Back when I lived in Chicago, one of the reasons I loved the Windy City was that “the corner bar was still in effect.” This was never more exemplified during the 2005 Major League Baseball season when the White Sox won the city’s first World Series in over 100 years (correction, 80 years). From the run-up to clinching the AL central, through the ALDS versus the Red Sox, the ALCS against the Angels, and sweeping the Astros for the title, it seemed there was a big game every other day. And for each of them I would just walk to the nearest bar, grab a seat and spend a few hours rooting for the Sox. I met a heck of lot of the heart of Chicago in those two or so months.
Over at FloatingSheep, they’ve done some analysis of bar density across America, a bit of which you see to the left. If you can’t discern the outlines, that’s mostly Illinois on the bottom half, and mostly Wisconsin on the top half. Red dots indicate where, as of 2008, Google Maps had more references to bars then grocery stores. While a bit dubious as a metric, it’s still one more piece of evidence to back up my claim that along the shores of Lake Michigan, “the corner bar is still in effect.”