Laguna Beach Among Best Small Towns in America, Smithsonian Says

Laguna Beach landed at number 17 on Smithsonian magazine's just-released list of the 20 Best Small Towns In America. Yay, us!

But somehow, incredibly, there are 16 cities ranking above us, including such godforsaken slums as Great Barrington, Massachusetts; Taos, New Mexico; Marfa, Texas; Menomonie, Wisconsin; and Red Bank, New Jersey.

New Jersey, better than Laguna Beach? Whatevs, Smithsonian!

To compile the list, the mag went to some stat-crunching company called Esri to search its databases for "high concentrations of museums, historic sites, botanic gardens, resident orchestras, art galleries and other cultural assets common to big cities."

They kept the focus on towns of less than 25,000 "so travelers could experience what might be called enlightened good times in an unhurried, charming setting."

Hmmm. Charming until they get stuck in Laguna Canyon traffic on a late summer afternoon, anyway. The very term "small town" is a tad misleading in this case, since it suggests a kind of bucolic way of life that, in Laguna Beach at least, gets tossed out the window once you realize 3 million tourists every year also want to get a piece of our "small town" lifestyle, regularly making our small town into anything but a small town ...

But we're being crotchety. Here's the complete list, in order of ranking:

1. Great Barrington, MA
2. Taos, NM
3. Red Bank, NJ
4. Mill Valley, CA
5. Gig Harbor, WA
6. Durango, CO
7. Butler, PA
8. Marfa, TX
9. Naples, FL
10. Staunton, VA
11. Brattleboro, VT
12. Princeton, NJ
13. Brunswick, ME
14. Siloam Springs, AR
15. Menomonie, WI
16. Key West, FL
17. Laguna Beach, CA
18. Ashland, OR
19. Beckley City, WV
20. Oxford, MS