Least safe title reflects city’s year of living dangerously

Dead last. Number 182. (With a bullet.) Some other year, the absurd notion that Fort Lauderdale is the least safe of America’s

182 major cities would elicit a heaping dollop of satire fromthe likes ofme.

I’d juxtapose life in our subtropical playground against the scary stereotypes borne by tough, impoverished but allegedly safer towns like Newark (ranked 150), Baltimore

(155), Detroit (178), St. Louis (181).(Mysteriously, St. Petersburg was rated Number 170, as if the somnolent Florida town had been confused with its Russian namesake.)

In a year less awful than 2020, I’d milk this for laughs, writing howwe natives brave the mean streets of a tourist town, negotiating ourway past desperate mobs of hipsters tussling for tables at Las Olas taco joints, everwatchful for kamikaze terrorists on electric rental scooters menacing the sidewalks.

Three years ago, when Fort Lauderdale was deemed only the second most dangerous municipality in America, I attributed such ignominy to the ubiquitous packs of Pomeranians, pugs, Pekingeses, Chihuahuas and shih tzus lurking under the tables at sidewalk cafes, ready to ambush the ankles of unsuspecting passersby “only held back by the pastel leashes clipped to their bejeweled collars.”

But 2020 has ruined the joke. The Sun Sentinel reports that so far this year, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties have suffered more COVID-19 infections than 42 states. “Least safe?” Maybe so.

The safest cities list was released lastweek by Wallet Hub, which describes itself as a financial services company. I have no idea what that entails, except that Wallet Hub reaps gobs of national publicity compiling all manner of rankings, most of which— at least in the past— have seemed both subjective and unprovable.

Miami, according to Wallet Hub, ranks as the sixth “most sinful” city in America, a characterization thatwould have you believe residents of Houston, Atlanta, even St. Louis for heaven’s sake, are out-sinning the irrepressible party animals of South Beach. Oddly, Walle tHub also placed Fort Lauderdale among the top 11 best places to retire in Florida (103 cities above the so-called retirement mecca The Villages.) It’s as if Wall etHub is directing America’s ancients to spend their golden years in Danger City.

Fort Lauderdale didn’t merit even a mention among America’s “best cities to raise a family.” (Pembroke Pines came in at 33.) Nor did our city of gushing sewers make the top 100 of “well-run” cities.

Miami may take the top ranking as the city most denigrated by self-anointed evaluators. Over the last decade, Miami has endured top ranking in Forbes’ list of America’s “most miserable” cities. Slate put Miami first (and Hialeah third) in the category of lousy drivers. Miami, Slate noted, was “first in automobile fatalities, first in pedestrian strikes, first in the obscenity-laced tirades against their fellow drivers.”

An outfit called 24/7Wall St. not only ranked Miami as the nation’s second worstrun city but the “Number one worst city in the whole USA.” Even uglier: GQ included Miami among its 10 “worst-dressed” cities.

The good news is that Terminex has removed the Fort Lauderdale/Miami region fromthe top 20 cities for bedbug infestation. We’re now ensconced at 36, though one wonders howa region struggling to complete a human census manages to track population fluctuations of teensy insects. After all that, we might have shrugged off Fort Lauderdale’s 182nd ranking as so much clickbait. But may be in 2020, Wallet Hub— in the manner of the blind squirrel foraging for nuts— has stumbled across a credible premise. Walle tHub apparently measures other criteria than violent crime, riots, hurricanes, floods, polluted water and insane drivers (admittedly, we have a few) in its pseudo-scientific formula. Economic factors are considered, like unemployment rates, individual debt loads and the 17% of Greater Fort Lauderdale residents struggling through a pandemic without health insurance.

This year, Wallet Hub included COVID-19 vulnerabilities in its safety assessment. With more than 111,000 infections and 1,700 deaths from COVID-19 complications so far this year, Broward County, and by extension Fort Lauderdale, have become dangerous places to live. And getting more so.

We’re nowin the throes of a steadily worsening fall-to-winter COVID-19 surge, a situation complicated by a president and a governor with no regard for CDC guidelines regarding masks and social distancing. Sadly, a sizable chunk of folks hereabout emulate their reckless ways. You can see it most evenings, strolling through Himmarshee Village, where the bars are jammed with barefaced, COVID -oblivious patrons.

Me to woman emerging from bar :“Why no mask?”

Maskless woman: “I’m sooo over that stuff.” Which explains Number 182.