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Laugh It Up: Indianapolis Has More Culture Than Los Angeles

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Woody Allen famously says in Annie Hall that Los Angeles's only cultural advantage is that "you can make a right turn on a red light," and a new survey from real estate website PropertyShark appears to agree. PS counted up venues designated for either cultural or recreational purposes ("ranging from museums, libraries and theaters to parks or stadiums"), then factored in population size, deciding that the fewer people there were to share cultural spaces, the better (so one venue to every 300 people is better than one venue to every 3,000). Based on all that, LA proceeded to come in a disappointing seventeenth place out of 20, with one culture/rec location for every 5,210 people (it came in seventh for total locations, with 774).

Um, what? Forgive us for rolling our eyes, but when LA loses a culture contest to Las Vegas—ranked twelfth on the list!—we get a little skeptical. They probably didn't count galleries, the many events that don't take place in actual buildings (book and music festivals), public art, or the giant corporate cultural machinery that region is famed for. Now, let's just close our eyes and concentrate on all those things and pretend we didn't just lose to Vegas.
· Top 20 U.S. Cities for Culture: Cultural Venues Density per City Population [PS]