A festival goer carries an inflatable giraffe as they wander through the crowd during the first day of the Outside Lands Festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023. Many concert goers carried objects to keep their groups together from getting lost amid the thousands of people attending the event. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
California specializes in fun.
It has the great beaches, the wonderful restaurants, the magnificent mountains, so many fun festivals and, well, the Beach Boys, the band that gave the world the smash hit “Fun, Fun, Fun” back in 1964. And the fun runs from Crescent City to Chula Vista and everywhere in between.
Yet, there can only be one epicenter of fun in California — a city where more fun can be had than any other spot in the Golden State.
And a recent study shows that San Francisco is the most fun city in all of California.
The City by the Bay is the only California spot that landed in the top 10 of WalletHub’s study about the most fun cities in the U.S.
San Francisco landed at No. 5 on the overall list, just behind Las Vegas (No. 1), Orlando (No. 2), Miami (No. 3) and Atlanta (No. 4).
The other top fun cities in California are:
2. San Diego (No. 16 overall)
3. Los Angeles (No. 20 overall)
4. Sacramento (No. 34 overall)
5. Oakland (No. 76 overall)
In judging which spots were most fun, the folks at WalletHub compared more than 180 U.S. cities on 65 key metrics, ranging from fitness centers per capita to cost to go to the movies to the business hours of local breweries.
“Finding a city that matches your own unique brand of fun is important,” says Cassandrea Happe, WalletHub analyst. “All cities have a variety of activities, but some shine more than others when it comes to things like parks and beaches, live music and comedy, partying, sports culture or fine dining. 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.”
San Francisco ranked high in terms of festivals per capita, which will make sense to music fans who have long enjoyed Outside Lands, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and other fun events. It actually is part of a five way tie for first in that category with New Orleans, Miami, Las Vegas and Honolulu.
It was also part of a six-way tie for first place (alongside Miami, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Orlando) in the category of restaurants per capita.
Originally published at Jim Harrington