The city of Minneapolis' website is a nice little reassurance that it's not spending tax dollars on fancy design. It's so basic you could probably call it up on an Etch-A-Sketch. I go there weekly to find out which award Minneapolis has won because we're always getting kudos for something, and sure enough: The City of Lakes has been named by Travel + Leisure magazine "the city most likely to recycle our press releases as a newspaper column." Happy to help! Also: AMERICA'S CLEANEST CITY.

This comes as no surprise; we are neat. We are also polite and smart and eat our vegetables and look both ways before crossing the street. And, according to Bon Appetit, we're the city most likely to dab our lips with a napkin instead of wipe. We are, in short, the urban version of the goody-two-shoes who got his books knocked out of his hand in junior high. We wish we didn't sit so close to certain suburbs because they have cooties, but it would be impolite to say anything, so we just make a big dramatic show of sitting on our chair as far away as possible ("Most Passive-Aggressive City," Psychology Today, June 2009). We are not overly plagued with young men from the Volunteer Expectoration Corps who roam the street hawking loogies for no particular reason. We are pristine. St. Paul? Well, they have a big cathedral. It all works out: cleanliness next to godliness.

But I was curious about the survey. If the fine print said, "Based on a random survey of 1,396 people named Anderson who force the dog to wear a purple jersey every fall," you might suspect the methodology.

Well, it turns out we didn't finish first in a list of cleanest cities. We finished last in a list of 30 filthiest cities. This is different. This is like being last in a list of diners most likely to serve burgers writhing with E. coli and calling yourself the town's top restaurant. What criteria were used? Let us quote from Travel + Leisure's website:

"Maybe it's the eight miles of covered skyways that keeps trash off the streets and parks. (Or maybe it's an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing.)"

Yes, I can't tell you the number of times I've been walking around the lake with a Hefty bag of household waste, couldn't find a trash can, and took a cab down to the skyways. Find me a covered second-floor walkway, driver, and don't spare the horses! "Or maybe it's an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing." What does that mean? The entire point of trash is putting it out of sight, no? It makes it sound like we're piling it in Block E and shouting, "LA, LA, LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU" when someone points out that the flies are so thick they block out the sun.

The Filthiest Burg wasn't the entire point of the survey. There were 30 other categories. I assume we didn't top any of them, or the Minneapolis website would have put out a button-bustin' press release touting our No. 1 status as America's Best City For Biking to a Sushi Bar That Features Oiled Midget Wrestling. (Alas, we are but No. 5.) We should be happy to be clean, but it's a bit like being named Best Complexion in the high school yearbook. People go to New York for vacation to see shows and eat, even though you want to exfoliate with sandpaper after a day.

Still, it's better than "Top City Where a Fella Could Lose a Toe in January," and if you're going to choose a place to live, clean is good. How do we manage it? We were raised right, perhaps. Maybe great flocks of nocturnal loons pick up trash overnight. (The city helps, too -- the website even has a page called "Find Your Garbage Day." That's Thursday, for me: I get a phone call that says "It's under the sink." Such service!)

But it's a lesson for other cities: If things are clean, people want to keep it clean. It's either that, or the wind blows everything into St. Paul.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/blogs/lileks