partyGPS.com - Bar, Club and Liquor Store Locator

A boozehound or social butterfly’s new best friend, partyGPS.com is a Google Maps mashup to help you locate bars, clubs, or liquor stores in 25 major U.S. cities (with new cities being added regularly). Select a city by name or zip code and you will see a Google Map with small markers to distinguish between bars, clubs, or liquor stores. You can zoom in or shift the map to adjust your view. Select an establishment by clicking on its marker or selecting it from an alphabetical list on the right, and partyGPS will tell you it’s name, address, and phone number. You can also get driving directions from Google Maps or check out partyGPS user reviews.

Tags like Live Music, Billiards, Irish Pub, or Outdoors help you to get an idea what an establishment is like or to search for others like it. Registration is not required to view the maps, browse the discussion forums, or even to save your favorite locations, but you must sign in to post in the forum. Anyone can suggest a new bar, club, or liquor store that they would like to see added to the partyGPS database, which is big but far from all-inclusive at this point. This site also includes easy links to share what you’ve found on partyGPS with Facebook friends.

“partyGPS.com makes it easier to locate bars, clubs, and liquor stores throughout the U.S. with Google Maps, tags, and user reviews. This will hopefully help you and your friends plan your night out quicker without the hassle.”

This site is smart to unroll city-by-city, instead of spreading itself too thin as it develops. It also encourages users by allowing nearly full access to the site without any registration requirements. Instead of trying to compete with sites like Facebook as a social network, partyGPS focuses on providing just its unique service and encourages and facilitates integrating its service with Facebook.

Will many users post reviews or utilize the forums? There is currently next-to-no activity in the forums, and it seems like sites like Yelp or CitySearch already have a huge head start on gathering an extensive collection of reviews for establishments like bars and clubs.