We all know how fantastic this city is. And if you live here and don’t think it’s fantastic, please leave.

So Milwaukee is the drunkest city in America. I don’t believe that any of us find that surprising.

A longstanding cultural idea has now been verified by the lovely people at Forbes and their nice little drinking survey. Most people picture Laverne and Shirley heading off to the brewery when they think of our lovely city.

With the publishing of a new survey, it’s official: Milwaukee will now be heralded as the drunkest city in America. At first we may see this as a bad thing, another solidification of our city’s negative image.

Let’s not feel this way. Let’s embrace it and have some fun with it instead.

Drinking culture is what it is, and it is alcohol that made this city known. Because, let me tell you, not everyone knows about Milwaukee. And what they do know is all from movies and stupid “smell our dairy air” jokes. I have tried to defend our city on numerous occasions to get people to understand we aren’t just a bunch of Miller-swilling drunks. But people unfamiliar with our city like their delusions of grandeur, that Milwaukee is a place where beer runs freely and everyone is always drunk and happy.

One of my out-of-town friends said after learning of the survey that if he lived in Milwaukee, he’d be drunk all the time too.

And I wanted to clock him and start on my whole “But Milwaukee is beautiful” speech, in which I mention entertaining facts like Lake Park being designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed Central Park. That it is impossible to watch the sun set on Brady Street and not fall in love.

The speech also includes a long list of festivals. I start waxing poetically on Lake Michigan and museums and restaurants. But I stop myself short, deciding that he doesn’t even deserve to know how great this place is with his “I’d be drunk too” snarky comments.

We all know how fantastic this city is. And if you live here and don’t think it’s fantastic, please leave. Sure, now we have this negative stigma attached to us, but perhaps we should use it to our advantage. Milwaukee should be the new spring break capital.

Let’s have all the co-eds come here instead of those fancy, warm places that are oh-so popular. They can stay warm in March the way the rest of us do: by drinking. While they’re here they can see that Milwaukee isn’t the rough-and-tumble drunken parade everyone thinks it is.

Perhaps more people will want to visit this illustrious place of debauchery now that we have a reputation to uphold. Let’s have them come in the summer, when they can drink to their hearts’ content at any one of the festivals we have; they can get drunk chomping on peanuts at Miller Park.

Can’t you see it now: “even their stadium is named after beer!”

We can’t look at this survey as a bad thing. The survey has simply made more people curious about this city. That’s good.

The more people who visit and fall in love with Milwaukee, the better. Then we can save our long-winded speeches about how fabulous it really is here. Because it really is.

> Comments