So, for some reason, COMBOS (you know, the pretzels with the cheese and whatever in them) did a ranking of the “Manliest” cities in America. Their findings: Charlotte, NC comes in first with Columbus, OH, Kansas City, Nashville, and Baltimore rounding out the top five. Portland finished last out of the 50 cities ranked.

Obviously, when we were emailed the study by COMBOS’ PR team, we wanted to know more about the methodology. So, here’s the explanation from the press release:

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.

Uh, so, there’s that (translation: We threw a bunch of pieces of paper into a hat and said “Cool, that sounds like something a study would say.”). The study ranks the cities using criteria such as “the number of home improvement stores ,steak houses, pickup trucks, and motorcycles per capita” along with “manly occupations” (such as fire fighters, police officers, construction works, and EMT personnel.

But what makes COMBOS so uniquely qualified to judge manliness? Well, they make a food that people get primarily when they’re high that consists primarily of salt and cheese. So that practically makes them like a young Steve McQueen, I suppose.

The full rankings for you to debate about in the comments:

1. Charlotte, NC (up 1 spot)
2. Columbus, OH (up 5 spots)
3. Kansas City, MO (up 5 spots)
4. Nashville, TN (down 3 spots)
5. Baltimore, MD (up 32 spots)
6. Milwaukee, WI (up 11 spots)
7. Chicago, IL (up 39 spots)
8. Indianapolis, IN (up 1 spot)
9. Washington, D.C. (up 36 spots)
10. Philadelphia, PA (up 20 spots)

If you are looking to buy a home in Charlotte, America’s Manliest City, give one of our agents a call!