New York has been named the dirtiest out of 35 American metropolitan areas by the out-of-towners who read Travel + Leisure magazine.

Tourists cited New York’s garbage-piled sidewalks and funky odors to shove Gotham to the top of the trash heap in the poll, which is part of the magazine’s annual America’s Favorite Cities survey.

The magazine polled 50,000 people online, but the tourists were the harshest.

You’d think New Yorkers would be quick to defend the capital of the world — but the nose knows; city residents ranked our rankness as the second-worst in the nation, behind, obviously, Baltimore.

“New York is beyond nasty!” said Nevillyn Parsons, 42, a city resident who recently snapped a photo of a rat rummaging through garbage outside a Brooklyn courthouse.

Of course, Mayor Bloomberg covered the stench of defeat in a floral spray of spin.

“Sounds like the people in this survey haven't been here in a long while,” said mayoral spokeswoman Julie Wood.

The city’s 50 million tourists last year, she added, “saw for themselves that the city is cleaner than ever.”

A recent Sanitation Department report gave the city’s streets a 95% cleanliness rating, up from 70% in the 1970s. But nonnative New Yorkers weren’t buying that particular bridge Monday.

Other cities “don't have the same smell of (urine) and the rodent problem that you have here,” said Derek Snow, 35, who moved to New York from Boston. “But if you want the extremely awesome, you have to take the extremely bad.”

New Yorkers may be slightly more immune to their city’s grit and grime — and the occasional skittering rodent — as they slog to their jobs every day.

But they’re not so thrilled once they get there. New York ranked only 17th in a separate survey of the 20 “happiest cities” for young professionals ranked by CareerBliss.com.

(Read by Brian Salter. Brian Salter is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

点击查看更多双语新闻

(Agencies)