Jardine: Who gets to criticize life in Modesto? Just us

We go through these fits of civic schizophrenia every now and then.

On one hand, Modesto will host the Amgen Tour of California's Stage 3 on Tuesday, putting on its best dress, makeup and a dab of Chanel No. 5 for a quick walk down the big time's red carpet.

On the other, the city just got slammed again by Forbes Magazine, which ranked Modesto as the fifth-most miserable city in America. The only salvageable thing from such a slap would be a potential new slogan for the I Street arch:

"This Isn't Stockton!"

Somewhere, framed by the glitz of seeing Lance Armstrong zoom by and the ultimate humiliation of being listed so prominently among the nation's urban cesspools, is daily life as we know it here in the valley.

I, for one, refuse to let Steve Forbes and his magazine define us. Here's a spoiled rich kid whose inheritance included a magazine that appeals to the same Wall Street ilk that gave themselves zillion-dollar bonuses out of your federal bailout dollars.

No, the right to rip Modesto and the valley belongs to the people who live here, work here, play here, send their kids to school (where they might lag behind on the test scores) here, grow the food the world relies on here, are in debt up to their eyeballs here, are homeless here, had their cars stolen here and everything else -- good and bad -- that goes on here.

Oh, yeah, and who also don't subscribe to Forbes' magazine here, whether we can afford it or not.

In other words, we don't need someone who never spends a minute here to tell us what's wrong. We can do that for ourselves. If he's so concerned about the quality of life in Modesto and other American cities, perhaps he could spare some of his vast fortune, augmented in no small part by selling his list-filled magazines, to help improve them. (Note to Steve: If you choose that option, say nothing about it to Gov. Schwarzenegger. He'll just shanghai it for the state budget).

We've been on these lists before. Police are hoping the recent 25 percent year-to-year drop in auto theft will allow Modesto to shed its No. 1 national ranking.

A few years ago, the so-called "Best Places" survey ranked Modesto No. 8 among America's most stressed-out cities. Heck, right now, Modesto isn't even the most stressed out city in Stanislaus County. That would go to Turlock, based upon the recent antics of its council members.

In 2003, Self magazine rated Modesto the nation's worst city for women's fitness. And Men's Health ranked Modesto 88th out of 101 cities and gave Modesto F's for fitness and quality of life, along with a D for overall heath.

All of those ratings, by the way, came from the same guy -- Bert Sperling of Portland, Ore. -- who makes his living doing quality-of-life surveys.

The problem is that once a city gets on these lists, it's impossible to get off of them -- you know, like kicking a cheeseburger addiction. When magazines like Forbes do their lists, I suspect they do a Google search for worst cities and, voilà!, there we are. Easy pickings.

If they really did their homework, they'd know Modesto now has a world-class entertainment venue in the Gallo Center for the Arts, the world's largest winery, that George Lucas grew up here, and that Amgen saw fit to bring its world-class cycling tour here.

Finally, according to Forbes, Chicago -- which once hosted a World's Fair, is home to Wrigley Field and which just sent one of its own to the presidency -- is even worse off than Modesto (but not worse than Stockton).

So it's hard to take the miserable cities rankings, and Modesto's place among them, too seriously.

And when Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer and the rest roll into town Tuesday, the only list that counts is their order of finish.

Take that, Mr. Forbes.

Jeff Jardine's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Local News. He can be reached at 578-2383 or jjardine@modbee.com.