In other words, there’s no honor in being No. 1. (Or even No. 6, St. Louis.) Cities are ranked “drunkest” (most alcohol-related deaths and crimes) to most “sober” (fewest alcohol-related deaths and crimes); each city also is awarded a grade, A through F.

The list includes 100 cities. I wanted to look for geographic trends, so I created a quick-and-dirty color-coded map: Red = F; purple = D; blue = C; yellow = B; green = A

View ‘Drunkest’ cities in a larger map

Cities with good public transportation and taxi systems were more likely to receive A and B ratings (Boston, New York and Chicago, for example). There appears to be more alcohol-related crime and deaths west of the Mississippi River. California appears to be hit the hardest.

I have some other maps sitting around, so I did a little quick comparison. The “drunkest” cities (marked with red pins) seem to match up (not perfectly, of course) with the cities where 75 or more newspaper employees were laid off in 2009.

(Men’s Health may put together its own map. I found one for a previous year, but not a current version. Sadly, there is no date on the map that I did find.)

Both papers publish a map and list of their local news stories from the past 48 hours, then link to those stories. Both papers are having iframe problems when retrieving to stories. (They have fixed previous problems with the iframe.)

A note on EveryBlock’s Web site says they’ll offer a similar service to any blog or news organization in the five cities it covers: Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

You can make this map without knowing any code. Really. Here’s how:

1. CREATE A SPREADSHEET.
Go to Google Docs and create a new spreadsheet, or import an existing spreadsheet. You can have a lot or just a little information in the spreadsheet, but you will must have at least three columns: A title for the map points, a description and an address. A column to rank the information is optional.

If you have several cells of information that you want displayed in the map, concatenate them. For example, if you want to combine cells C2 and D2 (with a comma separating them), enter this formula in a new column: =concatenate(C2, ", ", D2) Your concatenated cells can include HTML tags, such as bold, italic or line breaks.

Publish the spreadsheet. (If your spreadsheet includes private information, do not publish it.) After hitting “Publish now,” mark the “automatically republish” box, select “More publishing options,” change the file format to ATOM, select Sheet 1 and copy the URL.

Example: Brewery spreadsheet

2. GEOCODE THE ADDRESSES.
To plot points on a map, you need latitude-longitude coordinates. (If you already have those coordinates, you can skip this step.) You don’t have to look up each one individually: the geocode wizard will find them all at once.

The URL you copied from your spreadsheet will include a key and worksheet ID. Enter them as directed and the geocode wizard will return the latitude and longitude for each address. It will warn you if an address cannot be found. Create two columns in your spreadsheet, and paste the latitude and longitude. (You should be able to copy and paste both columns at once.)

Example: Brewery spreadsheet with lat/lng coordinates

3. MAKE A MAP!
Copy your key and worksheet ID into the map wizard. Identify the fields and adjust the size of your map (you can change it later) and the color for the markers. If you use a rank, those numbers will show up on the map points; otherwise, they’ll be blank. Preview your map and make any changes you want.

Below the map is the JSON code. If you do not already have one, sign up for an API key — that’s what lets you embed the map on your Web site. Copy the code and add your API key.

You can make changes to the spreadsheet, and the map will automatically update. There are several notes in the code (comments are marked by // and /*) if you want to take a peek, figure out how it works and make changes. But save a copy of the original file … just in case.

St. Louis has finally been added to the cities you can see via Google’s Street View. Co-worker Kurt Greenbaum says the most detailed areas are in downtown St. Louis and along Highway 40.

Google added 36 other cities too:
• Huntsville, Ala.
• Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento and Stockton, Calif.
• Boca Raton, Cape Coral, Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Sarasota and West Palm Beach, Fla.
• Atlanta
• Topeka, Kan.
• Lexington and Louisville, Ky.
• Springfield, Mass.
• Ann Arbor, Mich.
• Jackson, Miss.
• Lincoln, Neb.
• Reno
• Newark, N.J.
• Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y.
• Charlotte and Winston-Salem, N.C.
• Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo, Ohio
• Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla.
• Columbia and Greenville, S.C.
• Knoxville, Tenn.
• Virginia Beach, Va.