Everyday crowded streets day and night.. Your cities most vibrant streets.

The most consistently crowded street, day or night, special event or not, in the US:

1:30 AM, Thursday night:

If the Main Arcade at the Pike Place Market counts as a street, then it's by far the most crowded in the Pacific Northwest -- for four blocks, you pretty much shuffle rather than walk. But the Market is mostly daytime only.

In terms of volume (with more room) it's probably Pine Street from 3rd to 7th. That's the core of our Downtown retail district, imaginatively named the Retail Core. It's also home to our two main Downtown movie-plexes (16 and 13) and it's next to the convention center and a lot of hotels. It's actually a rectangular-shaped district but Pine is the busiest street.

The Broadway retail district, Downtown's Central Waterfront, and University Ave (the Ave) in the U-District are other good candidates. Actually, Broadway and the Ave are more 24/7 than the three others, though peak volumes don't reach as high.

I'm talking about pedestrians only.

The anti-cheesehead said:

The most consistently crowded street, day or night, special event or not, in the US:

1:30 AM, Thursday night:

Click to expand...

i would have to agree with this

Yeah, I'd think the LV Strip and Times Square would be pretty busy at almost all hours. That's a hard one to find a street "busy" from 2am to 6am - but Las Vegas is a special case that can pull it off.

Here in Chicago? Michigan Ave or State street have a lot of life, but not so much in the middle of the night.

I'd probably say Belmont between Broadway and Sheffield is one of our busiest streets, since it has the boystown, college and wrigleyville crowds in close proximity. Plus it's got the train station, Belmont bus that runs every 15 minutes all night long, Halsted bus that runs all night as well except for an hour or so at 4am, and numerous bars open until 5am on saturdays, 4am on weekdays.

DT San Francisco's pedestrian traffic is heavy in The Financial District during the day but then it drops off at night and weekends.

Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach and Fishermans Wharf are busy most days and well into the night.

Some of the neighborhoods have pretty good foot traffic day and night too.

Taylorhoge said:

Times Square amazingly enough gets quiet after 1am and you feel like your in the old times square bums and hookers wander down streets where tourist usually are during the day espeically 42nd street near the bus terminal

Click to expand...

I think people expect Times Square to be bumpin' all night long, but it's not, not even on New Years.

I haven't been to Miami, but I can see how it could be 24-7.

Really, the only places that I can think of that apply to this thread would be Miami Beach and Las Vegas.

Los Angeles's Sunset Strip (West Hollywood) could be on this list if the bars didn't close at 2.

bay_area said:

but really though, people need to sleep. its human nature and unless you live off of a trust fund, more then likely you also have a job.

Click to expand...

Which is why the only true 24-7 areas in the US (Las Vegas strip, the ocean side of South Beach) are mainly tourist destinations as opposed to something for the residents. Tourists dont have to worry about getting up for work in the morning.

love the lowriders but those pics either say its during the weekend or during the summer or a vacation when kids have off school.Some streets are 24 hours such as in NY we have 14th street for downtown which pretty much is open 24 hours beucase it has a large subway station and most people in downtown need a place to get cheap grocceries so they go there its the same thing for 34th street for midtown,72nd street for the west side,86th street for the upper east side and MLK Boulavard for Harlem

dave8721 said:

Which is why the only true 24-7 areas in the US (Las Vegas strip, the ocean side of South Beach) are mainly tourist destinations as opposed to something for the residents. Tourists dont have to worry about getting up for work in the morning.

Click to expand...

exactly.

yet there's an obsession on this forum over this ridiculous notion of the "24-hour city"..which I find laughable and out of touch with reality. 18 hours of excitement is just fine. :cheers:

bay_area said:

exactly.

yet there's an obsession on this forum over this ridiculous notion of the "24-hour city"..which I find laughable and out of touch with reality. 18 hours of excitement is just fine. :cheers:

Click to expand...

The obsession isn't just about the "24 hour city", it's the 24 hour city with lots of "grit", everyone rides the train to work, everyone lives in a 100+ year old brick rowhouse, everyone is liberal, nobody is white (diversity), there are no suburbs, everyone listens to hip hop, there is graffitti and trash everywhere (like I said, gotta have that grit!), and lots of skyscrapers that weren't built by evil corporations.

Now THAT's the ultimate, super duper urban, SSC dream city!!

The anti-cheesehead said:

The obsession isn't just about the "24 hour city", it's the 24 hour city with lots of "grit", everyone rides the train to work, everyone lives in a 100+ year old brick rowhouse, everyone is liberal, nobody is white (diversity), there are no suburbs, everyone listens to hip hop, there is graffitti and trash everywhere (like I said, gotta have that grit!), and lots of skyscrapers that weren't built by evil corporations.

Now THAT's the ultimate, super duper urban, SSC dream city!!

Click to expand...

Now you got the idea! kay:

^ yeah, I like the Chicago pics...but show those same pictures 12 hours later and it would most likely be a ghost town in most of them.

That's why I said Belmont street as my answer. It's not just tourists that keep the area going 24 hours a day. You have citizens working and roaming around during the day, restarants and Blue Man Group etc. in the evening, the train station and bars/clubs keep it busy until 4-5am, and then you have people leaving clubs/bars and others waking up for the morning between 5am-6am. After 6am you're back where you started with people going about their business and carrying on their daily lives.

Sure it's not BUSY from say 4am to 6am, but it's never really dead either, i've been on that street at all hours of the day night (far too many late nights), and I've never been alone by any means.