July 28, 2005

Is San Francisco really the 3rd best city for singles?

Forbes has presented a list of the "best cities for singles," which includes San Francisco as #3. It includes this endorsement of Frisco from "Carol Queen, 48, sexologist at Good Vibrations retail store:"

"San Franciscans are open-minded and sex-positive for the most part. They're interested in figuring out a lot of options here."

San Francisco's new motto could be:

"Our single men: sex- and HIV-positive -- a killer combination!"

My wife asks:

"San Francisco is 3rd best for what - staying single? Certainly not what straight women have in mind when they think of a great-for-singles place to live. Also I don't think most people think of gays as singles - perhaps because gay men don't identify being a couple and being single as mutually exclusive. Wonder how this data jives with your Affordable Family Formation theory?"

Good question, my dear.

Unsurprisingly, one of the factors in Forbes' ranking is "coolness," as defined by the egregious but well-compensated Richard Florida, who thinks that having lots of gays makes your city cool and thus economically successful. (In reality, the arrow of causality almost certainly points largely in the opposite direction: footloose gays follow the money generated by engineers and businessmen; the pocket protector boys don't follow the gays, as Florida assumes).

Equally unsurprisingly, the Forbes rankings doesn't even consider what's likely the #1 question single women have about a city: How quickly can they expect to become unsingle if they move there? It would take some effort, but I suspect the data is available to estimate that key number.

Anyway, here's the top 10 of the Forbes list, for whatever it's worth:

1. Denver-Boulder
2. Boston
3. San Francisco
4. Raleigh-Durham
5. Washington-Baltimore
6. Atlanta
7. Los Angeles
8. New York
9. Chicago
10. Seattle


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

No comments: