I read with amusement your assertion that beer consumption in Australia had fallen to just 4.23 litres (7.5 pints) per person this year... I can confirm that beer-drinking is at a 65 year low. But as a proud Australian undergraduate who is aware that bob Hawke, our former prime minister, downed a yard glass (2.5 pints) in nine seconds at the Turf Tavern whilst at Oxford, I can't help but contest this. The figure you quoted is for the pure alcohol content of the beer. In terms of volume, we drank 98 litres per head (172 pints) in 2011.Dan and I often go back and forth about heavy drinking in the midwest. Regardless of the statistics, it is shocking for anyone from another state (unless it is the north like Minnesota or Wisconsin) to see the insane level of drunkenness you see at a Cubs game on a summers' day or during St. Patrick's day here in Chicago.
Although I have a rule of thumb which is "don't try to keep up with Australians, Irish or British" each of which was learned by trying to do that very thing and failing on many instances.
3 comments:
I remember being scarred by the relative lack of beer guys in the stands in Baltimore. I think that was the first game I had ever been to that wasn't in Chicago or Milwaukee and I didn't know/understand that not ALL PLACES in the US didn't booze as fast as humanly possible.
Yes we really could not understand why he wasn't pouring booze out of the tap as fast as possible and pushing the cups onto desperate patrons. That is how it is at every sporting event we ever attended prior to that baseball game. And has been ever since (in the Midwest, at least).
I don't understand at Soldiers Fields why they do the stoooopid can thing with the vendors. They take so much time pouring them into cups and it makes a huge mess. At Miller Park they just sell you the plastic bottle to dump down your gullet. I wonder if at Soldier Field if they fear them being used as projectiles. But from what I have heard at Lambeau they sell the plastic bottles and the constant answer I get is "why on earth would anyone throw away good beer?"
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