Despite having one regional park, two professional sporting teams and too many young Latinos to count running for their lives nightly to avoid ending up in body bags due to gang/police/random gunfire, Anaheim has been rated among the worst American cities for recreation.
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Santa Ana and Anaheim Are Unworthy of “Staycations;” No, Seriously, Beat It!
Those wascally number crunchers at personal finance website WalletHub claims to have “conducted an in-depth analysis of 2015's Best N Worst Cities for Recreation” that has Anaheim at No. 91 out of 100, with No. 100 (Jersey City, N.J.) being the worst among the country's 100 largest cities.
WalletHub used 27 key metrics ranging from parkland acreage to the number of attractions to average movie cost to come up with its list that ranks Cincinnati, Ohio, numero uno.
Anaheim earned the dubious distinction by finishing 82nd in “Entertainment N Recreational Facilities,” 92nd in “Costs,” 95th is “Quality of Parks” and sixth in “Climate” (which means it's a good thing the numbers were not crunched during this recent hot. humid spell or Anaheim would have fallen farther).
No California city cracked the top 10. The highest ranking city from the Golden State is No. 24 San Diego, while the best Orange County does is Irvine at No. 56 (despite having a Great Park! Well, an un-built Great Park). Long Beach is No. 60, and Santa Ana is No. 89.
WalletHub, which notes the most populous U.S. cities collectively spent more than $6.4 billion on parks and recreation in 2014, released the report because July is National Park and Recreation Month.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.