Photo courtesy Flickr / Patrick Giblin.
The year is coming to a close, and that means it's time to make New Year's Eve plans — and there's no need to move your party outside St. Louis to make it one heck of a Champagne-worthy celebration.
Personal finance website Wallethub announced today that St. Louis ranks No. 8 overall in its latest report, "2016's Best Places for New Year's Eve Celebrations," a study of cities where you can ring in the new year in a big way without breaking the bank.
Since money is the object here, New York City did not top the list, even with that iconic Times Square ball drop. The winner? The far more affordable Orlando. No. 2 was San Francisco, followed by Denver and then Buffalo, New York. (Buffalo?? In December?)
Still, despite the oddness of these rankings, St. Louis acquitted itself well. The Gateway City notched first-place rankings in "Number of Nightlife Options per Capita," "Legality of Fireworks," "Number of New Year's Eve Festivals, Performances & Galas per Capita" and "Number of Music Venues per Capita."
In calculating these scores, the analysts at Wallethub compared the 100 most populated cities in the country using three dimensions: 1) entertainment and food, 2) costs and 3) safety and accessibility. Then they further examined each city using twenty different metrics of various weights, including the categories above, “average price of a New Year’s Eve party ticket" and event “forecasted precipitation for Dec. 31.” Each city's overall score was calculated using its weighted average across those metrics.
The upshot? If you're sad you won't be in that mess of people in Time Square this New Year's Eve, don't be. You can ring in 2017 in style without busting your wallet as the clock counts down — and you can do that right here in St. Louis.
