Bar Raised.

A Look At How Much The Top Bars In Dallas Earned In May, 2016.

Texans like to spend copious amounts of their income participating in the Great American Pastime. We know this, because as Reddit user BadLemur once pointed out, the Texas Comptroller keeps tabs on that sort of thing and makes all that info public record. Any establishment in the state that holds a Mixed Beverage license must report all sales revenue generated from the sale of liquor, beer and wine at their establishments on a monthly basis. The comptroller, in turn, puts all that info into a conveniently downloadable spreadsheet each month. As of May, there were 1,497 establishments in Dallas proper that held such a license. Below we’ve gone ahead and done you the solid of listing out the top 20 Dallas establishments in terms of alcohol sales for the month of May 2016.

Anyone that’s followed this column at any point over the past year knows that Dallasites sure love to drink — at bars and restaurants, in particular, seeing as how those are the only places we keep tabs on in this space. And to the tune of over $60M a month, typically!

Some of those same Dallasites — the dummy dumdum ones, specifically — like to try and drive themselves home after a night of getting plastered, too.

To that end, the big news this week is the controversial case of a Dallas man that says he went into the W.W. Fairfield’s in Richardson at 6 p.m. this past December, kept drinking there through (and on past) 2 a.m. and then, on his drunken swerve-fest home, crashed his vehicle into a dividing wall on North Central Expressway. Now, he’s suing the bar for $1M, saying employees should have cut him off at some point.

While we fully agree with him there — and while Texas state law states that drinking establishments can be held partially responsible for over-serving obviously intoxicated patrons — the dude should probably nut up and take some responsibility for his own actions here, too. Or maybe he should just count his blessings that he’s not only alive, but that he didn’t kill some other innocent family on the road that winter night.

C’mon man, learn to quit while you’re ahead!

There’s no arguing that there’s demand for booze around here, though. Even with more than 35 craft breweries having opened in North Texas in the last few years, that’s an industry that just keeps growing.

This past Saturday, the makers of Western Son Vodka opened Whistle Post Brewing Co. just next door to their Pilot Point distillery. For now, the operation is small enough to where its brews will only be available on site. That’ll all change, of course, once its full 20-barrel brewhouse is installed later this summer.

In the meantime, Dallasites have had little trouble finding other spots to quench their undying thirsts. So, onto the real reason you came here — to find out where folks in Dallas spent the most on booze last month.

Total alcohol sales in Dallas in May 2016: $81,718,566.80
Last month’s total: $69,692,936.72