Denver is the best place to live in the West, according to a ranking released this week by Money Magazine, but conservative gadfly Glenn Beck places the city near the bottom, on his list of cities to “avoid like the plague.”

Dubbing the Mile High City “a mecca for millenials,” Money says the “chemically induced Rocky Mountain high factor” – legalized marijuana, in the local parlance – isn’t the main reason. “You have real, legitimate urban living, then 45 minutes away you have back-packing, biking, or you can be scaling a 14,000 foot mountain,” says CU Denver professor Ken Schroeppel.

The magazine also touts the price of real estate, which might be news as housing prices and rents soar more than a mile high, but Money points out that Denver is still plenty affordable compared with other big cities.

“Younger adults are often priced out of owning their own homes in hip urban centers such as Boston and San Francisco,” the magazine notes, where housing prices are nearly two to four times as high as Denver’s.

Denver also gets high marks for its bike-share program and other ways of getting around town without needing to own a car. As is usually noted when Denver makes “best of” lists, it gets high marks for topping the ranks for residents who get regular exercise and for having among the lowest obesity rates in the country, though for the latter category it’s tied with San Diego.

But none of that matters to Beck, who listed 15 cities he urged his audience to stay away from “when things go bad.” Ranking behind Portland, San Francisco and Seattle, Denver places fourth on the list, ahead of Phoenix, Detroit, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.

“I want to give you the top 10 or 15 cities” – he listed 15 – “that I think are going to melt down,” Beck said. “These are the cities that you do not want to live anywhere around as things get worse and worse.”

Doesn’t matter how lean or fit Denver residents are, Beck said on his program last week. “These are the cities to avoid like the plague. And if you look at that list, these are the cities that are already having trouble. We haven’t even hit the road bump.”

The reason? Beck ranked cities based on national surveys showing which are the “least religious” in the country. Denver has a reported 32 percent of the population who don’t call themselves religious, although some would argue that evangelical city leaders more than make up for that.