A small town in Virginia has been maligned.
I’m here to defend it.
Granted, the offense here is not the most serious in the land, but I work from a zero-tolerance point of view.
The town getting the bum rap is Bridgewater and the allegation is that it’s the worst place in Virginia to make a Hallmark Channel movie.
Like I said, not the most serious allegation in the land, but if we let this kind of nonsense stand, who knows where we’ll wind up? It’s a slippery slope, man, a slippery slope.
So, let’s get to it. We begin with the time-honored adage “lies, damned lies and statistics.” Today we’re dealing with possibly all three, but we’ll start with statistics.
Our source is The Action Network, which bills itself as “a leading source for sports betting news, information, and analysis.” If you’ve got money riding on a game, well, it’s probably too late to consult these folks, but if you want to have money riding on a game, the Action Network says it has more than 15 years of sports betting data to help guide you.
There’s also another phrase that applies: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” What do statisticians do when they’re not computing the over-under on whether some teenager with an aptitude for throwing a bag of air will enter the transfer portal? They come up with things like this: The Action Network recently analyzed over 3,000 communities across the country based on small business density, historic places, and winter snowfall to identify the city in each state with the strongest Hallmark movie potential.”
Why? Another old line: “Because it’s there.”
The winner: Puyallup, Washington. “Washington cities in general rate well thanks to a mix of snowfall and strong small-business numbers,” the report says.
How the rankings were done
Here’s what The Action Network says:
We limited the field to incorporated cities between 3,000 and 50,000 people. Big enough for a real Main Street and a few romantic prospects, small enough to still feel neighborly and a little cinematic. Also, because Hallmark towns lean hard on independent bakeries, bookstores, gift shops, cafés, craft stores, and tree farms, we looked closely at small-business density. More small businesses = stronger Main Street energy.
We also weighed historic landmarks against population, meaning cities with no historic places were out. Charm is the whole point, and it’s tough for the lead to walk away from a high-powered city job to rehab a historic inn if there’s no inn. For winter weather, each city was assigned its state’s average December snowfall. Snow is basically a character in Hallmark movies, so more of it nudged a town’s odds up.
All four metrics were normalized, combined into a single Hallmark Likelihood Index, and used to rank every eligible city. The top-ranked city in each state became that state’s “most Hallmark-like” location.
Why snowfall and small business? If you have to ask that, you’ve clearly never watched a Hallmark movie. We’re not exactly talking “Game of Thrones” here, now are we? These shows are all cheery, uplifting dramas, typically with some romantic theme. They clearly aren’t real because the characters never spend any time bad-mouthing each other online over their political view — or betting on sports, either, but I digress. For you stat-heads out there, the criteria are in the accompanying box.
In Virginia, the place “with the strongest Hallmark movie potential” was deemed to be … the city of Fairfax.
No snickering there in the back. Let’s give Fairfax its due. Here’s what The Action Network says: “In Hallmark terms, Fairfax feels like a polished Mid-Atlantic holiday setting: a charming downtown anchored by local shops, community events on the town green, and a setting where tradition and modern life blend seamlessly. Its proximity to Washington, D.C., paired with its community-first feel, makes it an easy backdrop for stories about slowing down, reconnecting, and finding warmth close to home.”
Fairfax is quite proud of this honor, as it should be. “We’ve been posting on our social media channels about it,” Mayor Catherine Read tells me by email. (Fun fact: She was born in Galax and grew up in the Roanoke Valley, where she graduated from William Byrd High School in Roanoke County.) “Naturally, I’m very proud our little city is considered a hometown setting suitable for the heartwarming stories that Hallmark excels at portraying. We welcome the film crews anytime and will happily provide all the town characters the storyline might require.”
I don’t begrudge Fairfax winning at all. If they’ve got the stats, great. Now for the rest of the top five in Virginia:
1. Fairfax
2. Fredericksburg
3. Charlottesville
4. Manassas
5. Falls Church
This made me curious: Three of the five most Hallmark-like communities are in Northern Virginia. At that point, I did what any self-respecting journalist would do. I demanded to see the full list and all the scores. Well, “demanded” may not be the right word, since the press release said all that was available on request, but saying “demanded” makes me feel like I’m doing hard-core investigative journalism instead of falling for some cleverly written press release.
Here were the scores of those top five places, as measured on a scale with a maximum score of 100:
1. Fairfax 14.82
2. Fredericksburg 12.66
3. Charlottesville 11.68
4. Manassas 11.51
5. Falls Church 8.29
Being a gaming site, the Action Network calculated Fairfax’s odds of being the setting for a Hallmark movie at 1.9%, which is on the low end of things. Puyallup came in at 5.4%, followed by Farmington, Michigan, at 5.0%. Even Naples, Florida, beat us out at 4.3% and the last time I checked, Naples scores a big fat zero on the snowfall scale. Anyway, Fairfax is our Virginia champ. Congrats to Fairfax.
Being a journalist, I’m not content with just looking at good news. My eye immediately went to the bottom of the spreadsheet to see who scored worst. What poor, hardscrabble community had the indignity of being the least-qualified? I imagined some broken-down, derelict place full of boarded-up buildings where hope took the last train out years ago.
Instead, what do I find? Bridgewater!
If you don’t know this town in Rockingham County, it looks and feels nothing like the image I just conjured up above. It’s a picturesque little place with a growing economy and a growing population (currently about 6,600 or so). It’s certainly not poor: The Census Bureau puts the median household income at $81,012. It’s got a real downtown. It has a cultural center (the Sipe Center). It has a super-cool park that has an ice rink in the winter. It’s even got a college: Bridgewater College. How in the world did Bridgewater score at the bottom of this list, with a score of 0.63? On a scale of 100!
It wasn’t snowfall: Every place in Virginia on the Action Network list scored the same. Bridgewater did not score particularly high on business density count (likely because Harrisonburg is so close by), but not as low as others. What really pulled Bridgewater down was … the lack of historical sites. It scored lower than all but three other places: Colonial Heights, Vienna and Waynesboro.
That means Bridgewater (as well as the others) is being pulled down not because of what it is now, but because of what didn’t happen there a hundred years ago.
I asked Bridgewater officials about their town’s poor ranking. Mayor Ted Flory took it in good humor:
“Our residents often mention how living in Bridgewater feels like living in a Hallmark movie, especially around the holidays,” he said in an email. “We are proud of our thriving business community and the ways our people come together for celebrations like our tree lighting and parade. From proposals at the ice rink on Main Street to riverside weddings at Wildwood Park, Bridgewater would offer a great backdrop for any love story. We dare anyone to come to Bridgewater and not fall in love with our small town.”
I agree. Two skaters bumping into each other at the ice rink and then falling in love seems the perfect plot for a Hallmark movie. They could even take their relationship a step further by taking part in a Bridgewater tradition: Adding a “love lock” with their initials at Wildwood Park.
Yes, there are probably more serious issues in the land but the rule in politics is a charge unanswered is a charge agreed to. I’ll have more serious politics in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter. You can sign up here: