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We are less than two weeks away from St. Patrick’s Day 2020 which falls on a Tuesday this year. If you haven’t marked March 17th on your calendar yet you might want to go ahead and do that so you don’t forget until the night before.
The only upside of St. Patrick’s Day falling on a Tuesday is that it means we can theoretically celebrate the weekend before and after as well as on St. Patrick’s Day itself. Whether that means staying home and cooking corned beef + cabbage while crushing Guinness or hitting the bars to chug ‘Car Bombs’, that’s up to you. If you fall into the latter category, the folks over at WalletHub can help you choose where to party this year. I also recently interviewed Nick Offerman (aka Ron Swanson) about the best way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and you can follow that link to check out our discussion about corned beef and beer.
They’ve used 17 key metrics pertaining to things like St. Patrick’s Day Tradition/History, Cost, Safety, Accessibility, and Weather. After running these key metrics they were able to come up with a list of the best cities in America for St. Patrick’s Day with Chicago coming in at #1. Chicago ranks #2 overall in Tradition, just behind Boston at #1. Chicago also ranks #7 overall for Weather.
Here’s a look at the top 20 cities in America for St. Patrick’s Day based on the WalletHub study with each city’s corresponding total score next to the city. There are also some additional findings below you’ll be into:
1. Chicago, IL – 74.34
2. Boston, MA – 72.87
3. Philadelphia, PA – 69.56
4. Pittsburgh, PA – 68.99
5. Tampa, FL – 65.69
6. Naperville, IL – 64.56
7. New York, NY – 64.15
8. Buffalo, NY – 63.59
9. Cleveland, OH – 62.29
10. Cedar Rapids, IA – 62.02
11. Las Vegas, NV – 61.98
12. Denver, CO – 61.61
13. Omaha, NE – 61.36
14. Syracuse, NY – 61.12
15. Boise, ID – 60.84
16. Madison, WI – 59.78
17. Lincoln, NE – 59.65
18. Kansas City, MO – 59.46
19. Fort Collins, CO – 59.23
20. Henderson, NV – 59.2
I have to say that I was a little surprised to see Naperville, Illinois sneak in the top 10 when I couldn’t find that city on a map. Naperville ranks #5 overall for ‘Costs’ and #3 for ‘Weather’ which bumped it up very high on the list.
Here are some other interesting findings from the study:
Wallethub
Of course, most people don’t travel for St. Patrick’s Day unless they are firefighters or police officers and are marching in one of the big parades. The typical person celebrating St. Patrick’s Day stays local so this is mostly about bragging rights.
To check out the full study with 200 CITIES IN AMERICA ranked you can click here to head on over to Wallethub.