Vote Asheville for BeerCity, USA

First of May, First of May, BeerCity voting begins today! (Photo credit: rbatina.)

This thing is very simple.  For the last couple of years a bunch of people in Portland and a bunch of people in Asheville, North Carolina have all got their panties bunched up trying to sway the vote in Charlie Papazian's online poll to choose BeerCity USA.  Tiny Asheville always wins, and Portland always comes in second, and no other city in the country even notices.

Portland folks:  please don't take the bait this year and try to churn out PDX votes for this silly poll.  Even though Portland and the much smaller Asheville combined for about 14,000 votes last year, the voting was a non-event in much larger cities that have respectable beer scenes:

• Chicago (metro: 9.6 million): 190 votes
• Boston (metro: 4.6 million): 114 votes
• San Francisco (metro: 4.3 million): 171 votes
• Seattle (metro: 3.4 million): 362 votes
• San Diego (metro: 3.1 million): 884 votes

Portland is a great beer city.  Wherever you go in this town, from the crunchiest granola store to the dingiest gas station, from the humblest dive to the snootiest restaurant, if there is beer at all, there is something good on the list.  Asheville must be pretty nice also.  But to say that either of them is 50 times better than the cities I've listed above is simply ridiculous.  This year, let's bring Portland into the ranks of the other great beer metropolises by minimizing the number of Beer City USA votes we get.

One reasonable approach for Portlanders is to ignore the poll.  But just to make sure we don't lose by a hair as in past years, I urge you to do as I've done:  cast a strategic vote for Asheville, NC, for BeerCity USA.