Years ago, when this kind of stuff was only in the back pages of the Reader (and when I was younger, less bitter, and more easily charmed by such romantic notions), I had the notion of totaling up and plotting out the location of Missed Connections. Perhaps it could provide an empirical alternative to the Tribune’s occasional christening of random bus lines (first the 151, more recently the 66) as “the Love Bus” — but more interestingly, one could see whether missed connections correlated with overall density of singles in a neighborhood (perhaps not, since shy singles might live apart from the gregarious types who don’t miss their connections), whether springtime really is for lovers, or whether we non-drivers really do interact more with our fellow (wo)mankind.

The internet makes such analysis much easier, of course. Sure enough, EveryBlock, the hyper-local aggregation service just launched in three cities, also includes the locations of Craigslist Missed Connections posts, plotting them based on business names. In the past 11 days, 60657 (Lake View) accounted for fully 50% more MCs than 60622 (Wicker Park) — which might follow, since 61% of 60657 households are non-family, vs. 29% in 60622.

The other way of looking at that, though, is that 60657 has fully twice the proportion of non-family households but only half again as many MCs. Thus, it appears that the highest density of “MCs per single” might actually be right here. Fancy that.

Also, probably for the same reason that call center volumes peak early in week (weekends are busy!), people tend to post MC ads on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.