Milwaukee — A Drunken Port In a Storm

Milwaukee has been named “America’s Drunken City” — by no less an eminence than Forbes. San Francisco isn’t on the list. Neither is Los Angeles nor New York. Which suggests that, outside of Boston, Providencem and Pitt, the antipodean ends of the nation simply don’t have what it takes to get soused. Or the Forbes money men (or the employees of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) were too busy with their mergers and acquisitions to hit the pubs.

The announcement caused the Milwaukee Visitors and Convention Bureau to issue the following statement: “We’ve gone from Brew City to new city.” Well, that may be happening, but until they take the “Mil” out of Milwaukee, I’m unconvinced.

(via Dave White)

4 Comments

  1. Minneapolis made number 2, and people are talking about it here. This study, or whatever they want to call it, is really dumb – they figure the number of people in some sort of alcohol treatment into the numbers. Minnesota and Wisconsin have some of the best health care in the country, I think we got singled out for having better health care and more opportunities for rehab.

  2. Well, maybe Susan, but when I was growing up there were not only taverns on every corner in Milwaukee’s neighboods but a great number of local breweries in addition to the big three or four. I don’t know if people were alcoholics but drinking was not only a part of social life but in many cases it WAS social life. This may be a bogus study but it’s not surprising to me at all.

  3. Milwaukee I can see, but Minneapolis? I think there are more drunken cities. You can’t even buy liquor off-sale on Sundays.

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