(June 18, 2012) — Louisville, Ky., was named the 11th “manliest” city in the 2012 list of “America’s Manliest Cities.”
The list is compiled by Combos — part of Mars Chocolate North America — with the help of research expert Bert Sperling, who engineers the “Best Places to Live” study.
The Combos list takes 50 major metropolitan areas and ranks them from manliest to least manly, according to a press release from Mars. The study compiles manly metrics of each city like the number of home improvement stores, steak houses, manly occupations and motorcycles per capita. But just like a high concentration of construction workers can boost a city’s manly measure, an excess of cupcake shops and fancy furniture stores can hurt a city’s rank.
Oklahoma City took the top spot, followed by Columbia, S.C.
Toledo, Ohio, was No. 8, followed by Cleveland, Ohio, at No. 9. Cincinnati was 12th.
San Diego, Calif., was named the least manly.
Louisville and Cincinnati moved up two spots this year. Toledo moved up four spots and Cleveland moved down three spots.
The rankings were determined using 50 of the largest metropolitan areas as defined by the United States Census Bureau, which includes a central city and the surrounding county (or counties). Each metro area received a manliness rating between 0 and 100 based on how well it performed in each of the study’s manly categories. All data was adjusted by the current population of the cities to arrive at “per capita” figures, providing an accurate comparison between cities of varying sizes.
This year, Combos also used personal rankings of 10 individuals to help determine manliness. The “Board of Manliness” included actor/bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Rollie Fingers, comedian and actress Judy Gold, retired WWE wrestler Sergeant Slaughter, professional lumberjack Mike Sullivan and others.
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