Between San Francisco Fleet Week, the hot weather and a long holiday weekend, many Bay Area residents are sure to be indulging in more than a few celebratory drinks.
So to mark the occasion, The Standard dug into a recently released dataset that can help answer the question: Which San Francisco neighborhoods are the booziest?
Surprisingly, the residents of the peaceful Presidio logged the highest rate of San Francisco binge drinking, according to the 2023 Centers for Disease Control PLACES local health indicators data. The PLACES data represents estimates based on a 2021 national telephone survey of U.S. adults.
The CDC defines a binge-drinking adult as a man 18 or older who had five or more drinks during a single occasion in the past 30 days, or four drinks for a woman.
Coming in behind the Presidio was the more populous 94117 ZIP code, home to Cole Valley and the Lower Haight, where about 22% of residents are binge drinkers. The neighboring Castro, home to a vibrant nightlife, also logged one of the highest binge-drinking rates.
Meanwhile, just north of 12% of residents in the 94134 ZIP code, Visitacion Valley, reported recent binge drinking, giving the southeastern San Francisco enclave the lowest rate in the city.
Military bases report the highest binge-drinking rate in all of California, the data shows. The Marine Corps base Camp Pendleton had the highest rate of heavy drinkers of any place in the state, with 28% of residents falling into that category. The Naval Air Lemoore Station had the next-highest rate, followed by the Edwards, Vandenberg and Beale Air Force bases rounding out the top five.
In the Bay Area, Santa Rosa—smack in the middle of Sonoma wine country—had the highest share of binge drinkers: 19%. Concord, San Francisco and Berkeley followed, each logging around 17%.
San Jose and Sunnyvale, where just about 14% of residents reported being heavy drinkers, had the lowest rate among the Bay Area’s largest cities.
More than 140,000 people die from excessive alcohol use in the U.S. each year, while the combined cost of lost productivity, criminal justice involvement and health care expenses tops $35 billion annually in California alone, according to the CDC. Meanwhile, some of the cutting-edge research into new ways to treat alcohol use disorder is taking place in San Francisco.