New York City Crushes It

The reason?

Of the thirty zip codes nationwide possessing the most bars per square mile (with at least ten bars), over half are in New York City.

The zip code with the most bars per square mile in the entire U.S.? That would be 10012, my old zip code before moving to Brooklyn. There are 125 bars per square mile, with 40 drinking establishments spread out over an area of 0.32 square miles

However, New York does not hold the title for most bars in a single zip code. The holder of that title is the “Live Music Capital of the World”, Austin Texas.

Time for a new moniker, Austin. The U.S. census records 105 drinking establishments in 78701, the most in any single zip code nationwide.

As some of you might know from visiting Austin, this covers East Sixth Street.

Yelp reveals 37 bars on the half-mile stretch of land between North Congress Avenue and the highway. In 2006, there were presumably 57! According to Austin’s Downtown Alliance, that was one, too many.

The city with the second highest number of bars in a single zip code shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been. Think of a city with a street known as a tourist trap packed with dingy bars and people attempting to sign you up for various scams.

Bourbon Street! The French Quarter and the Lower Garden District in New Orleans (zip code 70130) have 71 bars.

As this zip code is spread out over a spacious 2.11 sq miles, there are 34 bars per square mile. This is just short of the number needed to make this list of the top 30 zip codes nationwide ranked by bar density.

All of the Manhattan zip codes in this image make the list.

No zip code in Brooklyn, however, takes a spot on the top 30 list.

In fact, Milwaukee has more bars per square mile than Williamsburg.

The reason?

Williamsburg’s zip includes South Williamsburg, where thousands of the ultra-orthodox Jewish Chasidim make their home. You can see in this map there are no bars there (or Citi Bike stations).

I queried the U.S. Census American Fact Finder http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml for business patterns by zip code, focusing on the industry code reserved for “drinking places (alcoholic beverages).”

I used http://www.usa.com/rank/ to gather land area (in sq. mi.) for each zip code in the U.S. Frustratingly, the U.S. Census does not make this data readily available.

The colorful Google Map overlays by zip code are courtesy of http://www.zipmaps.net/