Darien Named 23rd Drunkest Place to Live in Connecticut: Report

By BRIAN MCCREADY (Patch Staff)

There are so many rankings done on so many different subjects, best schools, best places to live, snobbiest communities, and now this one.

RoadSnacks, which says it specializes in data and communities, has just published, “These Are the 10 Drunkest Places in Connecticut” list.

Darien ranked 23rd on the list.

(Actually, they rank the top 92 drunkest places to live in Connecticut).

And how did they figure this out? According to RoadSnacks, they studied the number of places to purchase alcohol in a community, coupled with how many “drunk-related tweets” were reported on social media in each town.

Then they added a community’s divorce rate, assuming the higher divorce rate the more people were drinking alcohol. The divorce rate is three times higher if one of the spouses is an alcoholic, RoadSnacks says.

“Using that criteria, it’s not hard to scrape the internet, run some scientific data on where partiers might live in Connecticut, and then put out a list,” RoadSnacks says. “Because, the data never lies, does it? You’re probably thinking ‘Show me the proof!”

“So, hold our beers and watch this. After analyzing all cities with a decent amount of people in them, we came up with this list as The Drunkest Cities in Connecticut:”

1. Branford
2. New London
3. Plainville
4. Cromwell
5. Milford
6. New Haven
7. Torrington
8. Norwich
9. Manchester
10. Westport

Most of the communities are mid-size in Connecticut and all have a number of bars in them, the report notes.

RoadSnack also found that the top 5 least drunk places to live in Connecticut are:

1. Mansfield (Pop. 24,599)
2. Plymouth (Pop. 11,800)
3. Storrs (Pop. 14,041)
4. Weston (Pop. 10,540)
5. Trumbull (Pop. 36,088)

For Branford it says, the town’s divorce rate is 10 percent and when it comes to bars per capita Branford has the 11th highest ratio, and Branford is 10th in the state for liquor stores per capita.

RoadSnacks writes, “Hot damn, Branford, you are tore up from the floor up! We’re impressed. Based on the data, it sounds like you are all having a really, really good time.

First off, it’s no surprise that you guys ranked so high. You have several breweries in Branford. DuVig Brewing, Thimble Island Brewing Company, Stony Creek Brewery and and Southport Brewing Company all call you home.

The divorce rate is the 10th highest in the state in Branford. Maybe too many trips to fill up the growler is taking its toll? But when 1 in 8 of you have called it quits, it’s understandable why you might be burning the candle at both ends.”

Read the full RoadSnacks report here.

Photo by Anders Adermark, via flickr creative commons