Houston books a top spot in new ranking of country’s geekiest cities
GEEKS WELCOME
Houston geeks, unite. Bayou City has been ranked the sixth-geekiest big city in the U.S.
In honor of Embrace Your Geekness Day (July 13), Lawn Love ranked the 200 largest cities in the U.S. to determine their geekiness level. It relied on factors such as number of stores selling comics and video games, number of geek Meetup groups, and number of costume shops to develop the ranking.
Houston ranked:
- Fifth for number of comic book stores
- Fifth for number of “fan-cons”
- Sixth for number of cosplay/costume stores
- Tenth for number of geek Meetup groups
“Read your favorite comics from Third Planet before finding the perfect pieces at Four Quarters Costumes for your next cosplay,” Lawn Love recommends to Houston geeks.
One other city in Texas actually outdid Houston in terms of geekiness. San Antonio ranks fifth, one spot above Bayou City. The remainder of Texas’ mega-cities appear in the top 50: Austin at No. 9, Dallas at No. 21, and Fort Worth at No. 48.
Here’s how the rest of Texas’ big cities fared in the study:
- Plano, No. 58
- Irving, No. 60
- El Paso, No. 73
- Arlington, No. 76
- Lubbock, No. 87
- Killeen, No. 108
- Corpus Christi, No. 110
- McAllen, No. 121
- Denton, No. 127
- Midland, No. 148
- Garland, No. 162
- Frisco, No. 164
- Mesquite, No. 169
- Pasadena, No. 174
- Grand Prairie, No. 177
- Laredo, No. 181
- Brownsville, No. 186 (tie)
- McKinney, No. 186 (tie)
Now, you might be wondering what the difference is between a geek and a nerd. Although the terms often are used interchangeably these days, there technically is a difference, according to Rob Weiner, popular culture and humanities librarian at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
“A geek is one who is obsessed with collecting materials and following trends about their subject of interest, while a nerd is one who is educated and intellectual about a certain topic or subject area,” Weiner tells Lawn Love. “Nerds focus more on a wider breath of knowledge (and usually have a more technical or scientific knowledge base), while geeks focus on collecting and trends that go with pop culture.”
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This article originally ran on CultureMap.
