EDITOR’S NOTE — To vote, go to http://tinyurl.com/pdn-best. You can also get current vote totals there.
Online voting now underway between Port Angeles and Chattanooga runs until 8:59 p.m. Thursday, June 4.
PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles clobbered Bar Harbor, Maine, by 6,350 votes in the Final Four semifinals of Outside magazine’s hotly competitive 2015 “Best Town Ever” contest.
Port Angeles, population 19,000, now faces Chattanooga, Tenn., population more than 173,000, for the title championship.
Voting has already begun, and the victor will be known shortly after 9 p.m. June 4.
Chattanooga was named “Best Town” in a similar contest by Outside, a nationally recognized outdoor and adventure magazine, in 2011.
The magazine’s contest is set up with brackets modeled on the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament.
When five days of Final Four online voting closed at 8:59 p.m. Thursday night, the count was 22,494, or 58.22 percent of the vote, for Port Angeles, the West division champion, and 16,144, or 41.78 percent, for Bar Harbor, the East division champ.
Chattanooga, the South division champ, dispatched Eau Claire, Wis., the Midwest champ. Chattanooga had a 4,558 vote margin over Eau Claire — 30,106, or 54.09 percent of the vote, to 25,548, or 45.91 percent.
The online voting in the contest has inspired social media campaigns and in-town “Vote PA!” signs and high-five camaraderie as residents across the North Olympic Peninsula push for Port Angeles to go all the way and win the title championship on June 4.
But Chattanooga has ardent partisans, too, and since it is so much bigger, the title run is expected to be uphill for Port Angeles.
This is the Outside magazine’s fifth annual “Best Town” contest.
Previous winners say the “Best Town” title has resulted in more tourism for them — and calls from businesses that want to relocate to their towns.
‘WE HAVE EARNED THIS SPOT’
“We’ve worked so hard to make it to the final round, and we have earned this spot by coming together as a community,” said Leslie Kidwell Robertson, the founder of Revitalize Port Angeles, a Facebook group, in a message to supporters.
“This next round is going to the hardest one by far, but I know we can do this. We need to show everyone why we deserve to win this contest.
“Chattanooga may be big, but they are certainly not the best.
“Port Angeles is like no other place in the world, and we need to spread that message far and wide.
“Sign up for Twitter if you haven’t already, keep sharing those pictures on Facebook, and do everything you can to show everyone that Port Angeles truly is the Best Outdoor Town ever!”
It’s been a Cinderella story for Port Angeles.
It was a last-minute wild-card entrant that won its way into the contest based on Instagram votes.
It then advanced through four rounds of voting to face Bar Harbor after bettering Santa Barbara, Calif., the No. 1 seed in the West, by a 28-vote margin in the first round; the Kitsap County city of Bainbridge Island in the second round (by 296 votes); the Colorado resort town of Glenwood Springs (by 488 votes) in the third round and Flagstaff, Ariz. (1,336 votes) in the fourth round.
Revitalize Port Angeles, which has more than 1,100 enthusiastic Facebook members, has used online posters, photos and a constant flow of cheerleading messages to get out the vote not just locally but nationwide.
After its defeat, disappointed Flagstaff supporters labeled Revitalize Port Angeles as “The Machine.”
The group, about a year old, has been behind attitude-changing revitalization efforts for Port Angeles, from putting together volunteers to paint an old wooden hill-climb stairway downtown and leading the charge for sprucing up buildings and parking lots around town to promoting successful sales by merchants.
The contest began May 4 with an original field of 64 towns and cities.
BRAGGING RIGHTS
There are no prizes in any of the brackets for the winning towns — but plenty of bragging rights. Plus a splashy, tourist-drawing profile for the winner in September’s edition of Outside.
The other 15 finalists in the contest will be featured either in the September magazine or on the magazine’s website. One voter will win a trip to the No. 1 town.
For 2015, Outside’s editors first chose 60 communities, including Chattanooga.
Among the factors used to select them: thriving restaurants and neighborhoods, good bike shops, access to trails and public lands and — “of course,” as the magazine noted — the local beer scene.
Then, via Instagram, Outside readers were asked to nominate their favorite towns, which resulted in Port Angeles — plus New York City, Roanoke, Va., and Saugatuck, Mich. — being added as wild-card entries.
New York and the other two cities were destroyed by their opponents in the first round of voting.
People supposedly can vote only once per round per matchup in the contest — but many voters have discovered Internet tricks that allow them to vote at least several times.
HOW THE CITIES ARE DESCRIBED
Outside has this description at its contest website for Chattanooga:
Population: 173,366
House Price: $138,100
Since Chattanooga won our Best Town award in 2011, its farm-to-table restaurant scene and whiskey distillery movement have boomed.
As for the world-class rock climbing at Foster Falls, mountain bike trails, and Class IV and V rapids on the Ocoee? Well, those haven’t changed.
The magazine describes Port Angeles like this:
Population: 19,190
House Price: $201,900
On one side of town, you’ve got Olympic National Park — nearly 1,500 square miles of wilderness for hiking, rafting, and camping.
On the other side is the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where you can hop into a sea kayak to paddle the Whale Trail.
And right in town? Easy access to the Olympic Discovery Trail for more than 60 miles of running or cycling.
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PDN Publisher-Editor John Brewer can be reached at 360-417-3500 or jbrewer@peninsuladailynews.com.
