Ranked as 5th among 182 U.S. cities, San Francisco surpasses Los Angeles (No. 20), San Diego (No. 16), Sacramento (No. 34), Oakland (No. 76), and other cities in California, and it is the only California city that made the top 10.
The other cities that made the top 5 in the country are Las Vegas (No. 1), Orlando (No. 2), Miami (No. 3), and Atlanta (No. 4).
The 2023 Most Fun Cities in America report, issued on Dec. 4 by the personal finance website WalletHub, found San Francisco tops in both the dance clubs and restaurants per capita, 2 of 65 key metrics that were used to obtain an overall score for the cities.
Everyone’s brand of fun is different. Yet WalletHub defines a fun place as “one that offers a little bit of everything for everyone.”
A fun city is “a city with enough variety, you won’t have to compromise with your friends, family, or even yourself about the next fun activity to do alone or together,” according to the report.
The metrics WalletHub adopted in the study are categorized as entertainment and recreation, nightlife and parties, and the costs of fun.
Cassandra Happe, a WalletHub analyst, hoped the report would give hints for people to seek their own brand of fun.
“Finding a city that matches your own unique brand of fun is important,” said Ms. Happe in the report. “Picking a city to spend a weekend in is easy, but moving to a city where you’ll have fun on a regular basis requires more research.”
The high rank could be good news for San Francisco, as its tourism industry has been relatively slow in recovering after the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting in April this year, the monthly hotel occupancy of the city increased steadily and reached 70 percent in September, but it still lagged behind New York (85 percent), Los Angeles (73 percent), San Diego (76 percent), and Seattle (74 percent), according to the latest statistics from the San Francisco government.
However, the WalletHub study didn’t consider metrics that would negatively affect fun. For example, San Francisco suffers from homelessness issues, record high drug overdoses, and high property crime rates.
Luke Fowler, associate professor at School of Public Service of Boise State University and one of the three experts in the study, recommended that “safety is number one” if local authorities want to make their city a more fun destination to visit. He was not referring to any specific city.
“No one has fun if they feel like they have to be on high alert for crime,” said Mr. Fowler in the report. “This does not mean ‘aggressive’ policing, but it does mean doing things like making sure public areas are well lit, scammers are not taking advantage of people, etc.”
