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Per capita metric, bars per 100,000 residents (2019 population):
Pittsburgh: 90.6
Las Vegas: 79.5
Cleveland: 74.0
Atlanta: 60.2
Miami: 56.8
New Orleans: 56.1
Seattle: 52.0
Milwaukee: 51.7
San Francisco: 51.4
Portland: 50.7
Denver: 50.0
Washington DC: 47.5
Minneapolis: 44.2
Philadelphia: 39.2
Chicago: 35.7
Baltimore: 33.2
Dallas: 31.0
Austin: 28.3
New York: 26.7
Boston: 25.4
Los Angeles: 24.2
San Diego: 23.9
Nashville: 22.3
Houston: 20.9
Salt Lake City: 19.9
Phoenix: 18.3
San Jose: 14.3
Indianapolis: 12.4
The number for Milwaukee is way low! As of today, according to the City of Milwaukee Office of the City Clerk-License Division, there are 850 licensed taverns in Milwaukee. This works out to 144.0 per 1,000, which would move Milwaukee to the top of the list. The 850 does not include wine bars, restaurants with wine/spirits licenses only, special "taverns" (e.g., churches with fish fries), grocery stores, convenience stores or liquor stores.
And by the way, standard closing time for a bar in Milwaukee is 2:30 a.m.
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, I guess, has gotten lax on its enforcement of private club rules. Under those rules, admission to private clubs is limited to members, who are the only people who can purchase alcoholic beverages once inside; members may bring guests, but if a guest wants to buy a drink, they have to do it through a member.
When this was a primarily gay private club (under several different names: DCA, 2-4 Club, Pure; each of these used a different club license, I'm guessing because the owners, who I believe have been the same two men since it became the 2-4 Club, managed to lose the earlier ones), you did have to become a member in order to enter. Memberships were easy to obtain and cheap ($15 annually). An additional cover was charged after 10 p.m. on weekend nights.
I know there are some other private clubs in the city, all of which have a 3:30 a.m. closing time, that aren't difficult to join if you know someone. I'm on the Board of Governors of one of the best known, the Pen & Pencil Club, Philadelphia's press club since 1892 (the oldest press club in continuous daily operation in the country). It's been popular with Industry people for many years, and our new General Manager comes from the Industry as well. We've been mothballed since the first lockdown and are eagerly looking forward to the time, probably this summer, when enough people will have been vaccinated that we can reopen safely.
It varies from club to club.
Of course, right now, all of this is suspended, including the overnight subway service, thanks to the pandemic. Check back here in six months or so.
Something else I decided to check on:
Since Vincent_Adultman was good enough to include Indianapolis in his initial Yelp survey but omitted both of Missouri's large cities , I decided to run his Yelp survey on Kansas City, whose civic leaders played the principal role in partially liberalizing Missouri's closing-time laws.
More than its cross-state rival St. Louis, Kansas City considers the convention trade a major pillar of its economy; the city trades on its status as the closest big city to the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states to pitch organizations on meeting there because it's equally accessible to everyone living on the coasts. Generally speaking, St. Louis and Kansas City don't see eye to eye on a number of issues (much like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh where I live now), so what happens when one city really wants something but the other's lukewarm is that a bill gets drafted in Jefferson City allowing cities, counties or defined districts to do that thing on a local-option basis.
So it was with bar closing times: the legislature passed a law allowing bars in "convention trade zones" to stay open until 3 a.m. weekdays and 4 a.m. weekends, at which point the cities of Kansas City and North Kansas City promptly declared their entire territory "convention trade zones."
It turns out that Metro KC has 160 bars (some of them bars and restaurants, as I also suspect is the case in the other cities Vincent_Adultman surveyed) that are open after 1:15 on Wednesday. About one-third of them, however, close 15 minutes afterward, the standard state-mandated closing time; some close at 2 a.m. and the rest at 3. I didn't check them rigorously against a map of the city and area to see where they were located; I assume most of those that close at 1:30 are located beyond the city limits of Kansas City or North Kansas City.
I suspect I'd find many more bars in St. Louis and its suburbs that closed at the earlier time.
My bad - yeah, not sure why I left the Missouri cities out.
Oh, I just divided your numbers by the 2019 populations lol.
Oh, that's funny. I didn't even realize. Interestingly, I now see that WCCF uses Yelp as their data source frequently so it makes sense that they are similar.
Since someone earlier on was referring to late night bars, I know there are a limited number of 4am bars(5am on Friday and Saturday night, and such bars would begin last call about 4:30am) in Chicago. I don't think anyone mentioned it earlier, but I know Mobile, AL has a handful of late night bars that stay open till something like 4-5am. Due to Alabama state law, they more act like private clubs to stay open that late. I think some parts of Texas are like this too, where the bars open the latest are technically private clubs.
Albany, NY, and Buffalo allow bars to have a later last call for NY state, as well. I think at 4am, IIRC? KEEP IN MIND I'm talking about closing times pre-COVID, since I know every city is ordering their bars(if they can open for inside service at all) to close earlier. In January 2020, Chicago did allow brewery tap rooms(of ones not serving food) along with bars not serving food to reopen, but it included a weird covet that such bars ONLY could open if they contracted in some way for food deliveries to happen there. To me that's a silly rule, as that wasn't required before all bars briefly temporarily closed(for the bars not having a kitchen) to contract with another place serving food.
Since someone earlier on was referring to late night bars, I know there are a limited number of 4am bars(5am on Friday and Saturday night, and such bars would begin last call about 4:30am) in Chicago. I don't think anyone mentioned it earlier, but I know Mobile, AL has a handful of late night bars that stay open till something like 4-5am. Due to Alabama state law, they more act like private clubs to stay open that late. I think some parts of Texas are like this too, where the bars open the latest are technically private clubs.
Albany, NY, and Buffalo allow bars to have a later last call for NY state, as well. I think at 4am, IIRC? KEEP IN MIND I'm talking about closing times pre-COVID, since I know every city is ordering their bars(if they can open for inside service at all) to close earlier. In January 2020, Chicago did allow brewery tap rooms(of ones not serving food) along with bars not serving food to reopen, but it included a weird covet that such bars ONLY could open if they contracted in some way for food deliveries to happen there. To me that's a silly rule, as that wasn't required before all bars briefly temporarily closed(for the bars not having a kitchen) to contract with another place serving food.
4AM is the base for NYS. NYC, the NYC suburbs and most of the upstate cities also have a 4AM last call.
That being said, most places want you out of there by 4 if not earlier. On slow nights, a place might close as early as 12 to 2.
You mean most bars or most cities? I thought 4am closing time was legal statewide.
City closing times. The 5 I went to on rotation were 2am, 2am, 2am, 1am and 2am. I dont recall 4am but its entirely possible. And cops were really strict about it because bars are wild in Upstate NY.
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, I decided to run his Yelp survey on Kansas City, whose civic leaders played the principal role in partially liberalizing Missouri's closing-time laws.
