Forbes Magazine has released its list of “America’s Drunkest Cities” and Milwaukee has the dubious distinction of leading the list of 35 cities ranked. According to the review, the other cities in the top rankings following Milwaukee were Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Columbus, Ohio; Boston; MA and Austin, Texas.
Here’s what Forbes writer David Ewalt had to say about Milwaukee:
“It will come as no surprise that the residents of a city known as “The Nation’s Watering Hole” like to have a beer or two.
But Milwaukee isn’t just your average brewing town. It’s the hardest-drinking city in America, according to Forbes.com’s ranking of America’s Drunkest Cities.
Each city was ranked in five areas: state laws, number of drinkers, number of heavy drinkers, number of binge drinkers and alcoholism.”
It was interesting to see, that to this writer at least, Milwaukee is known as the “Nation’s Watering Hole.” This is quite a contrast to the survey results reported by Alderman Witkowski quoted in Small Business Times as having said:
“In the most recent study, many people failed to respond on questions about their perception of Milwaukee, presumably because they have no perception of or knowledge of Milwaukee.”
Given that the Milwaukee Community and Economic Development Committee has created a task force to evaluate Milwaukee’s image, maybe their work is done for them and they should bow to reality and call the city “America’s Watering Hole”. The entertainment venues around the city would love this and given a bit more marketing pizazz (and some good weather too), maybe Milwaukee could become the “New Orleans of the North”. Water Street = Bourbon Street anyone?
UPDATE
Jumping on or leading the trend, USA Today also published a list from the Men’s Health March issue of America’s Drunkest Cities. Their list was compiled based on the following criteria:
“death rates from alcoholic liver disease, booze-fueled car crashes, frequency of binge-drinking in the past month, number of DUI arrests, and severity of DUI penalties.”
By their ranking criteria, Milwaukee didn’t make the top of the list. In fact Milwaukee rated a C at #58 on the list, while Madison was ahead of the Brew City and Watering Hole at #15 with a D-. Their top 5 cities were
- Fresno, Calif.
- Reno, Nev.
- Billings, Mont.
- Riverside, Calif.
- Austin
