Canadians and their March breaks

I found this articlewhich notes that Canadian air travel peaks in mid-August (I'll save that thought), but also flags the trend that more Canadians travel for their March break than for Christmas. I'll have to find out more about this.

"We open the door and hold on"

"San Antonians can follow the trail of peanut shells from the River Walk to Dirty Nellie's Irish Pub where Don Rives has been a bartender 22 years.

Rives said St. Patrick’s Day is one of the busiest days of the year for the pub.

“We open the door and hold on,” Rives said." says TheRanger.org

More on St. Patrick's Day as the Busiest Day for Pubs

The Publican says that Jameson Irish Whiskey is investing heavily in promotional events, saying, "“It'’s important that Jameson shows support for the [pub] trade on potentially one of their busiest nights of the year. This year we have introduced a t-shirt gift with purchase promotion which should appeal to the Jameson's consumer and drive revenue for the licensee."

BTW, Publican is not just a word with a "Re" missing, it is the old word for the keeper of a "Public House" from which our word "pub" derives.

St. Patrick Day -- Will it be the busiest day for bars?

Here's an interesting article in which a not-particularly-Irish bartender (Dave Wiganowsky, of Wiggies bar in Madison WI) cites St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) as the busiest day for his bar.

I'm still looking for other sources to confirm that St. Patrick's Day is the single busiest day of the year for bars and for alcohol consumed in licensed establishments.

I suspect that there are bigger beer drinking days, like Memorial, Independence, or Labor Day, and bigger wine/Champaign days, like New Years, and that much of the alcohol on those days is consumed at home or, at least, not in a bar.

Busiest Day of Carnival is likely not Mardi Gras, but Saturday February 25, 2006

Carnival is that season that lasts from Twelfth Night to Shrove Tuesday (more popularly known by the French Mardi Gras). Because modern travelers (and revellers) need time off from work to celebrate, Carnival as a season will be at its busiest on Saturday, February 25, 2006.

The revilers traditionally return home on the Sunday before Mardi Gras, which this year will fall on February 26. See this old press release from the New Orleans airport. The double peak of departures (on Sunday and again on Ash Wednesday) suggest that the busiest nights could be either Saturday or Tuesday.

Busiest Rail Travel Day for 2006 (Jan 26th)

Thanksgiving in the US has nothing on the Spring Festival in China. The period surrounding the Chinese Lunar new year creates the single largest source of trips on the planet. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Specialists estimate that Chinese will take 2 billion long- and short-distance trips during the New Year's period, 100 million more than last year."

Because the New Year's Day itself (Jan 29th, 2006) has three preparation days, long distance travel should have peaked about 4 days in advance, while shorter travel may have peaked slightly later--perhaps late on the 25th or early on the 26th. In the case of travel between the Mainland and Taiwan, I did confirm that the peak came this year on Wednesday, January 25th.

I could not find an exact citation for the rail peak, but I'm guessing it follows the same pattern as American Thanksgiving where air travel and the longer trips and vehicle miles traveled to Thanksgiving peak earlier (on late Tuesday or early Wednesday) while shorter trips peak on late Wednesday or the day itself (Thursday).

I'm still looking for sources that describe whether the sharpest peak happens before or after each of these holidays.

I'm also reserving judgment on the World's busiest air travel day. While the Chinese migration is very large, it is done mostly by rail, leaving an opening for air travel to Mecca for the Haj to actually produce the single busiest air travel day since Saudi Arabia is relatively more reliant on air than rail for getting pilgrims to Mecca.

Sunday of Washington's Birthday Weekend is the Busiest Day for Skiing

In some parts of the country, this week is known as Winter Vacation Week. I'm still investigating how this week came to be. Was it:

1) Schools in cold areas close to save on heating costs
2) Schools in cold areas close because parents demanded Florida or Skiing vacations
3) The skiing lobby demanded such a holiday
4) Its an extension of Washington's Birthday.

Whatever the case, the holiday weekend has been cited as having the busiest skiing day. In a February 13, 1997 statement in the New York Times, Colorado Ski Country U.S.A., a ski resort trade group cited the Washington's Birthday weekend as "our busiest weekend". Their spokeswoman noted that Colorado gets 40 percent of its ski business between Washington's Birthday weekend and the end of March.

Sunday morning (February 20 in 2006), falling in the middle of the weekend, should produce the busiest day for skiing, unless the weather intervenes. I'll go into more detail later on the nature of 3-day weekend holidays (which build as people arrive and decline as people leave), but suffice it to say that the stereotypical leisure trip with its "Saturday Night Stay" tends to produce a Sunday Morning Rush.

Busiest Days for Filing Divorces

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Best and Busiest Blog, a blog devoted to the proposition that people are more alike and more predictable than we intuit--or than perhaps we care to admit.

Because I'm late in starting this blog (it was supposed to be a New Year's Resolution) we've missed some of my favorites from January and earlier in February, so I'll quickly recap them here. Initially, this blog will be un-footnoted, but over time I hope to develop not only links to media sources, but also to original sources, such as surveys and industry associations.

Was your gym busy on the first Wednesday after that first Monday in January? It certainly was. In fact, given that new gym signups peak on that first Monday, combined with continued signups on Tuesday and Wednesday, that Wednesday evening is probably the busiest single gym day of the year. By Friday, the urge to party has overtaken a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule, and by the following Wednesday, folks have begun to lose their zeal. So go ahead and give the gym a try a gain. It isn't nearly as crowded as it was.

When the Super Bowl was still in January, the busiest day for television sales (or large screen TVs) was widely reported as the Saturday before Super Sunday. Two factors conspired to make this so. First, retailers' fiscal years mostly end on January 31 (allowing them plenty of time to process returns and extra inventory from their busiest time of year--Christmas--before closing the books on a year), and second, consumers wanted a big TV. With the Super Bowl now in February, things are a little murkier. Fiscal years still end on January 31, so Super Saturday now falls at the start, rather than the year end of electronics retailers, which may have caused the peak to spread out--some in January and some in February. We shall see.

Then Super Sunday itself is close to the busiest day for hosting a party (with New Year's Day usually classified first, and Thanksgiving Dinner somehow not being classified as a party). The Super Bowl also spawns the single busiest day for delivered pizza, although it may not be the biggest day for consuming pizza. The biggest day for eating pizza may be Thanksgiving Wednesday--which may be the single largest pizza day (combining delivered and eaten in-restaurant), and Thanksgiving Friday, which may be the day for the most pizza eaten at restaurants (for a guilt-and-cleanup free meal eaten out, especially by "the kids" who are back from college that day.

We've also just missed Valentine's day which is the busiest day for florists (although flower markets have their busiest day at some point before this, and the flower cutting would occur even further back). Valentines is by far the busiest day for marriage proposals (an estimated 10% of annual proposals are made on a day representing just 0.27% of the year).

The question of what the busiest day is for restaurants depends on the type of restaurant and the measure of business. As noted above, pizza restaurants are busiest on either side of Thanksgiving and for Super Sunday, and given the unromantic aura of pizza, the parlors experience a slow day on Valentines Day.

Valentines is good for a particular type of restaurant ("white tablecloth" restaurants) and a particular size of party (two). In this, it should be the busiest day for most tables turned, but not necessarily dinners served or dollars sold--a measure that favors the family-sized parties and brunch-or-dinner nature of Mother's Day.

Valentines day is also the busiest day for private detectives who are hired to trail unfaithful partners on the one day of the year on which they must be seen with both their #1 and #2 amours.

And, sadly, that brings us to mid-to-late February, when Divorce lawyers--already busy from a New Year's Resolution surge--are made doubly busy because of the impetus given by the evidence uncovered on the 14th/15th by those busy private detectives.

Part of what makes a particular day the busiest can be this layering of factors--not only where attorneys busy from New Years (and they stay busy through March), but on February 15 a second peaking factor kicks in--fresh evidence.