New York Shoves Its Way to the Top of the ‘Rudest Cities’ List

New York City, with all its rushed inhabitants, bullied its way to the top of the list without so much as a friendly wave to those cities it passed along the way

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Gary Hershorn / Reuters

New York: pretty city, rude people

Saying New York City ranks as the rudest city in the union is akin to saying Seattle has the best coffee in all the land. We have believed it for years, so we still believe it. Whether right or wrong, Travel + Leisure readers have declared it so (on both accounts) yet again.

In the magazine’s America’s Rudest Cities poll, New York pushed its way to the top of the 35 cities in the running, sending Los Angeles, Washington and Miami just a smidgen further down the list.

New York, with all its rushed inhabitants, bullied its way to the top of the list without so much as a friendly wave to those cities it passed along the way. And while New York was no surprise at the top of the list, sunny Miami slid in at No. 2. Also ranked high in terms of attractive people and wild nightlife, maybe Miami seemed a bit superficial for some voters.

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All those important folks in their power suits, feverishly typing on their BlackBerrys in Washington, seem to have rubbed voters the wrong way, landing the city in third place. But if you go, the city ranked tops for museums and historical monuments, so perhaps chatting with people in D.C. isn’t really needed anyway.

Los Angeles — home of the famed road rage — and Boston rounded out the top five of the rudest, bolstering the trend that the larger the city, the greater the rudeness.

And if you thought rudeness was reserved mainly for cold-weather climates, the bottom half of the top-10 list bucks that thought. Dallas/Forth Worth (do you blame Dallas or Fort Worth on this one?), Atlanta (this city didn’t do too well on many categories, actually) and Phoenix/Scottsdale took the next three spots. The brashness of Baltimore grabbed ninth, and tourist-overloaded Orlando rounded out the final spot.

But where do you go for some niceties and slowness? Try out the South (just not Atlanta, mind you) for Savannah, Ga.; New Orleans; and Charleston, S.C. Savannah and New York not at the same ends of the list? Shocking. Just shocking.

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