Newark, Jersey City get no Valentine’s Day kiss, just low rankings

Valentine's Day is fast approaching and while Americans are planning to spend a record $18.9 billion on their significant other on items like candy, flowers and a special night out, there are certain cities across the country -- including two in New Jersey -- that do not rank highly on the list of the nation's best in which to celebrate the romantic holiday.

Jersey City and Newark came in at numbers 89 and 92 respectively on WalletHub's 2015 Best and Worst Cities for Valentine's Day, but not for the reasons you might think.

The study looked at 100 of the most populated cities across 15 different metrics including weather, restaurant meal costs, the average number of attractions, florists and jewelry stores per capita. Jersey City will not have the best weather on Valentine's Day compared to other cities, bringing it in at number 93 in that category. Also, when it comes to gift accessibility, the city ranked 91st. Newark did even worse, ranking 95th for Valentine's Day weather forecast, 97th for lowest number of florists per capita and 99th for gift accessibility.

"Newark has one of the highest average price for a movie ticket. It also has a very low number of jewelry stores per capita as well as florists per capita.  It actually has the third least amount of florists of any cities that we looked at. It has the same number of chocolate shops, so if that's something you're looking for this Valentine's Day and you're in Newark, you're going to have to search for it," said Jill Gonzalez, spokesperson for WalletHub. "Jersey City was very similar.  It didn't have as few florists and jewelry shops as Newark, but it was lacking in specialty stores like greeting card and gift stores."

Despite the low numbers, Newark and Jersey City are not all bad, according to the survey. They both ranked in the top ten for the number of restaurants per capita.

"If you're in Jersey City and Newark and you stick to restaurants, you'll have plenty of spots to choose from. But, unfortunately, the meal costs are among the highest that we looked at," Gonzalez said.

The top five best cities for Valentine's Day, according to the study, are San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; Orlando, Florida; San Diego, California and San Jose, California. The bottom five: San Bernardino, California; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Toledo, Ohio; North Las Vegas, Nevada; Laredo, Texas and Detroit, Michigan.