St. Louis: The Sixth Manliest City in the U.S.

Combos, the pretzel-and-processed-cheese food that comprised an unhealthy proportion of my adolescent snacking, has released a new study revealing the 50 "manliest" cities in the country, and St. Louis ranks sixth! It trails only (in order) Nashville, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, Cincinnati and Denver.How did Combos come to this conclusion? The study was commissioned from the same dude who does those "Best Places to Live" studies.

[The study] ranks 50 major metropolitan areas using criteria such as number of professional major league sports teams, popularity of tools and hardware and frequency of monster truck rallies. Cities also lose ranking points for emasculating characteristics like the abundance of home furnishing stores, high minivan sales and subscription rates to beauty magazines.

Also:

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. Factors used to determine the manliest city rankings included the number of U.S.-made cars driven in the city, number of sports bars and BBQ restaurants, number of home improvement and hardware stores as well as manly salty snacks consumption.

The study singled out St. Louis for special praise:

If you're in the Midwest and looking to enjoy a game with a cold beverage, look no farther than St. Louis, which has the highest concentration of sports bars in the country.

What were the least manliest cities? Chicago — take that, Cubs fans! — Portland, San Fran, LA and New York.