Best-of list · Bar Crawl Guide
Solo bar crawl tips from James Harlow — how to plan your route, pace yourself, meet people naturally, and enjoy a bar crawl alone across New York or.
The short answer
8 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
Solo bar crawl tips are something we get asked for constantly, and it is because most people have never tried it and assume it will be awkward. Our editors have collectively done bar crawls alone in 24 cities. The reality is that a solo bar crawl is frequently better than doing it in a group. You move at your own pace. You sit at the bar. You talk to bartenders and strangers without managing anyone else's preferences. It is one of the best ways to actually experience a city's bar culture rather than just pass through it.
The first solo bar crawl tip is to reframe the entire exercise. You are not alone at a bar. You are a customer with full control over your evening. Bars are social environments designed for strangers to occupy the same space comfortably. When you sit at the bar counter rather than at a table, you position yourself at the social centre of the room, next to the bartender and adjacent to other single patrons. This is the correct seat for a solo bar crawl and we will return to it throughout this guide.
How we picked
A solo bar crawl is not a compromise position. It is a specific way to spend an evening that is available to anyone who is willing to sit at the bar counter and treat each stop as its own conversation rather than a waypoint on a group itinerary. The solo bar crawl tips in this guide all come down to one principle: position yourself at the centre of each room, order something worth talking about, and let the evening develop at whatever pace it wants to. You will not always end up in the same place you planned. That is almost always an improvement.
James has done solo bar crawls in 24 cities across three continents. He started because he was travelling alone for work and found it more interesting than staying in. He has not stopped since.
Last reviewed 2026-05-14 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.