And the best neighborhood for trick-or-treating in Washington is....
The West End.
So says a real estate Web site that used a mathematical formula to rank the best cities and best neighborhoods within those cities for collecting candy on Halloween.
(bigstock)
The folks at Zillow compared walkability, crime rates, density and home values to come up with the rankings. Researchers said those variables reveal the cities that will provide “the most candy with the least walking and safety risks.”
Run those numbers and that’s how they reached the dubious conclusion that The West End, a cluster of townhouses and apartment buildings between Georgetown and Dupont, is the best. (Washington landed at no. 7 overall.)
The problem is West End isn’t exactly strollerville and tends to be sleepy on Halloween, so much so that the few residents with kids have been known to de-camp to other locales for the night. (The other questionable “winners”: Kalorama, the U Street Corridor (!), Georgetown and Dupont Circle.)
The results are an extreme example of the problem with ranking an experience that is inherently subjective. There have been plenty of odd choices on ranking of “best” places to go to school or to retire or to raise kids (though I maintain that Parenting Magazine was on to something when it ranked Washington as the top city for that distinction earlier this year.)
In the current case, there are a few obvious flaws in the equation. Home values have exactly zero to do with the quality of trick-or-treating. The presence of families has almost everything to do with it. How could suburbs be ignored?
There’s also a lack of necessary information: Where have the most bags of mini Snickers been sold recently? I’d bring my girls to trick-or-treat there.
How do you rank Washington trick-or-treating? Where are the best (and worst) neighborhoods for filling the candy sack?
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