This new ranking is "America's Craziest Cities". Which should probably be pronounced "America's craaaaaziest cities!" According to the Beast, "After two years of national doldrums, crazy is on the rise again." Really? Even though in the previous two years there was a national election involving Sarah Palin? Just for starters?
Oh, well moving on, to the Beast's (always) unimpeachable criteria: Psychiatrists per capita, stress, eccentricity and drinking levels.
Number One is Cincinnati on the basis of a dude who made something that looks like a Port-a-Potty but is really a ten-stall public crapper. Whoa! Crazy! How can St. Louis possibly compete with that?
Oh, whoops, we can't. The Beast ranked us a lowly 21 out of 57. They write, "Despite Missouri's generally lenient open-container laws (read: there aren't many), it is illegal on the curb of any city street to drink beer from a bucket." They got this information from a website called Dumb Laws.
Apparently they were also paying attention to Unreal's report on the All-Star Game last summer in which our intrepid correspondent wrote, "One [police] officer informs Unreal that the force received orders to turn a blind eye toward public drinking over the weekend."
But wait! Riverfront Times calendar editor Paul Friswold thought to look up the actual laws governing public alcohol consumption, available online thanks to the St. Louis Public Library, which means even dumbasses in New York can find them:
No person shall drink any nonintoxicating beer or intoxicating liquor in any park, public building, street, sidewalk, alley, highway, parking lot, thoroughfare, or other public place unless consumption of intoxicating liquor or nonintoxicating beer in such place has been expressly authorized in writing by the Excise Commissioner.
It's also illegal to have an open container in a liquor store and buy a single drink for consumption off premises. Furthermore, if you're busted violating the open container law in your car, you get two points off your license.
We don't really object to being deemed the twenty-first craziest city in America. We love our City Museum. The way we scream our brains out over the Cardinals certainly stretches the boundaries of sanity. But for God's sake, Daily Beast, do some actual goddamn reporting. Or, better yet, quit doing these stupid rankings.(Which they won't, because they get crazy people like us all worked up and we write about them and they like it. Damn.)
