Seattle Times Reports Wauna 10th Worst Suburb in Washington

Ted Olinger, KP News

The Purdy Bridge connects Wauna to Purdy. Photo: Ed Johnson.

WAUNA, April 1—The Seattle Times reported March 8 that Wauna was the 10th worst suburb in Washington State, according to a survey produced by the brain trust known as Roadsnacks.net.

Using "science and data," researchers at Roadsnacks.net determined that among other faults, Wauna suffers from low unemployment, affordable housing and, in their words, “no thing (sic) to do.”

Roadsnacks.net called Port Orchard the fourth worst place to live in Washington because of their unemployment rate of 5.5 percent (cowering in the shadow of the national average 4.9 percent) and because “it's not a real port.”

Bainbridge Island was branded the 10th worse place to live in Washington because of “being surrounded by water.”

Roadsnacks.net does not define the difference between “worst suburb” and “worst place.”

Local reaction in Wauna ranged from puzzlement to resignation. A fly fisherman casting his line into the waters of Henderson Bay said, “We’re a suburb?”

Another resident, who likewise declined to give her name, confessed on hearing the news, “It's true. Like all Key Penners, I have no thing (sic) to do,” she said while walking her dogs and playing with children on the Purdy Spit on a sunny spring day.

The methodology of Roadsnacks.net includes mining census reports and “data from around the Web.” According to their own website, “We try to paint a picture of what’s happening in a region based on ‘Friday Night Science’ — how’d you argue at a bar.”

Headquartered in Durham, NC, Roadsnacks.net has conducted similar in-depth analysis into their own state, producing lists of the worst places to live, the most dangerous cities, and their “most redneck places.”

Durham does not appear on any of them.

Remarkably, Roadsnacks.net did accurately identify Seattle as the fifth snobbiest city in the U.S.

For more information, go to: seattlerefined.com/travel/new-study.