A Bustling North Carolina City Known As 'America's Drinking Capital' Also Boasts A Vibrant Downtown

If we could say one thing for sure, it's that many folks love their alcohol. Whether it's a grotty, local pub with sticky tabletops and stickier floors, a high concept designer bar meets pinball arcade like Sunshine Laundromat in Brooklyn, wineries in unexpected places like Alto Vista Winery in Aruba, or any combination of brewhall, tavern, sports bar, speakeasy, you name it, humanity is practically drowning in liquid courage. It's hard for locales to distinguish themselves amidst such a milieu, but Durham, North Carolina, has done it. They don't have the most bars in the world — that might be Tokyo with about 30,000 bars — nor even in the U.S., but they do have the most cocktail bars per person in the country. 

According to a report by Upgraded Points, Durham, North Carolina, has 7.95 cocktail bars per 100,000 people. This puts them above places that we'd all guess would have more, such as New Orleans with its 5.63 cocktail bars per 100,000 people. But that doesn't mean that Durham has a lot of cocktail bars in total: With a population of about 300,000, that ratio would mean it has around 24 cocktail bars. That might not seem a lot, but it's the peculiarity of cocktail bars, specifically, that makes the statistic interesting. It might boil down to the distribution of the city's nightlife districts and/or the extreme compactness of the bars in those districts — we can't say for sure.

At any rate, Durham's proliferation of cocktail bars means there's lots of swanky drinking to look forward to if you visit. Highlights include the rooftop bar of The Velvet Hippo,  the gin-focused Conniption Bar and Lounge, the industrial interior of the seriously classy Weldon Mills Distillery Durham, and many more.

Most of Durham's drinking establishments tend to congregate around three separate areas of the city. These are the downtown triangle of East Chapel Hill, West Main Street, and Route 15; a cluster around North Gregson Street to the west, and a stretch along West Geer Street to the north. These include its top-rated cocktail bars (on Yelp), nine out of 10 of which sit in this general area, and it takes less than 40 minutes to walk to all of them. This is not only fantastic for people who want to drink responsibly and avoid taxi fares, but it makes Durham perfect for a crawl of any type. 

Just make sure that your wallet is prepared. A single drink at The Velvet Hippo, for instance, is going to run you about $15 – not absurd, but it adds up. But no worries, because these places and plenty of others serve beer, too. It's all about what you think an experience is worth.

On that note, you can always pair up the cocktails with activities of other types. Aside from being dubbed "America's Drinking Capital," Durham is also apparently the "Line Dancing Capital of America." That's quite the combination, especially if they happen at the same time. You can always sip on liquid courage to reduce your social anxieties about looking dumb while line dancing, strap on your dancing shoes, and then hit the floor. Durham also has Duke University, kid-friendly museums like the Museum of Life & Science, plenty of parks all around town, and local oddities like the weirdly cool V & E Simonetti Historic Tuba Collection. So hop to it. Those drinks won't drink themselves.