By Janis Mara –
Forget about leaving your heart in San Francisco. It turns out that Concord is America’s happiest city.
An analysis released Thursday by HouseFresh.com, a site focused on improving residential air quality, placed Concord in the Number One slot.
“The hometown of Tom Hanks is said to be a quiet and pleasant place to live: moderately wealthy, moderately liberal, and more affordable than similar cities nearby,” according to the HouseFresh.com website, and who are we to quarrel with this flattering assessment?
The rating method was, er, interesting. It was based on how many people in each city or state in America were smiling in their Instagram selfies. Yes, really.
HouseFresh.com used a face recognition API known as Azure to analyze a database of Instagram selfies from each state, as well as the 100 biggest U.S. cities.
The locations were ranked by the percentage of people smiling. Apparently, 74.4 percent of the Concord residents had a grin above their chin.
Regardless of the relative efficacy of this approach, one result is not unlikely: Residents of the East Bay might well be smiling at the ratings two of their towns recently received.
Not only is Concord now Number One in the eyes of HouseFresh, personal finance website WalletHub in March awarded the same honor to the City of Fremont.
Returning to the HouseFresh rankings, the top five below Concord were Provo, Utah; Knoxville, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; and Mesa, Arizona.
Yet another victory for the East Bay: San Francisco came in 15th, quite a snub.
A fake rating based on Instagram photos. Give me a break.
THIS is so dumb, and not true. From smiles on social media….what a joke.
OMGosh..
You simply cannot make crap like this up..
I cannot believe this was even printed!
That’s Dandy!
Did they mention the unhappiest city? Just curious.
Yes .it’s Clayton,they are stuck living next door to Concord.
Clayton is Baja Concord.
Absolute BS.I live on a street where people who voice their opinion out loud when walking or driving by,hate this city,and voice it all day,all night.
This is one of the most unhappy cities i’ve ever seen and i gets worse ans the SF homeless now come here cause the policies about the homelsss are the same.Think about that,and what’;s coming,we are an SF copy,as far as city policies,and yes,there is $hit everywhere.
PS
A 1 bedroom apartment for $2500 is not’affordable’
These people got paid to do this study and come up with fa-la-la as the result..
What did this cost?
More feel good BS to convince low informationers that your life and city arent going into the toilet when it is.
And liberals eat it up.
Am liberal, also think this is horse excrement. What makes you need to align this with a political party? Sometimes stupid is just stupid.
Munchies, smile ? ? ? ?
Concord once was a fantastic city. I still have hope. I saw a gentleman wearing a go Brandon t shirt at safeway, so I still have hope.
hahahahahahahaa too many druggies smiling in selfies.
This is literally a joke!!!
I’ve run my fair share of surveys in my professional life, and I cannot imagine what moron came up with the idea to assess a city’s “happiness” based solely on the most sming people using IG, and who are located in Concord CA. Do I have that about right?
I know so many people who have become “anti-social media”. They’re not included in this survey, but they might be the happiest person on earth.
And, if the IG page is “private”, the surveyors cannot check to see if the people in the photos are smiling, correct?
Who ever said those who smile are also happy? See Also: Robin Williams (may he rest in peace, finally).
I’m beginning to think I have missed out on a fantastic way to make easy money, by asking clueless government people to pay me to do surveys from the comfort of my home, using some of the most flawed statistical processes I can construe. Anybody want to help me do simple math for millions?
WDG
What about the horrible streets, City Council? For example Treat Blvd just to name one of many in bad shape.
Concord has the happiest streets in CA. The streets were smiling on their IG pages too.
Professor. To bad the smiling streets are missing teeth. ( potholes )
Who knew?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Funniest award.
“The hometown of Tom Hanks….”…BFD
Hanks hates Concord.
@Dr Jellyfinger….While watching “Evil” I kept waiting for him to show up so he and Peter Scolari would be reunited for a Bosom Buddies reunion episode…..Father Kip, Father Henry fight an evil monkey pox demon and they become possessed.
Yep. I’d watch that one.
+++
Oh nuts…. can’t happen. Scolari died last October.
@Dr. Jellyfinger…..I thought to myself he looked a little “peekid” on that show. Oh well….another one I’ve outlived by a couple of years….knock on wood.
fix the potholes
As voted on by the Northern California Association of Drugged-up Zombies …
To be fair, I’m sure a lot of people in Concord are laughing pretty hard right now, so that article has some truth to it.
Note my Whatever comment form yesterday:
S August 21, 2022 at 11:28 AM
HAHAHAHAHAaaaaaaaaaaa
and the pic they use isn’t even Concord….
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-city-named-happiest-in-america-study-says/
What idiot thought that one up they don’t live in Concord.LMAO
Concord, where a former councilmember always referred to Todos Santos PLAZA as Todos Santos park, and who is now a State Assemblyman. If you’re thinking it might be Tim Grayson, who never shows his nose around town anymore, you’re right. I just got a flyer in the mail for some seminar he’s doing, so election time must be coming soon, and, although I’m registered for his party, he won’t get my vote, but his opponent will. Has he sponsored any meaningful legislation while supposedly doing his job in Sacramento? Not that I’m aware of. He’s your typical politician; all for Grayson, not for Concord.
Well I’m certainly glad I don’t live in, eat or ever drive thru Concord.. so I’m very happy!
Clearly they didn’t stop by this website for any keen insight as to just how disgruntled citizens around these parts are….
When driving on Clayton road you see crankster guys on the sidewalk with a slightly agitated look of mindless contentment. That must be what the survey is referring to.
When I drive on Clayton Rd, and I do frequently, I’m watching the traffic, not those on the sidewalks.
Reminds me of a bumper sticker from the 80’s-
If you don’t like the way I drive
Stay off the Sidewalk
@The Fearless Spectator….”a slightly agitated look of mindless contentment.”…you make it sound just like a lovely state of mind….nice composition.
This survey was taken 40 years ago. they’re just now releasing the news.
GIGO. Babies appear to smile when they have gas.
@Wesley Mouch….So do Slo Joe and Eric Swallowell, also dogs.
Bahahaha, these comments crack me up. You can tell who’s who by WHAT they complain about. Yes we smile and we laugh here in concord ALOT. And the air quality is 1000 % our trees and birds and squirrels who clean the trees. Our natural air filters! Definitely laugh and smile a lot!
Bahahaha, these comments crack me up. You can tell who’s who by WHAT they complain about. Yes we smile and we laugh here in concord ALOT. And the air quality is 1000 % our trees and birds and squirrels who clean the trees. Our natural air filters our beautiful trees!
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Smiling faces sometimes they don’t tell the truth…
A smile is just a frown, upside down…
Just an observation
@chuckie the troll…”Can ya dig it?”
… ok – so who got the payola on this one? 🙂
We can see clearly here that the 25.6% are right here on Claycord. The amazing thing is that so many people in Concord continue to spread the Joy and Love despite the sour life approach of these people.
Spreading too much love and joy can be dangerous. Monkeypox, doncha know?
A side observation:
When you capitalize Joy and Love, you insinuate that they are people. I don’t think Joy and Love were asked if they consented to Vandy’s continued spreading.
The mural on the wall behind the singers is obviously Concord & Mt. Diablo.
https://tinyurl.com/yysymeaf
This is the biggest joke ever and that take some now days. Concord has a slew of issues that need to be addressed and they are not. Who got paid off to put this in the media?
The biggest lie ever. Paid for by the chamber of commerce. I can’t wait to move to Wyoming.
Whos writing this BS? Im a lifelong Concordian and can say this is utter BS…. stop it!
@Dr Jellyfinger everyone hates Concord, including the people who live there.
Any time you see a list of top-anything, you have to consider who put the list together and what rating criteria they used. Nevertheless, I’ve lived in four of their top-10 cities and liked them all. In my never-humble opinion, Concord was a great place to live and raise a family.
Sure Cowellian, the part of Concord you grew up in didn’t have that Monument Blvd. Detroit Ave type charm…. Concord isn’t/wasn’t all bad, but let’s get real….. it isn’t the happiest anything on anybody’s list.
I think that mid-south politeness is just taking a hold of you since you settled there.
I was raised here, so it’s in my nature.
On the other hand, I did spend several years in the Navy, so speaking fluent sailor is also in my nature.
Hello, Janis, it’s nice to see you back on Claycord!
I’ll bet everyone who arrived in Concord way back when it was only known as “Drunken Indian” all had a great big grin when they heard that was the name of the town.
Drunken Indian was one of several names that Concord was known by.
@jaguarcat….Tony Joe White wrote and sang Polk Salad Annie, by far the best. As for the WW1 memorial, it was on CC Blvd. and Monument Blvd. long before 680 was built, it was moved to it’s present location in 1954….
https://youtu.be/MCSsVvlj6YA
By who? Alfred E. Neuman of MAD Magazine?
@jaguarcat..…I was distracted and forgot to add this at the end of my last comment. That part of 680 was built about 10 years after the monument was moved in ’54. So actually 680 was built next to the monument, not the other way around.
Of course Concord, Ca is the happiest city in the Nation – it’s where I host Karaoke, every Friday night at the Captain’s Chest!
@ CI – No joke, sometime wayyy back in the 1800’s Concord was known as “Drunken Indian” really, look it up…. I don’t know who named it that.
As for the rest of you…. “Polk” is actually a misspelling of “Poke” as in “Poke Weed” which is in fact poisonous, and has to be cooked two or three times to remove the toxins from it… it looks like a Tobacco plant & after it’s cooked it looks like garbage.
Anyway, Tony Joe White (who wrote Polk Salad Annie) spelled it with an L
and now it is pretty much impossible to correct.
@Dr. Jellyfinger..….Poke, Polk…whatever, give me okra any day, you’re favorite.