If you enjoy maps as much as I do, then I highly recommend visiting floatingsheep.org, which provides stats and color-coded graphs on just about every trend imaginable. With Montana’s drinking laws in the news lately, I was interested in this map that compares the number of bars in an area to grocery stores. In red, watering holes outnumber the stores – an area floatingsheep.org refers to as America’s “Beer Belly:”
The clustering was so apparent that we wanted to check how it compared to the “official” data on this activity. So we gathered 2007 Census Country Business Pattern on the number of establishments listed in NACIS code 722410 (Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)) and divided by Census estimates for state population totals for 2009 and found remarkable correspondence with our data.
On average there are 1.52 bars for every 10,000 people in the U.S. but the states that make up the beer belly of America are highly skewed from this average.
Most bars per 10,000 population
1. North Dakota 6.54
2. Montana 6.34
3. Wisconsin 5.88
4. South Dakota 4.73
5. Iowa 3.73