Seattle and Portland: Less Drunk in 2010

"2009.276 - One Drink Too Many" by Shawn McClung, via the SunBreak Flickr pool.

Men's Health is set to publish their annual list of "America's Drunkest Cities" in the upcoming March issue.  For whatever reason, they don't have the new list up on the website just yet, but they've released their results to the rest of the media (full list here, care of yesterday's the USA Today). 

Denver has been stripped of its "Drunkest" crown, but the majority of the top ten are still located in the West, with the bottom ten mostly being in the East (one exception: those Mormons in Salt Lake City, of course).  Seattle comes in as the 64th-drunkest city, with Portland out-drinking us at #40.  The rankings come from stats like "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."  See the Men's Health website for a more in-depth explanation of the data they use. 

And while you're there, check out the map of last year's rankings.  It's confusing and counterintuitive, but consider the numbers in a backwards fashion--so Denver, last year's #1 drunkest city, shows up with an overall rank of #100.  Or as Men's Health puts it: "For the overall ranking, a lower ranking is better. That is, a city ranked No. 17 is less drunk than one ranked No. 89. For the individual criteria, however, a higher ranking is better. So a city ranked No. 92 for DUI has fewer drunk-driving arrests each year than a city ranked No. 3."

In that case, last year Seattle came in at #79 (the 21st-drunkest city) and Portland was right there with us at #80 (the 20th-drunkest city).  So Portland is now twenty slots less drunk than in last year's survey, and Seattle's moved down the drunken list past a whopping 43 cities?  I'll drink to that.