Map shows rats hang out at all the restaurants everywhere

When you go out to eat, do you ever worry about how many rats have been hanging out at the the restaurant? We’d put that out of mind if we were you, there’s enough to worry about when out eating, like how to pay the bill. But the rat-obsessives over at Gothamist wondered about it, and they got data journalist Steven Melendez to study the restaurants cited for evidence of mice and rats and plot out what percentage of restaurants in each ZIP code in the city had those citations. Surprise! It’s everywhere!

Seriously, when you go and look around on the map, you’re going to find that rats basically take up residence in at least twenty percent of the restaurants in any given ZIP code. Only 22% of restaurants in Sea Gate and Coney Island got hit with rat or mice violations, but that’s the lowest number in all of Brooklyn. The highest percentage of restaurants with mice and rat problems was 52%, found in ZIP code 11218, made up of Windsor Terrace and Kensington.

Still, that doesn’t mean people elsewhere should be all smug about  Kensington’s rat problem, because all of Brooklyn is basically a 30% rat restaurant zone. The good news is that it means everyone is basically equally gross and we have a new place to play “spot the rat,” other than the subway. The bad news is that the rats will probably take over the city and establish some kind of King Rat way earlier than had been predicted by scientific models. Oh well, we’ve had a good run.

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