What’s Best About Reykjavík?

I’ve been thinking about this question for the last week, as we’ve been making our fourth annual Best of Reykjavík issue. This magazine is often critical, even negative, but every year we dedicate an entire issue to that superlative, “BEST.” In fact, the word appears xx* times in this issue.

So what’s best about Reykjavík? For starters, our city is run by The Best Party—at least that’s what the party calls itself. And we elected them because they wanted the best for our city.
They campaigned/sang to the tune of Tina Turner’s “Simply The Best:” “We want a city that’s cuddly and clean and cool…and topnotch stuff as a general rule…we want water fountains, trains, and all kinds of animals…we want free towels at the swimming pools, a polar bear for the Reykjavík zoo, all kinds for the unfortunates, Disneyland in the Vatnsmýri area, a drug-free parliament by 2020…And, and we will not accept mediocre because we want the best…”
You may not agree with their ideas of what’s best, and you may not agree with our idea of what’s best, but who really knows what’s best anyways. I won’t say that this is the best “Best of Reykjavík” guide, but it’s full of a lot of the things that we like.

Much like the group of people who wrote Iceland’s new Constitution (which has yet to be approved), we “crowdsourced” it. We called up a group of people to sit around and discuss the best of this and that in Reykjavík, and we sent out a poll and asked our Facebook and Twitter fans for their input too. Ultimately it was not a democratic process though, and perhaps it’s a stretch to say that we crowd sourced it at all. Sometimes we even made up award categories for things that that we like, just to be able say: “You’re the best.” And ultimately I think what’s best about Reykjavík is the fact that there are so many things worth calling the best.

*Believe it or not, the xx wasn’t a typo! If you can guess (or count) how many times the word “best” appears in this issue, I’ll buy you a hot dog and a coke at Bæjarins Beztu.