Asheville vies with Portland for ‘BeerCity USA’ title in poll’s final hours


Click here to vote in BeerCity poll
Voting closes Monday morning at 1:59 a.m. (Mountain time Sunday 11:59 p.m.)

Tension between the competing cities has increased, as evidenced by the blog post on the Portland Mercury news website by Patrick Alan Coleman saying, “We’ve got more “beer city” in the backwash at the bottom of our pint glasses than can be found in all of their pubs and breweries.”

In last year’s BeerCity poll, Asheville and Portland shared the title “Beer City USA,” after tying for the honors.

Xpress covered last year’s outcome this way:

Asheville and Portland, Oregon, will share honors as Beer City USA, according to beer guru Charlie Papazian.

After thousands of votes were cast in the online poll, the two cities scored about 6,000 votes each, according to Papazian, who posted the online poll at www.examiner.com.

Papazian, who founded the Association of Brewers and American Homebrewers Association, wrote that more than 16,000 people from 46 countries cast ballots between March 18 and May 7 for their favorite Beer City USA in the first such online poll. In a seesaw polling battle, the voting was close right up to the end. Papazian said the poll, while not scientific, was “indicative of the efforts put forth by various communities.”

“One thing that a poll like this indicates is the degree of beer culture and networks that exist in various areas of the country. It helps to bring to the forefront that beer culture, beer community and beer enthusiasm are relevant forces in the quest for access to better beer. … I saw an effective mobilization of beer communities in several areas of America,” Papazian wrote.

— http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2007/asheville_ties_for_first_place_in_beer_city_usa_poll/

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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes

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One thought on “Asheville vies with Portland for ‘BeerCity USA’ title in poll’s final hours

  1. Rob Close

    Asheville leading Portland, 37% to 34.8% as of a minute ago…keep those votes coming in, this could be great advertising for local breweries!

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