A Map from the Vault: Bars, Bookstores, Bowling Alleys & Adult Entertainment

The other day when looking for a larger version of the Beer Belly of America map, I happened across a map that we made back in the early days of the blog in which we compared references to bars, bookstores, bowling alleys (an oblique nod towards Putnam) and adult entertainment.

For some reason, this map never made it on to the blog, but is worth revisiting. In it, the colors represent which of the four search terms was most prevalent at any location. A green dot means there were more bookstores, a red dot indicates more bars, yellow shows more bowling alleys and blue marks places that had more references to adult entertainment than the other three categories.

The pattern of more bars than anything else shows up solidly in Montana, the Dakotas, the Midwest and parts of the Northeast, with the exception of New England, which is interspersed with a sprinkling of places with more bowling alleys.

In contrast, much of the southern U.S., particularly the Southeast, has many more references to bookstores than to the other search terms. As this is a relative measure, this does not indicate there are more bookstores in the Southeast than the Midwest but that there is a greater number of bookstores relative to bars in this region.

Also interesting is the clusters of more bars along the Gulf coast (Texas, New Orleans and Florida), as well as the southern half of Arizona. This suggests that these parts of the southern U.S. have a different relationship with bars than much of their surrounding areas.

Lastly, the pattern of adult entertainment shows that Nevada represents a very different milieu than the rest of the U.S. The only other points in the U.S. where adult entertainment exceeds the other categories are predominantly rural areas in the Southeast and the central valley of California.

Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of America's Beer Belly

Today is an important day, but you probably don't know why. In the lore of Floatingsheep, February 1st is a very important day...

One year ago today, the wonders of America's Beer Belly, as discovered by the Floatingsheep Collective, were announced to the world-at-large. By far the most popular single post in our relatively short history, the Beer Belly of America was eventually featured everywhere from The New York Times and Andrew Sullivan's blog on The Atlantic to Strange Maps, FlowingData and the Consumerist.

The Beer Belly of America

Our extrapolation that the prevalence of bars as compared to grocery stores in the American upper Midwest (using directory listings from Google Maps) was indicative of some cultural characteristic may or may not have been especially daring. But one thing is clear: in addition to the official statistics from the Census Bureau, the innumerable comments generated on this blog and many others served as corroboration for our claims.

Whether it took us 'discovering' it, or just giving it a name, we now know that Wisconsin, Illinois and much of the Great Plains are the true Beer Belly of America.

The Beer Belly of America in 3D

After Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, we've noticed a 3D craze happening that we feel a bit left out of. So we decided to turn one of our most popular maps (the beer-belly of America) into a 3D visualisation. No 3D glasses necessary. Although sea-sickness pills may be recommended for those who might feel slightly unsettled watching a spikey map of the U.S. lurch across the screen.

Of course, since our budget is slight smaller than Hollywood's, you may find it harder to lose yourself in the magic of animation. Also, for some reason the happy beer belly has been transformed into a spikey midwestern landscape of doom. And the blue grocery store map reminds us too much of what we saw last time we looked under a table at the cafeteria.

But besides that, it is just like Avatar.

The Beer Belly of America

At FloatingSheep, we're willing to search for and analyze almost anything that falls within the realm of human experience. Sometimes this is mundane (pizza) and sometimes it is contentious (abortion) but most of the time it falls somewhere in between. Such as, where can I get a drink?


Total Number of Bars


We were quite surprised, however, when we did a simple comparison between grocery stores and bars to discover a remarkable geographically phenomenon. We had expected that grocery stores would outnumber bars and for most parts of North America that is the case. But we could also clearly see the "beer belly of America" peeking out through the "t-shirt of data".



Starting in Illinois, the beer belly expands up into Wisconsin and first spreads westward through Iowa/Minnesota and then engulfs Nebraska, and the Dakotas before petering out (like a pair of love handles) in Wyoming and Montana.

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.

Rank	State	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
6	Nebraska	3.68
7	Wyoming	3.4

Another slice of the Google data which shows the relative number of bars in a location further confirms this concentration. So looks like Wisconsin is your best bet.


Specialization in Bars