Distractions

I guess cleaning out the boxes isn't really holding my attention, hence the third blog post today. Here's a list of Forbes magazine's America's 15 Hard-Drinking Cities , based on three criteria: Residents who had at least one drink in the last 30 days, Men who had more than two drinks per day, or women one drink, and Residents who had five or more drinks on one occasion.

The article I've linked above is annoying, as you have to scroll through the cities to view all of them and their relative statistics, so here is the main article. I've repeated the list below, with an *asterisk in front of every city I've been to, and a **double asterisk if I've drank there.

• 1. ** Austin, TX
  
• 2. ** Milwaukee, WI
  
• 3. ** San Francisco, CA
  
• 4. * Providence, RI
  
• 5. ** Chicago, IL
  
• (tie) 8. ** Seattle, WA
  
• (tie) 8. ** Cleveland, OH
  
• (tie) 8. ** St. Louis, MO
  
• 9. ** Boston, MA
  
• 10. * Cincinnati, OH
  
• 11. * Pittsburgh, PA
  
• 12. Virginia Beach, VA
  
• 13. ** Portland, OR
  
• 14. * Jacksonville, FL
  
• 15. ** Detroit, MI
  

I'm feeling pretty good about the top ten, though it looks like I need to go drink in Providence. It's interesting to me that this list includes so many places where I wouldn't particularly care to live (Milwaukee, Providence, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Virginia Beach, Jacksonville, Detroit), and similarly, so many towns that are pretty unhappy places. It's reminiscent of my 2004 post about football, baseball, and the geography of hope.

A few more observations: note how concentrated the cities are in the northeastern U.S. in this google map, and how twelve of the fifteen cities are very humid, and another two are known for heavy rainfall. Do we really wonder what makes people drink?