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Party Time: Welcome to America’s Top 10 Booziest—and Soberest—Cities

It isn’t a stretch to say that alcohol helped build our nation. From bathtub gin to the Old-Fashioneds of the “Mad Men” era, kegerators to craft beer, the Boston Tea Party to Long Island iced teas, boozy beverages have played a prominent role in American history and culture. Legend even has it that dwindling beer rations are what prompted the pilgrims to land on Plymouth Rock.

“We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer,” one settler wrote of the voyage.

And it wasn’t Homer Simpson who said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” It was founding father Ben Franklin, a gentleman who famously enjoyed his tipple. 

We’re a nation of drinkers, and our love affair continues unabated. You got a problem with that?

Sure, tastes and preferences change over the years. Whiskey is gaining fast on vodka. Beer’s still the drink of choice for the majority of Americans—about 43% in 2016, according to Gallup—but not as popular as in ’92, when 47% of folks regularly enjoyed a can or bottle of suds. Meanwhile, wine lovers may make up only about a third of all drinkers, but those regularly savoring delicious glasses of pinot noir or sauvignon blanc have risen 5% over the same period.

For those looking for an excuse to imbibe, Saint Patrick’s Day is as fine a time as any to throw on a leprechaun sweater, belt out some Pogues tunes, and savor a few dark pints of Guinness or some Irish whiskey.

“Drinking is entertainment,” says Wayne Curtis, author of “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” It’s other things, too. A time-proven social lubricant. A salve for the endless stressors of modern life. And, sometimes, a crutch.

Some cities, for better and worse, clearly enjoy drinking more than others. So in honor of one of the two great alcohol-fueled holidays, we decided to rank the 300 largest U.S. cities based on these criteria:

• Rate of binge drinking (five drinks over a two-hour stretch for a man, or four for a woman, at least once a month)
• Number of bars, wineries, breweries, distilleries, and liquor stores per capita
• Percentage of homes with a wet bar
• Number of drug and alcohol rehab centers per capita
• Percentage of traffic fatalities that are related to alcohol

The region where you live can have a big influence on how much you pound down at the bar, says William Kerr, director of the Alcohol Research Center in Emeryville, CA. For example, alcohol consumption is high in the chilly states of the northern Midwest and New England. (Hot toddy, anyone?) Meanwhile, the drinking rate tends to be lowest in the Bible Belt and in heavily Mormon Utah.

Your salary plays a role, too.

“We generally see that as income goes up, people are more likely to be drinkers,” Kerr says. Something to strive for, fellow Americans!

Of course, as you can tell by some of the criteria above, heavy drinking can have serious consequences. So designate a driver in case the fumes coming off our list of booziest cities intoxicate you, and read on. Here are some of the things we learned:

Boozy Trend No. 1: The Rust Belt loves its alcohol

What could possibly be better than a bottle of ice-cold beer at a Packers game? Three bottles.

Green Bay, WI, is the nation’s booziest city, boasting more than 150 years of suds-making history. Evidence is everywhere you look: couples in wedding gowns posing for photos next to brewing tanks, tourists and locals strolling through exhibitions in the National Railroad Museum, more likely than not with sweaty brown bottles in hand.

Perhaps there’s too much evidence. Green Bay has the highest binge drinking rate in our study. A staggering 24% of adults confess to railroading several drinks at least once a month, compared with 17% nationally.

“There [are] bars everywhere. It’s just part of the culture,” says Kevin Revolinski, author of “Wisconsin’s Best Beer Guide.” “We joke about it: that people will maybe go to the pub after church, put their kid on the bar in a diaper, and have a beer for lunch.”

Nearly 150 miles away from Green Bay, Madison (No. 4) residents also enjoy kicking back with a few brewskis. It’s a college town, after all: The University of Wisconsin–Madison has more than 43,000 students. We’d like to think at least a few are hard at work studying, but let’s just say they help keep the downtown bars and clubs in business.

Some attribute the drinking culture to Wisconsin’s heavy German heritage—and it was the Germans who popularized hopped beer and those sprawling beer gardens that populate the state.

The cultural affinity for beer is also reflected in the state’s lax liquor laws. Underage drinkers can consume alcohol in a bar as long as they’re accompanied by a parent, guardian, or spouse of legal drinking age.

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh (No. 10) has its own long love affair with beer. Almost as soon as people settled in the region, the brewing began. The city’s first brewery opened in 1765, 11 years before the United States became a nation. Priorities are priorities.

Boozy Trend No. 2: Hipster cities dig craft beer and cocktails

Both Denver (No. 2) and Portland, OR (No. 9), are young, hip, and ready to party. It’s common to see movie theaters pairing popcorn with beer (delicious, really), and food trucks with separate stations for cocktails.

From Williams & Graham, which was a speakeasy disguised as a corner bookstore during Prohibition, to City O’City, a coffee shop by day and pub by night, Denver has a head-spinning 650 bars listed on Yelp.

Denver is also the birthplace of Modern Drunkard Magazine, dedicated to the art and culture of drinking. It gained national attention in 2004, when publisher Frank Kelly Rich wrote an impassioned editorial protesting the reduced alcohol content of Jack Daniel’s Black Label, which had gone from 86 proof to 80 proof. The outrage!

Colorado is renowned for its craft breweries, and Denver is overflowing with them, says Cody Gabbard, a beer writer for Denver’s 303 Magazine and advocate for all things fermentable. Some of the best can be found in the River North Art District, Denver’s new “it” neighborhood near downtown.

“About eight breweries opened in the last two years” in River North, he says.

Many of the city’s young residents see no contradiction between heavy drinking and the famously outdoorsy Colorado lifestyle, says Robert Sickler, owner of Finn’s Manor, a Denver craft cocktail bar.

“They want to go out and about, meet people, make their acquaintance, and enjoy their time after a hike or a bike ride”—preferably with a beer, he says.

Portlanders also enjoy a refreshing alcoholic beverage, or four. But bars in the city are required to serve food with alcohol to promote “healthier drinking.”

“The drinking culture really goes hand in hand with the dining culture,” says bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler, who manages two bars at the Portland Ace Hotel. “It’s not a city full of people who are just getting drunk all the time; it’s a real social atmosphere.”

And taverns are just about everywhere in this hipster mecca. Be prepared to walk into a random store and realize, “Oh, it’s also a bar.” There’s a bike repair shop that has 12 taps, a video arcade that names cocktails after video games, and a leather goods store that tucks a bar in the back patio.

Boozy Trend No. 3: Cold weather drives people to drink

File this one under “obvious”: Researchers have pointed out a link between heavy drinking and latitude. As it turns out, the farther people are from the equator, the more likely it is that they drink. When winter days get long, dark, and freezing, locals tend to turn to alcohol to combat boredom and depression. Guess what the heaviest-drinking country in the world is? Russia.

In the U.S., cities in the snowy north—Billings, MT (No. 3), Spokane, WA (No. 7), and Fargo, ND (No. 8)—have a strong penchant for booze.

Downtown Billings offers as diverse and welcoming a drinking scene as most big cities, but at a much lovelier price. Happy hours offer $2 beers, $3 margaritas, and $3 fireball shots. (Don’t ask.)

Driving under the influence accounted for 14.3% of all arrests in Montana, among the highest rate in the country, according to 2015 FBI data.

Meanwhile, college football tailgating—and all the booze that goes along with it—is huge in Fargo. Tailgater Magazine (it’s real!) named North Dakota State University the 14th-best place for parking-lot partying.

Boozy Trend No. 4: Cities dominated by young guys imbibe more

“States like North Dakota and Wyoming generally have a higher percentage of male and generally younger people,” says Kerr from the Alcohol Research Center. Simply put: “Those groups drink more, regardless of where they are.”

The preponderance of men is at least somewhat due to the oil industries in both of the states, and Wyoming’s coal business.

And younger, unmarried people often aren’t saddled with the same responsibilities as those who are raising families—meaning that they may have way more time and money to buy a few rounds at the bar.

Sober Trend No. 1: Religion and benders don’t mix

Apparently, every month is #Dryanuary in Utah—many residents take a pass on alcohol all year long. That’s due to the state’s large population of devout Mormons, who abstain from drinking alcohol as well as caffeine, aided (no coincidence) by the state’s stringent liquor laws.

In restaurants opened after 2009, Utah bartenders are required to mix drinks out of view behind the so-called “Zion Curtain,” or to have a 10-foot buffer zone, prohibited to minors, between the alcohol-serving area and the rest of the eatery.

Any beer that exceeds 4% by volume is considered “liquor,” and is therefore banned from groceries and convenience stores. And remember, you can have more than one drink in front of you, but you can’t order a “double.” Got it? (Us neither,)

In Provo (No. 1), only 7.1% of adults engage in binge drinking, by far the lowest percentage in our study. West Jordan (No. 3), south of Salt Lake City, has only five bars on Yelp, including Applebee’s (which tells you a lot in itself).

As for Salt Lake City, it missed the top list because of the growing number of bars. Sometimes called “Silicon Slopes,” the city’s tech industry and proximity to world-class skiing have attracted young transplants from all over the country. That increases the demand for real, honest-to-gosh drinking establishments. But the binge drinking rate still remains low, at 11.6%.

Religion is also part of the reason why Memphis, TN (No. 6), made the list. Even though it’s hard to imagine scores of musicians without a drink in hand, the city has a large Baptist population, many of whom abstain. Only 9.6% of the adults there are heavy drinkers.

Sober Trend No. 2: Suburbanites don’t party where they sleep

Several of the most sober cities, including Daly City, CA (No. 2), El Monte, CA (No. 5), and Hialeah, FL (No. 8), are family-oriented bedroom communities located just outside bigger metros. So they often don’t have quite so many bars.

That means that if you live in Daly City, you need only to travel less than 10 miles into that bar mecca San Francisco. Residents of El Monte are only about a half-hour away from Los Angeles. And Hialeah residents can hop on the train to get to Miami, only about a dozen miles away.

Even if you’re traveling for your tipple, just be sure not to drink and drive, OK?

“At the end of the day, [drinking] comes down to a sense of moderation,” says Ted Haigh, aka Dr. Cocktail, author of “Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.”

Data: realtor.com®, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Census Bureau County Business Pattern, Yelp.com, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, County Health Rankings, RehabCenter.net

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