Taking the bait like a Bama big bass

The website is called HomeSnacks and I had never heard of it until about a week ago.

You see, HomeSnacks provides “infotainment” — their term, certainly not mine. Their stated goal is to combine recent data, fun videos, and thoughts about local culture into bite-sized snacks of shareable regional information.

Just call it what it is — click bait.

And I recently took the bait. The headline, “These Are The 10 Worst Places To Live In Alabama,” instantly had my attention. In 55 years, I have lived all over the great state of Alabama. Surely, if they were going to name the 10 worst places to live in the Heart of Dixie, I would have lived in a few of them.

That hunch proved to be more than accurate. Using population, household income, house vacancy rate and crime, the folks at HomeSnacks went to work.

It didn’t take long for me to get a hit when I started the slide show — I did say this was click bait, right?

Coming in at No. 10, Phenix City. They call it a stone’s throw from the Georgia line. “It was ranked as one of the most affordable suburbs to raise kids, eight years ago, by BusinessWeek magazine, and has been named as a great place for nightlife,” it reads. “That’s why it’s surprising that Phenix City ranked so high on this list. But, the data never lies.”

Yes it does, if you’ve got the right person manipulating it. And Phenix City is far from one of the 10 worst places to live in Alabama.

And, by the way, I don’t recall anyone saying Phenix City was a great place for nightlife.

No. 9, Eufaula. Wow, my hometown is the ninth worst place in Alabama to live. I can give you two dozen worse places without blinking an eye.

“It’s sparsely populated, and an hour from Birmingham,” according to HomeSnacks’ reasoning. An hour from Birmingham? There goes your credibility. It usually takes me three hours, but I have only driven it a zillion times.

No. 8 is Fort Payne and No. 7 is Talladega. Guess they don’t like country music or NASCAR. No. 6 is Selma. No. 5 is Atmore. I have spent time in all these places, but never lived in one.

No. 4 is a different story: Anniston. I lived there for nearly two years and loved my job as a sports writer for the Anniston Star, but never could get comfortable with the place.

“Anniston is out in an area on its own, about an hour drive east of Birmingham,” the folks at HomeSnacks say. At least they got the mileage right this time.

“In 2002, it was determined by 60 Minutes that Anniston was one of the highest-contaminated cities in the country,” it reads. There were a lot of chemicals there from Monsanto to the Anniston Army Depot.

If this was my list, Anniston might have been No. 1. But it isn’t.

The list rounds out with No. 3 Bessemer, No. 2 Prichard and No. 1 — drumroll, please — Gadsden. It’s hard to argue with Gadsden, but I know some folks will.

So, I have lived in about half the “worst places” in Alabama. For my money, they left Daleville off the list.

This story was originally published June 8, 2016 at 3:27 PM with the headline "Taking the bait like a Bama big bass."