In Pittsburgh, it's still tough to be single.

Such was the message yesterday from Forbes magazine, which announced that Pittsburgh once again was the "worst" U.S. city in which to be young and unattached. It was Pittsburgh's second year at the bottom of Forbes' "Best Cities for Singles" list -- a list comprising 40 of the country's biggest metropolitan areas.

Pittsburgh is still picking itself up from last year's Forbes drubbing. Its 2002 ranking, accompanied by a story that tagged the "square" and "stagnant" city as "the worst place in American to be stuck with a lonely heart," struck a raw nerve among the many local organizations struggling to change Pittsburgh's image on a national scale. Pittsburghers flooded the magazine with more than 240 e-mails, one of them deriding the survey and story as "easily the most irresponsible piece of journalism I've ever seen."

To arrive at its conclusions this time around, Forbes gathered six measurements for the 40 cities it surveyed: projected job growth, number of bars and clubs, cost of living, number of singles, amount of "culture" and number of "bohemians" as measured by Carnegie Mellon University professor Richard Florida. Pittsburgh's worst performance in the six categories was job growth, where it placed 39th out of 40. Its best placement was cost of living, where it placed 26th. Forbes also asked readers to provide thumbs up or thumbs down for each city, and despite last year's outpouring of support for Pittsburgh, only 29 percent of the respondents gave it a thumbs-up.

Because of the hostile response he received here last year, Forbes writer Davide Dukcevich went out of his way to visit the city this time around, hoping to taste the singles scene firsthand. Ironically, he came away with a positive impression. In his story now available at Forbes.com,Dukcevich raves about how the authenticity of the Strip District serves as a testing ground for what "New York's trendiest bohemians will be wearing in the coming months," citing the abundance of trucking caps, wrestling T-shirts and mullet haircuts that "cheeky New Yorkers" are wearing to "prove their postmodern credentials."

"At least Pittsburghers can lay claim to being authentic," he writes.

Last weekend, Dukcevich hit many of Pittsburgh's hot singles spots. He visited the Strip District on Saturday morning, ate at Primanti's, strolled through some South Side clubs and even visited the "leafy and green" neighborhoods of Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, saying afterward that they reminded him of a scene out of the movie "Pleasantville."

"I really had an outstanding time," he said, in an interview. Pittsburgh, he added, is no "cookie cutter American city. The fact that it is so unique is something to be celebrated."