"Clearwater City" -- the worst place to retire?

The following is from America On-Line's "Finance" page, in which they list the 13 worst places to retire. The worst place? Read on:

Clearwater City, Fla.
Too Many Fellow Seniors
This Tampa Bay area hamlet has the highest percentage of seniors of any U.S. city. This 'graying' of Florida in general, has caused many retirees to change their mind and leave, fleeing the bland culture, extreme weather and high real estate and homeowner's insurance prices of Florida.

Hmmph. For openers, there is no hamlet named "Clearwater City," although there is a city named the City of Clearwater. We have a Dade City, a Panama City, even a Florida City, but not a Clearwater City by that name. When I see a blunder like that, I have to ask, do they have any clue what they are talking about?

Having lived in the City of Clearwater (off and on) since 1955, I have as much right to knock my home town as anybody, and I have done so, but let's be fair. Clearwater was a small town until the 1960's, a nice place on the Gulf to grow up and then raise a family. As it grew over the past 40 years it never pretended to be another Tampa or even another St. Petersburg, which used to have a reputation as the place to retire and listen to your arteries harden as you sat on their green benches.

Too many seniors? If your idea of retirement is to hole up in a condo populated by people of your generation who have nothing to do but sit around and bitch about everything, that's a problem. Personally, I've met a lot of people older than myself, mainly through our Methodist church, and I can tell you they are a lively bunch of positive-minded people who would make great neighbors.

If you want culture, meaning the performing arts or the fine arts, you can go to several venues in the Tampa Bay area including our own Ruth Eckerd Hall. If "bland culture" means bland architecture and plain-vanilla Midwestern social values, we plead guilty, but so does every other city and town on Florida's Gulf Coast.

Extreme weather? It gets hot in the summer, but we never see 100-degree days or even temps in the high 90's. It ain't the heat, it's the humidity, which is why God created air-conditioning on the Eighth Day. In the winter, we rarely see a "hard freeze," which is what the strawberry and citrus growers call it when it drops below 32º F. for more than a few hours.

High real estate and homeowner's insurance prices? This is the only part of the piece that has any validity but none of it is unique to Clearwater. The real estate market is in the tank and prices are high, but that's a national problem. The state legislature is too deep in the pockets of the industry to make any headway on homeowner's insurance, but these problems are common throughout Florida.

In short, I've lived here for 29 of the past 52 years and will probably retire here unless I hit the Florida Lottery, and even then I'm not sure I'd blow the money on an expensive home somewhere else.