El Paso is Where Romance Goes to Die

El Paso has some of the least-supportive football fans in the country and the worst college football team in the nation, according to a study by Wallethub.

And apparently there’s another game we suck at: the romance game.

With The Holy Day of Obligation® right around the corner, the financial site crunched the numbers to ascertain the best places in the country to celebrate romance on Valentine's Day, and we are not one of them. El Paso, they concluded, is the 4th worst city to celebrate Valentine’s Day in.

To determine “the most romantic and cost-effective cities for celebrating” the Hallmark holiday, Wallethub took into account four key dimensions: Safety, Budget & Activities, Gift Accessibility and Weather Forecast, as well as 14 key metrics that included the number of flower and chocolate shops, jewelry stores per capita, the availability of high quality takeout food, and, this year, the impact COVID-19 has had and continues to have on a person's safety.

Most years it’s the lack of things to do and places to go that keeps us in the bottom 50, but this year the coronavirus pandemic was thrown into the mix and the effect it had on the public's ability to move about freely put all cities on a pretty even playing field, at least in that one category.

In our case, however, the crisis that overwhelmed hospitals and the morgue this past fall contributed way more to the overall low "safety" ranking -- a dismal #98 out of 100 -- and in the end El Paso's overall ranking fell from the number 45 spot in 2020 to #96 in 2021's Best Places for Valentine's Day list.

On the upside, we scored better than normal in "budget & activities" and “gift accessibility,” meaning El Pasoans won’t have to blow through a wad of cash to buy their sugar boo the biggest stuffed-teddy-bear-holding-a-heart the guy in the white van parked off on the side of the road is selling.