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America's "Hard-Drinking" Cities, Whatever that Means

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KEEP AUSTIN DRUNK Greetings!
In another one of their shameless attempts at grabbing traffic through highly dubious listicles, Forbes has gone and ranked "America's Hard-Drinking Cities" for your Internet perusal. Heading up the pack of drunks are the citizens of Austin, Texas.

Per the mag's stats, the hometown of the University of Texas boasts a population in which 61.5% of adults have had at least one drink in the past 30 days, and 20.6% of have had five or more drinks on one occasion. So basically Forbes slapped the attention-grabbing "Hard-Drinking" tag on Austin because a little more than half the city has enjoyed a beer or glass of wine in the past month, and about a fifth of the city has gotten drunk at one time or another. That is totally hard!

Rounding out the top 10 are Milwaukee, San Francisco, Providence, Chicago, Seattle, Cleveland, St. Louis, Boston, and Cincinnati. Just how useless are lists like this? Men's Health ranked America's "10 most dangerously drunk cities" back in June, factoring in such legitimate signs of being a lush as deaths related to liver disease and DUI arrest rates. Their top five—Denver, Anchorage, Colorado Springs, Omaha, and Fargo—differs completely from Forbes'.

By Neel Shah   08/08/08 2:30 PM
Related: Duly Noted, Forbes, Pop, Useless Listicles
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