The little ZIP code that could

At Houstonist, there are few things we love more than getting wrapped up in pointless trivia. It helps us refine our witty cocktail party banter — or ensures we don’t get invited to any more cocktail parties — and, more important, spending half a day chasing useless facts across the Web means we only have to do our real job half as much. Score!

In that spirit, we were excited today to find 77010, the least populous ZIP code in Houston. It's a one-tenth-square-mile slice of downtown that includes Houston Center. Because most of what's in 77010 is office space, only 76 people live there — most of them in the posh Four Seasons Place apartments. The median income is more then $200,000, which means 77010 regularly shows up on lists of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the United States (some sources put the average income as high as $670,198, or even $741,291). But there's an interesting disparity in rents in 77010: About half the renters pay between $250 and $299 a month, while the other half pay more than $2,000, according to City-Data.com.

If this kind of thing interests you as much as it does us — and no, you don't have to admit it — the Census Bureau's American FactFinder is a great way to pass the time you should be working. You can thank us later.