (Endangered Durham gets my vote for being one of the most unique resources for historic preservation anywhere I have lived; Carpe Durham for local food, especially taco trucks and taquerias.).

For those outside of the NC Research Triangle area or those who've been students or postdocs in the area in the 1980s and 1990s, you'd know that Durham had usually been relegated to a distant #3 in quality of life comparisons with the state capital, Raleigh, or Chapel Hill, home to the state's flagship university.

But how things have changed. Kevin promotes the city of Durham that I moved to: one of the most vibrant and funky mid-sized cities in the southern US, warts and all. For some examples, here is a nice cross-section of this place: 300+ Great Things About Durham. Very much a southern version of the downtown Denver that I saw rise again in the 1990s.

Here Ginny Skalski, 30Threads.com journalist, new Twitter friend, and blogger at Ginny From The Blog, interviews Kevin:

So, congratulations to my upstanding city and all of my friends who work so hard to promote it to the blogosphere!

And feel free to add to the comments any other penis puns I may have passed over.

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