Dating in San Francisco: The Odds are Bad and the Bads are Odd

Why the common dating wisdom for SF women is actually wrong.

The most common thing I hear about dating in San Francisco for women is that “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

Well, I’m here to burst that bubble: the odds actually aren’t good—at least not if you’re a college-educated woman.

San Francisco is often seen as a tech bro playground, but that narrative leaves out two major caveats. First, this city is also famously one of the gayest in America. Second, once you filter by education—something most college-educated straight women tend to care about—the numbers get grim.

I had always told myself that if things looked bleak in NYC, I would consider moving to the West Coast in hopes of finding a tech bro to call my own.

In mid-2023, I even setup a few dates there when I visited friends out there. The men I encountered were not impressive, nor did the attention feel particularly intense.

So I found myself wondering: just how true is this whole gender imbalance?

Curious whether my underwhelming experience was a statistical fluke, I looked into the data after doing a gender ratio analysis on NYC.

And the truth is oddly surprising.

Ratios are pink where they’re favorable to women, blue where it’s favorable to men. I make parity blue because of SF’s large gay population.

Using the 2023 American Community Survey, I looked at the numbers for never-married, separated, divorced, and widowed people by age, gender, and education in the San Francisco metro area. At first glance, yes, there are more men than women between 20–39. But that flips the second you filter for college degrees.

Among 20-somethings, college-educated women significantly outnumber college-educated men. In the 30s, there is the illusion of parity (but not actually, because of gay men). By the 40s, the gap opens up again.

SF is about 6.2% LGBT. Gay men heavily outnumber lesbians, according to a newspaper poll of registered voters.

SF also has a large poly community, which further complicates the dating pool for women looking for more traditional relationships.

And not to mention, many of these men are not suave, charming lotharios but rather, men in hoodies who are frustrated by society’s demands to shower regularly and make small talk.

So where does the myth come from?

I wonder if it’s geographic error. The fabled land of “odds are good” abundant single men isn’t San Francisco.

It’s about an hour away in San Jose.

The Odds are Good in San Jose

That’s where you’ll find a real surplus of single men in the major demographics of 20-40 year olds.

Their dating pool is about 1/3 the size of the SF Bay area and has the worst ratios in the entire country.

It is literally THE worst when we look at the top 40 metro areas by size for the 20-29 and 30-39 age groups.

Its scale of badness for men is only exceeded by tiny cities with large prison populations. That bad.

To give context, single, college-educated women outnumber men in every single age group nationwide by a large margin. That really makes San Jose singular in its female shortage.

1.65:1 is wilddddd

So if you are a straight man, dating in SF, at least from the raw numbers, isn’t quite as awful as people would have you believe. If you’re a straight man with a college degree who knows how to make small talk and showers, you’ll probably do just fine.

And if you’re a woman, please, for the love of god, do not move to SF specifically to date there.

Move for the job, not for the men. There’s not as many as dudes as people would have you believe. And maybe consider San Jose.