We live where you vacation, but apparently staycationing in Miami is the worst
So you are planning a staycation in Miami this summer, even though we’ve all just suffered through two months of inadvertent staycationing, minus the actual fun and relaxation.
If you are, you should know that a new study says we’re staycationing all wrong.
In fact, this study by WalletHub reports that Miami is just not that great of a place to staycation. In fact, on a list of 182 cities in the United States, it’s no. 75. (Hialeah had a marginally worse score at no. 84, but Hialeah always fails such studies, unless they’re weighing extramarital shenanigans, in which case Hialeah dominates).
We demand to know why the 305 has received this slight. We have pools. We have sunshine (at least in the mornings). We have liquor cabinets. Of course, we also have hurricanes, iguanas, mosquitoes, the pervasive stench of rotting mangoes, giant snakes, gators, grasshoppers so big they should be called grosshoppers, kamikaze mockingbirds, terrible drivers, rents nobody can afford, construction that never ends and whatever that vine is that climbs up the side of your house with the speed of Spider-Man on coke and will drag your roof right off if you don’t deal with it.
Sadly, WalletHub did not count liquor cabinets in its assessment of the 182 cities. It analyzed metrics in recreation and rest/relaxation, weighing such elements as the number of hiking and biking trails, parks and places to rent bikes. It examined the average price of pizza, burgers, beer and wine — what, no empanadas? no tortilla espanola? — plus the average square footage of homes.
It also considered number of pools. You’d think Miami would excel at that, but we didn’t even crack the top five cities in that metric (though Fort Lauderdale, no. 14 overall, did).
What doomed us? We’re not sure, but the study also counted the metric of weather, which, as we all know, involves thunder, lightning, flooding, wind and random appearances by the Cone of Death from basically now until December.
Still, we’re dubious about this study, if only because WalletHub dubbed Plano, Texas, as the no. 1 city in which to staycation. Plano, which lies north of Dallas, has no beach, so we conclude that WalletHub analysts don’t go to the beach much. Neither do we at this moment but at least we have one nearby and are waiting impatiently until it opens up. Face masks be damned; It’ll be coronatastic.
The rest of the top 10 cities for staycationing: Boise, Idaho; Tampa; Charleston, S.C.; Lincoln, Nebraska; Fort Smith, Arkansas; Scottsdale, Arizona; Grand Prairie, Texas; Austin, Texas; Orlando. On the Florida front, Tallahassee came in at no. 11 and St. Petersburg at 17.
We don’t know about this list. Sure, you can play some golf in Scottsdale and stuff your face with barbecue in Austin. But we’ll pick Miami over Nebraska every time. Pass the croquetas and let’s go scrape some mangoes off the patio.
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 2:06 PM.