When it comes to the “funnest” cities in the United States, San Antonio doesn’t make the cut — or so they say. According to WalletHub’s recent article listing 2016’s Most Fun Cities in America, the Alamo City is just not a place you visit for a good time, coming in at No. 114 out of 150 cities. We didn’t even crack the top 100. Ouch.
WalletHub arrived at this number by comparing the 150 most populated cities across the country and scoring each city in three categories: entertainment and recreation (up to 40 points), nightlife and parties (up to 40 points), and costs (up to 20 points). Each of the three categories were broken down by subcategories, which made up a category’s score. For example, the number of public beaches per capita could add up to 1.29 points to your Entertainment & Recreation score, and the number of square miles where public drinking is allowed could add a whopping 4 points to a city’s Nightlife score. How scientific, right?
We have just one question for the article’s author: Richie Bernardo, have you ever even been to San Antonio? Really, you're going to rank Akron, Ohio
(basically a glorified suburb of Cleveland) a whole 56 spots higher than San Antonio? Sure, maybe we're lacking in the "Ball Diamonds per Capita" department. Here's a better rundown of what we do have for the next time you conjure up your "funnest" cities list:
Arts & Culture
San Antonio is home to seven museums, a booming art scene, and now boasts not one but five World Heritage sites in the city's Spanish colonial missions. Still, thank God WalletHub considered arts & crafts supplies stores in their ranking. Because we all know counting arts & crafts stores is a surefire way to gauge how "fun" a city is...
Food
Only two subcategories in WalletHub's "funnest" cities study were dedicated to food: "Average Food Price of Pizza and Burgers" and "Number of Restaurants per Capita." Seriously? We have a James Beard Award finalist running a restaurant at The Pearl. We dominate in Mexican restaurants per capita (duh) and if you trace the history of Tex-Mex, you're sure to see our name.
Nightlife & Parties
Sure, there's always room for improvement. But here's what San Antonio does have: 10 breweries, many of which you can visit on a single brew tour, regular bar crawls and five distilleries within the city limits. We might not have the Vegas Strip (Las Vegas came in as No. 1 Most Fun City in America), but we do have the N St. Mary’s Strip. Which honestly sounds way better to us anyway.
Now don't get us wrong. We're not so naive to think San Antonio should've been named the most fun city in the country. But No. 114? We're confident that actually spending some time here instead of using a point system would change your mind.
