The dry town of Ocean City, NJ, manages to make Business Insider's list of the "Most Hungover Cities in America."
"America's Greatest Family Resort" has long enjoyed a less-promoted reputation as "America's Wettest Dry Town."
But we had to laugh at Ocean City's latest triumph: Being named among the "25 Most Hungover Cities in America" at No. 5.
Or more appropriately we had to laugh at the Business Insider editors who noted Ocean City's "27 bars per 100,000 people," "27 beer/wine/liquor stores per 100,000 people" and "3.1 alcoholic beverage producing establishments per 100,000 people."
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Read:
The 25 Most Hungover Cities in America at BusinessInsider.com
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Top 25 and Top 10 lists are cheap and effective gimmicks for publications to boost readership — readers usually oblige by clicking on those superlative "Best Of" headlines. But the features often involve little meaningful research ... or, in this case, no knowledge that Ocean City is a dry town with no bars, no liquor stores and no "alcoholic beverage producing establishments."
Perhaps they were talking about the Ocean City metropolitan area ... if a small barrier island town of 11,701 has such a thing.
On a page showing a stock image of an "Ocean City" bar table filled with empty beer, wine and shot glasses, Business Insider links to a methodology that is based on a 2011 telephone survey that supposedly interviewed more than 500 Ocean City residents — with 10.1 percent admitting "heavy drinking" and 17.6 percent "binge drinking."
The count of bars in Ocean City was reportedly from a U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns report in 2012.
But, hey, who are we to rain on Ocean City's latest superlative parade? We're probably just hungover and cranky.
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