America's unhappiest city?

Yeah, right.

I had to laugh when I saw that BusinessWeek.com had taken some random set of statistics, mushed them together and magically concluded that Portland ranked at the very top of their list of America's Unhappiest Cities.

Now, I'm blind to the area's flaws. We have symptoms of every urban problem that other cities do -- whether it's crime, gangs, drugs, prostitution, homelessness, inequities in educational achievement and employment and, most regrettably, a less diverse population than most.

But still. With all this lush greenery, clean air and outdoor recreation opportunities, not to mention progressive politics, fabulous food, microbrews and wine and less reliance on automobiles, you'd think we'd rank higher. But to understand our No. 1 ranking, you'd have to look at the criteria BusinessWeek.com used:

Overall rank: 1*
Depression rank: 1
Suicide rank: 12
Crime (property and violent) rank: 24
Divorce rate rank: 4
Cloudy days: 222
Unemployment rate (December 2008): 7.8%

Quoting from the magazine's Web site:
BusinessWeek.com ranked 50 of the largest metros based on a variety of factors including depression rates, suicide rates, divorce rates, crime, unemployment, population loss, job loss, weather, and green space. The most heavily weighted factors were the depression, suicide, jobs (unemployment and job loss), and crime rates. The depression rate is based on drug company data on antidepressant sales.

Portland's No. 24 ranking in the crime rate puts us in the middle of those 50 cities, so that's no big deal. I don't mean to minimize people's suicides, but does that reflect a one-year spike? No. 1 in antidepressant sales? Huh?

So is it about the weather? Is it about 222 cloudy days a year? Isn't climate a better indicator? Given the choice between rain and months of snow, I choose to get wet. It keeps the air clean and the grass green. In fact, here's what I said yesterday on Facebook:

Just came back from a six-mile run in Forest Park, where it started out sunny, then changed to a light rain, then hail, then snow and back to sunshine. And I thought, "I love it here." I'll take Oregon's variety-pack weather over California's constant sunshine anytime.

(What a coincidence. Just as I'm about to publish this post, I look outside and see it's snowing. Ha!)