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How can i get to the new york city?

How can I get a list of all the bars and restaurants in New York City?

  • How can I get a list of all the bars and restaurants in New York City? I met a guy in a bar who is paying me to do a bit of programming for him. My task is to somehow get a list of all the bars and restaurants in new york city with their addresses and phone numbers. He recommended a few sites to scrape the data off of (ones that are known to be pretty comprehensive), but after spending several hours on this, I'm realizing there's got to be an easier way. The scripts I wrote to scrape the data work well enough, the problem is knowing when they're complete. Since only linked pages get downloaded, there's really no way to know that I have all the data. So my question is two-fold. First, just how many restaurants and bars are there in the New York City area? And second, how do other sites get this data? Do they buy it from yellow pages?

  • Answer:

    have you heard of Time Out New York? or Zagat's? Maybe you can get a metafile from CitySearch.

jeffxl at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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Perhaps NYC's http://home2.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/rii/index.shtml One would assume it's as complete as any list is going to be. Has names and addresses, but no phone numbers. As far as numbers go, the site says " more than 20,000".

goingonit

Hmm --- actually, it seems like it does have phone numbers, but only sometimes.

goingonit

try contacting the local licensing authority for restaurants and bars. They're sure to have the list, and probably in a nice format. the question is whether they're obligated to release the list to you.

cosmicbandito

You can start by asking http://thousandbars.blogspot.com/, or by reading his blog. He's a personal hero of mine.

mds35

Maybe you could get some kind of list from http://www.menupages.com or worse yet http://www.citysearch.com. Any list you get from anywhere really is going to be outdated within a week, though - unless its online and has a dedicated resource constantly updating it, perhaps.

allkindsoftime

You can also probably get a complete list from the http://www.abc.state.ny.us/JSP/query/PublicQueryInstructPage.jsp, but it may still take some searching. The search results will also return liquor stores and restaurants. Or you could do a formal FOIA request.

mds35

Hey jeffxl, did you used to be called "Commando," too?

mds35

@allkindsoftime: Yeah, I've been trying citysearch, but it's a bit of a mess. I'd think I should be able to get a nice list. @mds35: I'll check it out, thanks. And nope, I was never called Commando.

jeffxl

er... phone book?

edgeways

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