Cupid’s bull’s-eye

Austin gets some love as one of the top U.S. cities for singles, study says

Looking for love in Austin? You're in the right place!

Photo courtesy of iStock

If you’re single, Austin reigns as one of the best U.S. cities in which to mingle in hopes of finding a new love.

Personal finance website WalletHub ranks Austin fifth best for singles among more than 180 cities. Ahead of Austin on the list are No. 1 Madison, Wisconsin, followed by Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Denver.

To determine where singles enjoy the best prospects for finding love, WalletHub compared 182 cities across 32 key indicators of dating friendliness. Those indicators include the number of single people, number of online dating opportunities, and average price of a two-person meal.

Austin ranks 15th in the “fun and recreation” category, 26th in the “dating opportunities” category, and 91st in the economic category.

Rebecca Johnson, a graduate teaching assistant in communication studies at the University of Kansas, tells WalletHub that she doesn’t think people should choose where to live based solely on how likely they are to find a partner there.

“My advice is to live your life according to your own pursuits and interests. If you are in a place where you can pursue the activities and hobbies you have an interest in, you are likelier to find others around that are interested in such things and follow the commonalities into building a relationship,” Johnson says.

Only one other Texas city appears in WalletHub’s top 50: Lubbock, ranked No. 47. Here’s how several other Texas cities fared in the study:

Houston, No. 55.
San Antonio, No. 58.
Dallas, No. 77.
Irving, No. 87.
Arlington, No. 109.
Fort Worth, No. 115.
Plano, No. 119.
Garland, No. 162.
Grand Prairie, No. 168.

More Foraging

Free 'food forest' in East Austin expands with thousands of new plants

Angelina Alanis at Festival Beach Food Forest

Photo courtesy of KVUE

Angelina Alanis gives a tour of the garden, which is open to anyone.

In East Austin, there is an edible forest garden called Festival Beach Food Forest where anyone can walk around and harvest free produce, nuts, medicinal plant leaves and herbs. And over the summer, it grew to several times its size.

The forest has fig trees, peach trees, grapevines, asparagus and more that's not in season right now. You can grab passionfruit and plants like yaupon holly, with leaves that can make a caffeinated tea, rosemary and lemon balm.

"[Lemon balm] is part of the mint family," said Angelina Alanis, communication and partnership coordinator for Festival Beach Food Forest. "It has a lemony taste but it's good for a nervous stomach. I'm prone to anxiety so I always grab a hunk."

The food forest is located right next to Interstate 35 and Lady Bird Lake on 29 Waller St., near a part of town that's known for being a food desert, lacking grocery stores.

"There's as much as a 20-year life expectancy difference between parts of East and West Austin, and a lot of that comes down to food access, health care access and also access to nature."

Alanis said for the past nine years, the volunteer-based grassroots project been helping with the issue and just recently expanded in the summer from two-thirds of an acre of city parkland to over 3.5 acres.

"We're going to have hundreds of new trees," said Alanis. "We've already planted 150 new trees in the area and then thousands of plants on the ground."

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They also plan to add a community kitchen and a pavilion to do things like cooking classes or informational sessions.

Read the full story at KVUE.com.

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