Early risers, head to Arizona. Fellow sleepy people, your ideal home is, rather surprisingly, either San Francisco or New York. Those are the conclusions reached during a recent study of the best and worst cities for “morning people” in the U.S.
The study utilized Yelp data in the top 50 American metropolitan areas to identify the number of coffee shops and “breakfast restaurants” per capita, along with gyms open at 5 a.m. or earlier. As well, the research included the percentage of professionals who leave for work before 7 a.m.; from there, all the numbers were put on a weighted scale of 50.
So it’s definitely not rocket science, but the results were intriguing. Some highlights:
- Mesa, Arizona, was by far the top morning person city, scoring 40 out of 50 (six points higher than Long Beach, CA). It had the highest percentage of people who leave for work early — Phoenix was second — and the second-most gyms and coffee shops that open early. There are a weirdly tiny number of “breakfast restaurants,” however.
- Las Vegas was third, which is both not a surprise (the city is pretty much 24/7) and very surprising (personally, don’t remember a lot of gym use before 5 a.m.).
- New York, aka “the city that never sleeps,” was 49th out of 50.
- San Francisco was dead last, scoring 6 out of 50 and having the lowest percentage of workers who start their day before 7 a.m.
We called our SF and NY editors for comment, but they mumbled something about “just gimme another hour.”
Photo by Hernan Sanchez on Unsplash
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