Miami Ranked Ninth Coolest City by Uncool Forbes Poll

via Robot Academy

​Forbes.com has decided to rank America's "coolest" cities (and they don't mean by temperature) using the decidedly square methods of polling. Miami made the top ten, so we're not exactly complaining, but somehow our Sunshine State sister Orlando came in three places higher, which just has us scratching our head. However, Miami did make the biggest gain in "coolness" from last year.

Forbes had Harris Interactive poll 2,104 Americans to ask them which U.S. cities they thought were the coolest. Miami came in at a respectable ninth.

Here's what Forbes says of Miami:

Miami took the biggest leap in coolness, moving from 19th place in 2009, to ninth place this year. In the past decade, the city has increasingly been recognized for its cutting-edge art scene, and hip galleries have proliferated. The 2002 introduction of Art Basel, an annual contemporary art festival that originated in Switzerland, has helped force art-lovers around the world to grudgingly acknowledge the city's status as a high-culture taste-maker.

It's not clear whether recent news about basketball superstar LeBron James' defection to the Miami Heat did anything to affect the city's coolness factor -- but if the team goes on to perform as well as many observers suggest, it can only help the city's reputation.

Somehow, Orlando came in sixth. We're not sure who thinks Mickey Mouse is cooler than Cocaine Cowboys, but they must be decidedly L7.

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Besides, polling people is not the best way to decide coolness. You decide coolness by walking into a dive bar, putting out your cigarette under your black leather boot, reaching for another smoke from the box rolled up in your white T-shirt sleeve, hitting the jukebox twice to get it playing your favorite song, announcing the coolest cities, putting on your leather jacket and Ray-Bans, grabbing the hottest betty in the place, and then riding off on your motorcycle. Duh.

There was a tie for the number one coolest city this year: New York, which is cool if you can afford it these days, and Las Vegas, which is cool if you're Jon Gosselin.