DRAFT: not for citation
Alcohol, the Press, and Urban Redevelopment in
Joseph A. Rodriguez
Department of History and Urban Studies
UW-Milwaukee
Since January of
2002, the
With the new printing plant’s construction, the paper created a new series on the back page of the Cue called "No RSVP Needed." This serious runs on Fridays and profiled a bar. These were not reviews. The profiles were not critical. Rather they celebrated the distinctive culture of each drinking establishment. There was no explanation as to why the paper began to run these articles. Most of the copy consists of photographs of the insides of clubs, patrons drinking, playing darts, dancing, talking. There are no exterior shots. The accompanying text describes the clubs by name, gives the address, phone, hours, drinks available, and describes the crowd ("middle aged blue collar types, yuppies, professionals, construction workers in hard hats"). Paragraphs also describe the ambiance, music, and class of the crowd.
“No RSVP Needed” profiles a different bar or
nightclub with text and colored photographs showing young people enjoying
alcoholic beverages and/or playing darts or pool. Most of the clubs featured are located in
While
newspapers have had restaurant reviews, this feature is not a review. Rather, it
lays out in factual detail the types of drinks, music and people featured in various
clubs in
While text is included the main feature of these articles are the clear colored photographs. All are interior shots. Many include shots of the bar itself with bottles of alcohol lined up in the back.
What is one to make of this new feature? American press is increasing coverage of entertainment and the arts, sports, and business, while news coverage declines. (Bogart). The rise in arts and entertainment and sports coverage coincides with the post-industrial urban economy. Without a shrinking manufacturing base the city increasingly turns to entertainment, the “fantasy city.” Cities compete for the hottest restaurant chains.
It’s
not surprising that such a series exists in
The
revival of nightlife in
Others who have
analyzed the emphasis on nightlife look at corporate domination (
While the economic restructuring of cities has increased the influence of corporations and monopoly capitalism, “No RSVP Needed” focuses on independent bars in order to emphasize the unique experience of the city’s nightlife. While several clubs are owned by the same capitalists, there are few national chains featured. The media’s role of the media in promoting nightlife and urban redevelopment has been overlooked. There are studies of the press’ role in redevelopment. The press plays an important role in the promotion of redevelopment (Wilson and Wouters). The press is essential for encouraging the public to support urban redevelopment plans (Logan and Molotch). The press covers redevelopment because it interests both city and suburban residents (Kaniss) The press labels particular areas as “ripe” for redevelopment or gentrification thus creating or adding to an image of decline or conversely of a neighborhood being on the cusp of “recovery.” (Wilson and Wouters)
The press’ role in redevelopment according to Kaniss is to draw in suburban readers. The city is the only common connection that widely separated suburbanites have in come. Gibson following Heiden, argues that the press in covering urban redevelopment favors the elite goal of public investment and tends to ignore or downplay grassroots critics (Gibson).
But coverage of large construction projects (stadia and convention centers) or gentrification are not the only aspects of urban redevelopment covered by the press. And nightlife is not only significant for large breweries and other transnational capitalist industries. Media promotion of nightlife is an essential part of the new urban economy. And media promotion of nightlife reflects the desire to lure more young people to the city and have them subscribe to the urban press. Finally, coverage of urban nightlife is part of urban image making. The press is essential in promoting fairs and festivals, and in imaging the city (See articles in Gold and Ward) in its advertising, reviews, and its extensive coverage of events, conventions, festivals etc.
In
the series “No RSVP Needed” the press supports the identity of downtown
This study argues
that alcohol plays an increasingly important role in the press' coverage and
promotion of urban redevelopment. Few have studied alcohol as a central
attraction to the promotion of urban redevelopment (
Alcohol sales further urban redevelopment in multiple ways. Alcohol companies advertise extensively in cities and so help finance events and new buildings. Because companies invest heavily in advertising, alcohol is a highly symbolic product. Alcohol plays a role in shaping the format of various urban redevelopment schemes. Cities increasingly depend on the tourist industry. Tourism forms a large part of the urban tax base. Thus alcohol sales in restaurants and bars contribute to urban revenues. Alcohol advertisements that associate drinking with fun also has benefits. But the proliferation of events and festivals, sports, and entertainment districts where alcohol is a chief attraction leads to several questions. Have urban redevelopment strategies influenced the way alcohol is consumed? Have changing patterns of alcohol consumption affected urban redevelopment strategies?
The Urban Role of Alcohol
Why focus on bars and saloons and nightclubs? One reason is that alcohol is a highly imaged product. Therefore its association with the city helps shape the city’s image. What are the images that alcohol companies seek to associate with their products?
Alcohol advertising often portrays its consumers as young, attractive, active, fun loving, popular, fashionable, and diverse. The images in “No RSVP Needed” mirror the typical images in alcohol advertising and ascribe those images to the place, the bar or nightclub that is the subject of that week’s feature. The photographs are inevitably of young people in groups having fun while drinking, shooting pool, or playing dates. The text refers to the patrons listening to music. The impression created in the images and text is that drinking in bars is a way young people meet and have fun. For urban boosters, associating the downtown with these images is highly desirable. These images strongly suggest that downtown is a desirable place to hang out and have fun.
Moreover, the text
indicates that there are a variety of clubs in
“No RSVP Needed”
provides a highly positive image of drinking and nightlife in general. The
articles create the impression that
Moreover, alcohol, as a social lubricant, encourages people to spend more money than they normally would on food, drinks, and other souvenirs thus stimulating the downtown economy. The alcohol industry is dominated by large companies that compete for consumers through media and outdoor advertising and direct promotions (giving out samples, gifts, sponsoring entertainment and etc) (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 9-10-04). These promotions focus on urban venues like street festivals, bars, restaurants, and stadiums where large numbers of consumers are present.
Moreover, the alcohol industry’s advertisements link the city to youth and fun, images that fit the goals of urban boosters. Alcohol advertisements emphasize sexual allure and adventure, youth, freedom, diversity, and fun. Television beer ads are set in cities or nightclubs and show young, attractive, singles interacting while drinking. Thus alcohol ads aim at the same clientele, and approach them with the same messages that urban boosters use to promote cities.
Diversity is especially important to both city leaders and the alcohol industry. The alcohol industry promotes its products to minorities who represent a growing portion of the youth market. Large alcohol firms, seeking to expand their market share into minority areas, are increasingly competing with minority-owned liquor stores (Farrell and Johnson). Images of ethnic and racial minorities permeate alcohol advertising. Alcohol companies promote ethnic festivals and advertise in foreign languages. This advertising helps attract ethnic minorities to the city where ethnic festivals are held, for example, Cinco de Mayo. Immigrants are an especially important part of the new service economy as laborers, but also as entrepreneurs who open restaurants, bars, clubs, stores, that add diversity to the city and create a lively atmosphere.
Alcohol advertisements increasingly target a racially diverse, urban, market (Alaniz and Wilkes, 1995). This celebration of racial diversity in alcohol advertising corresponds with the desire of urban boosters to demonstrate that cities are sites of multicultural harmony rather than racial or class conflict. These desires come together as the beer and spirits industries co-sponsor urban ethnic and neighborhood festivals to reach diverse consumers. While celebrating cultural diversity these festivals also advertise the city's cosmopolitanism (Davila).
As Lees has shown,
even though urban redevelopment advocates often point a desire to promote
diversity in downtown, it is a highly restricted form of diversity that
excludes non-consumers like the homeless and youth (Lees). Thus alcohol companies in their advertising
narrowly define diversity to gender, ethnic, and racial mixing. This diversity does not include the elderly or
gay. In “No RSVP Needed” diversity is
highlighted as shots show blacks and whites together in the clubs. Also,
diversity is projected in terms of
Diversity is also
promoted in the celebration of residential and commercial activities. Also, the
diverse buildings both older and modern styles that predominate in the
For example in
Mardi Gras in
Alcohol's many associations with diversity and its cross cultural popularity make it a power symbol of urban freedom. “No RSVP Needed” describes the wide variety of alcoholic drinks, from beer, wine, and hard spirits available at the clubs. Different types of alcohol is associated with different audiences from beer drinking sports fans, to wine connoisseurs, and hard liquor sophisticates. Not only the type of alcohol but also the places where it is served promote the notion of a city that has something for every type of patron from those seeking to relax at a neighborhood bar, dance at a nightclub, seek a partner at a singles bar, or drink and eat at an upscale restaurant. There is no better way city leaders can suggest urban freedom and diversity than by reviewing the range of clubs and highlighting individual styles, ambiances, products served, and music played and danced to. Listing of urban clubs will suggest that the city has something for every taste, race, gender to attract a wide-range of tourists, which is the primary goal of urban promoters.
A final reason for
the promotion of alcohol consumption by urban boosters may relate to the fact
that the city has cracked down on crime and vagrancy. City leaders want to suggest that
In sum, both cites and the alcohol industry seek to promote images of personal freedom and fun. Therefore there is an especially powerful synergy at work when cities rely on alcohol companies sponsorship of events and buildings.
The next section of the article focuses on aspects of the series “No RSVP Needed.”
Importance of Music and other activities
Analysis of the
series “No RSVP Needed” suggests that even though the series celebrates
downtown
Social drinking is acceptable but society generally frowns upon solitary drinking. "Drinking, more than most other leisure activities, derives its meaning from its social context and setting." (Barrows and Room, 1991:7) Alcohol advertisements emphasize socializing, parties, and other activities (sports etc—find a reference.). An active lifestyle (dancing) is associated with youthful exuberance and fun. These are the same qualities that urban boosters seek to link to their cities.
Thus, “No RSVP Needed” portrays drinking as a group activity. Groups or couples interact while drinking. Individuals are never shown drinking alone. In most of the photographs the subjects look at each other not at the camera, strongly conveying the message that the bar is where socializing takes place. Individuals who are pictured alone, and staring into the camera are nevertheless doing something else (ie on a cell phone or dancing) that connects them to others.
Moreover, the actual act of drinking is generally not displayed in the photographs. Instead, patrons are shown doing a number of other things: talking, eating, talking on cell phones, playing darts, and dancing while holding a drink or with a bottle or glass on the table. The effect is to downplay the role of drinking and to emphasize that drinking is only part of the attraction. Thus the articles reassure reader that these are not hard drinking venues like the working class bar or the skid row saloon and that the patrons are not alcoholics.
Photography
The most arresting part of the series are the large colored photographs, made possible by advances in printing press technology. In the 19th century, urban boosters provided visual images of the city in the form of the bird’s eye view (Reps). Boosters promoted the city by furnishing images that suggested the growing city and its future prosperity. The bird’s eye view provided investors and potential residents with a highly idealized perspective.
In the late 20th century imagery again became central to urban promotion. As cities competed for residents and businesses they ratcheted up their visual production. Photography and video are the preferred methods of selling the city. Photographs of the city are part of elaborate advertising campaigns (Gold and Ward) and campaigns to lure business investment with computer graphics of the city’s open land. (MJS, 9-11-2005) Advertisements are linked to catch praises and mottos that seek to encapsulate the city’s cultural and economic vitality. The growing importance of impressive architectural structures adds to the city’s ability to visually represent itself in ad campaigns.
Advertisements in
the late 19th century used visual images and the reader was to supply the
narrative, or interpretation of the image. "Without text, the reader was required
to use inference to solve the meaning. Advertisements were meant to be dramatic
scenes that persuaded people to enter an imaginary world where human needs were
fulfilled through the purchase of goods. (Craig, 1999)
The photographs in "No RSVP Needed" do much the same thing. The text is minimal. The photographs are ambiguous. Are the patrons married? Do they know they are being photographed? Are they paid models? Are they posed? But the interpretation that is desired is that the photographs are spontaneous "crowd shots" without any manipulation by the photographer, editor, or the bar owner. As a result, “No RSVP Required” is free advertising for the establishments as well as free advertisements for the alcohol (brand names are always given) that can be purchased at the venue.
In the 19th century, US newspaper advertisements only showed the image of the product. By the early 20th century, advertising progressed to "showing the product in use" which was deemed more convincing (Craig, 1999). This is precisely what these photographs do: only they are more effective than "advertisements" because the users of the products are supposedly "real" people who ostensibly made their choice of products to consume and where to consume them.
Alcohol advertising is associated colored images that appear on the television and magazines printed on glossy paper. The most famous advertising campaign being that for "Abosolut" vodka. However, with new printing technologies, papers now match the clarity of magazines. The clarity of color photographs in "No RSVP Needed" advertises the paper as a viable competitor to glossy magazine advertising.
By featuring shots
of flavored martinis and other specialty drinks, the series asserts that there
are new trends in downtown
This also reflects
the reality of advertising in the paper. Miller and beer companies advertise
frequently but hard liquor companies do so less frequently. So highlighting the
liquor bottles suggests that
The ironic aspect
of the use of color today is that the press’ new printing plant is located in
the suburbs. Thus, promoting downtown nightlife and urban development comes via
the suburbanization of the MJS printing plant. The MJS is following its middle
class suburbanizing readers. But it is also taking workers from downtown
Youth
The images of young people socializing is the main object of these photographs. In rootless urban society such images represent visual models of community. The emphasis of the photographs is people having a collective "experience." The photographs commodify the act of having a good time. As Malbon has noted in a study of clubbing: "countless forms of consuming do not involve the purchase of objects or tangible services, but are instead premised upon an experience during and after which nothing material is 'taken home'--only an experience held subsequently as a set of memories." (Malbon, 1999: 22).
The pictures are of friends who meet in the bar. The images emphasize the presence of couples and mixes of men and women. This fits with the notion, promoted by boosters, as the city being a place where singles come to meet. The RSVP images do not include children or the elderly. Like the sitcoms in which young urban residents hang out, the images fit the notion of the city as a place for young adults and not families or retirees.
The photographs thus document people as they have an experience. The photographs itself becomes part of that experience, and the photograph's appearance in the paper essentially extends that experience to a much wider audience. Thus, going to the club or bar, creates the potential for "seeing and being seen" by a larger public.
The focus on urban
youth is also important because so many of the entertainment workers are young.
The entertainment economy depends on youth as employees. One article quoted
workers who assessed the relative merits of the different entertainment areas
in
The proliferation of downtown nightclubs coincided with the desire of cities to attract young people. These clubs employed young people, and served them alcohol as well. These clubs benefited from the alcohol industry's focus on attracting young consumers (Babor, 2003) Since drinking no longer tied to ethnic culture or class, getting brand loyalty of the young consumer became more important than ever and the alcohol industry sought to shape the consumption patterns of young people. One way to reach the young consumer was through promoting new products in the urban club, fairs, festivals, and sporting events (MJS, 9-10-04).
But of course, many workers in the service economy are not young, and many are minorities or immigrants who can't afford to patronize these clubs. Lees has suggested that urban redevelopment, particularly in downtown, has focused on creating the image of "hipness" and used youth to symbolize a city's trendiness. Yet city officials also want to regulate youth by carefully policing activities that do not have commercial benefits to business owners. Skateboarding, loitering, or panhandling must be contained.
Safety
Urban redevelopment relies on projecting the city as a safe place for residents and visitors. The emphasis or over-emphasis on safety leads to design features like entertainment districts-popular zones that are self-contained and isolated from areas where poorer residents reside and crime is higher. Police patrols on horseback or on foot create stronger feelings of safety.
Yet, crimes occur in nightclubs. No RSVP Needed emphasizes safety by projecting the image of the clubs as light and cheerful and isolated from the rest of the city. The patrons are friendly and without concerns about their safety.
In this context the articles feature young adults, not teenagers, the inside of commercial establishments, not public space where unpredictable encounters with strangers might possibly occur. Inside the club everything is predictable and revealed. The articles list the preferred drinks, habits, dress, and music. This information lowers the outsiders' fear that the will venture into the wrong club. Moreover, when blacks and whites are pictured (rarely Hispanics), the underlying text is that the encounters are pleasurable and a part of the urban hipness, contrasting to the urban problems in the rest of the city.
Here too, alcohol is sanitized. Whereas many crimes are committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the images suggest that consumption can be handled with moderation and as a side aspect to enjoying other aspects of the clubs (food, music, darts, talking with friends)
Mo’s Irish Pub
To highlight these aspects of the representing of drinking in the MJS I'd now like to analyze one article. In the section sub-headed: "Likely to See Here":
"There may be more starch floating around Mo's Irish Pub than any other brew pub in the city. Fortunately that starch is limited to shirt collars and trouser on the downtown office types and conventioners who invade the joint every afternoon. The people in the suits? Not stiff at all, from what I've seen. I mean I haven't met all those who frequent Mo's. However, I've consistently found an upbeat and almost party-like atmosphere when I've visited. It took a minute to figure out why the vibe here was so lively, but I think I got it. Lounge and nightclub owners take note: Mo's Irish isn't upbeat because it has a DJ spinning dance tunes It's not upbeat because of a disco-lit dance floor. It's upbeat because its patrons are comfortable and at ease. And most have in common that they've trudged into Mo's after long days at some nearly dreary office tower. You won't fid them looking over their shoulders or worried that they'll be on the receiving end of a shove for accidentally stepping on another person's Pumas. And you won't find them at a loss for conversation. As for the structure, Mo's is rife with beautiful ornate woodwork on the walls, ceilings, floors and dining furniture. Old match box cases, antique shadow boxes. Old-fashioned decorative booze signs and striking photos of Irish countryside also adorn the walls." (MJS, 10-29-04)
This description refers to the bar as a reprieve from work, a "party atmosphere" in contrast to "dreary office tower" nearby. As many have noted the new downtown is a place where work is subordinated to consumerism. Class and race are referred by describing the patrons as "downtown office types" in "shirt collars" who are "upbeat" because they are not worried about offending someone accidentally then getting "a shove" a reference to inner city bars which are frequent sites of fights and gunfire. Besides the prose, the photos get these points across as well that diversity is a key feature of Mo's: two feature the same woman on her cell phone, another features an inter-racial couple, and another features two Indian women.
Thus alcohol serves urban boosters quite well in several ways: it suggests that the city is a fun place, a place of freedom from work. It highlights that the city is attractive to young and successful people and a diverse group of blacks, whites, and others who interact peacefully in contrast to the media images of urban crime. In this sense alcohol is the link between diverse people bringing about the diminishment of urban racial, and class tensions. Finally, alcohol itself indicates status: the article notes that the beer at Mo's "is a case of quality outweighing quantity" featuring obscure brands as well as domestics.
All of these images mirror the images of in alcohol advertisements that appear newspapers, television, magazines, and billboards. It is quite natural that city leaders seek to appropriate these images and attachment them to urban life.
Opposition to the promotion of Alcohol as part of the
Despite the celebration of drinking in “No RSVP Needed,” alcohol is controversial and requires the press to handle it with some sensitivity. The press is forced to deal with issues like drunken driving. The press strives to separate social drinking from drunken driving. No mention is made in “No RSVP Needed” of how patrons arrived at the club or the club’s location near a freeway or highway or parking issues. No outside shots of cars or parking lots are included. No directions other than addresses are provided. The clubs are isolated from their surroundings as the photographs give no glimpse of the outside world.
Not all readers are enamored with the use of alcohol to promote urban redevelopment. In a 2005 letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a reader wrote:
In recent years that I have gone to Summerfest, the common factor has been the amount of drunk people. I try to go there with kids I baby-sit, but not only are there thousands of people, it seems at least one-quarter of them are drunk. The fact that the Journal Sentinel published an article about types of drinks that would be at the event this year is a sign that Summerfest has become a big drinking party. (MJS, 5-27-05)
The author was referring to the MJS' article about Summerfest's decision to begin selling cocktails as well as beer (MJS, 5-21-05) Summerfest is a musical festival in Milwaukee that was started by former Mayor Henry Maier as an attempt to revive downtown activities in the face of economic decline brought on by suburbanization of department stories and other businesses in the 1980s. Summerfest was not unique. Mexican Fiesta in 2004 sponsored a new tequila tasting booth, supported by Mexican tequila producers. The same letter writer criticized "No RSVP Needed."
The criticism of alcohol as undermining the city has a long history. Scholars have argued that alcohol consumption tends to be higher in cities than elsewhere. Theories for why include: greater anonymity than in small towns or rural areas. More access to bars and liquor stores so people who want to drink gravitate to cities. Competition between bars drives down the cost. The stress of urban life creates desire for release in the form of alcohol consumption. There is less respect for moral authority in cities as urbanites tend to have more secular attitudes (Smith and Hanham, 1982).
The relation of alcohol to cities has always been a political and cultural struggle. Breweries employed urbanites and saloons provided recreation and relaxation and essential information for working class urbanites (Powers). Elites owned the breweries and were prominent political figures as well. Yet, overindulgence was a problem. Reformers criticized the denizens of skid row and public concern with drunks, crime, and public drinking led to calls for prohibition, finally successful in 1919.
In the nineteenth century middle class reformers often cited alcohol abuse as a problem related to urbanization. Some of this criticism reflected class conflicts and divisions between natives and immigrants. Employers argued that strikers acted from excessive alcoholic intake and lobbied for recreation programs that would the working class from saloons where they believed working class politics encouraged disloyalty to employers (Linkon and Russo, 2002).
Despite middle and upper class attempts at regulation, saloons catering to working class men flourished. Men sought relaxation, fellowship, but also employment and housing information. Bartenders depended on friendly politicians to counteract temperance advocates and city politicians depended on bartenders to turn out the saloon vote. Some bartenders became city bosses and ran their political machines out of their saloons. Money flowed into political pockets as the saloon was a conduit for prostitution, graft, and gambling. (Powers)
Control of urban
drinking became a major concern for the middle class reformers in the late-19th
and early 20th centuries. Temperance advocates attempted to limit
saloons, mandate closing hours, and eliminate strong alcoholic beverages.
However, these attempts largely failed until the prohibition era. Reformers also fled the city and created
"temperance towns" on the urban periphery. Suburban incorporation allowed the control of
the proliferation of taverns and tavern licensing (Teaford, 1979). Among the "temperance towns"
founded in the late 1800s was
While the suburbs used legal incorporation to restrict the proliferation of alcohol, urban leaders embraced a different strategy. After World War II, urban planners vowed to stamp out "problem alcohol consumption" through the mechanism of slum clearance that focused on eliminating the section of the city called "skid row" (Metraux, 1999). With the decentralization of manufacturing and commerce, downtown town residential districts declined rapidly. After World War II, fewer employers hired casual workers. Skid row often was located near train stations where day jobs were located. But these districts declined with the rise of the motorized trucking and air travel. Increasingly the apartments, hotels, and restaurants catered to the poor, elderly, and alcoholic (Bahr, 1973).
The media and urban planners tended to exaggerate the degree of alcoholism among skid row residents. Though many residents were simply poor or elderly, urban renewal advocates focused on the scourge of alcoholism as the "cause" of the district's pathologies. Reformers photographed men slumped in the streets and staggering out of bars (Bogue, 1963). Residents in skid row resented the "low social status that their skid row address gives them because of its connotations of alcoholism" (Bogue, 1963: 170).
The focus on the growing problem of alcoholism furthered the related belief that skid row was physically expanding. Bogue noted that urban planners targeted skid row because it was considered "sociologically poisonous to neighborhoods in a broad surrounding zone." (Bogue, 1963: 4) The fear was that the pathologies of skid row would spread into other areas of the city.
Urban renewal reshaped the city. The razing of older hotels and apartments eliminated many of skid row's residents (Groth). New construction attracted more investment in these forgotten areas. Yet critics like Jane Jacobs charged that renewal wiped out what made cities urban: diversity both in terms of class and function. Cities became too much like suburbs (Jacobs). Skid row functioned as a place of freedom and non-conformity including homosexuality (Boag). The presence of homosexuality and prostitution in skid row provided ammunition for those calling for the elimination of the vice districts. Religious groups opened missions in skid row to "reform" the population.
This historic discourse on the negative role of alcohol in the city explains current efforts to create entertainment districts along with residential revival. Current redevelopment efforts have focused mixed use including residential and nightlife. This diversity of resident and commercial activities seeks to avoid the concentration of older single males, or minorities in a single district. Rather the effort is to encourage couples, youth, and return to the mixed use urban landscape of the 1950s without the taint of skid row.
Similarly, to avoid the skid row problem, urban boosters seek to make the city attractive to the professional middle class by providing a variety of entertainment activities (bars, restaurants, sports, museums, shopping) coupled with a high level of public safety. As Lees notes: "Urban renaissance initiatives have been deeply ambivalent about urban diversity--they promote cultural diversity at the same time as promoting social controls that limit diversity . . .The rhetoric of urban renaissance yearns for heterogeneity, but in practice harmony and stability are often emphasized." (Lees, 2003) Besides eliminating venues that catered to the poor or skid row denizens, officials curtailed drinking in public except during events in which the streets were barricaded to regulate consumption (Kelling; Wright).
Thus, despite the elimination of skid row, city officials continued to portray alcohol consumption as a social problem that required regulation. However, alcohol was no longer viewed as a problem limited to a self-contained urban district. It increasingly was portrayed as a problem in the much wider realm of public space (Kelling and Coles, 1996; Davis)
During the 1980s, social control efforts focused on regulating drinking in public spaces like parks and roads. Mother's Against Drunk Driving formed in 1980 after a series of horrific automobile accidents. In the 1980s states began imposing ever more severe restrictions on drinking and driving and launched extensive public service campaigns about drinking and driving. The alcohol industry began contributing to these campaigns, especially promoting the "designated driver," to avoid more stringent restrictions on alcohol consumption (Robin, 1991; Jacobs, 1989). Similarly, the moral panic over homelessness required additional police patrols in public areas like parks and the streets and enforcing open-container laws (Wright). Advocates fighting drinking and driving made clear their position distinguishing responsible drinking from irresponsible alcohol consumption. MADD made it clear that it was not "prohibitionist." (Sadoff, 1990: 132)
The highway and the car became the focus of reform, not the bar or restaurant, ethnic festivals or sporting event, which were essentially absolved of complicity with the alcohol as a social problem. In the 1980s, the cocktail revived in popularity. Symbolizing the new popularity of drinking, the cocktail party was revived in the Reagan White House (Lanza, 1995). Advertising of alcohol products set records in the 1980s as companies used all the media to promote their products
Thus, increased social concern about drunk driving and extensive advertising promoting drinking flourished simultaneously. Drinking was promoted as a social activity and associated with attendance at festivals, concerts, and sporting events. All activities that lured visitors downtown. (Babor, 2003)
In sum, skid row in the 1950s-1970s was a self-contained urban space typically identified as a physical representation of alcohol's negative impact on single men. However, beginning in the 1960s, urban renewal, economic change, and gentrification eliminated the most visible "skid row" working class dives and flop houses from many downtowns so that by the 1980s, alcoholism was no longer linked to a particular urban space. Rather, alcoholism became identified as a problem without class distinction. Motorists who drank endangered all motorists and pedestrians.
With changes in downtown, especially the re-establishment of entertainment districts, social control now shifted to fight homelessness in tourist areas and drinking and driving. Both social problems were associated with urban public rather than private space (parks and the streets). Thus, public space, rather than private venues, became the focus of massive public and law enforcement campaigns.
It is also true that abstention rates increase with age. Consumption of alcohol tends to decrease with age. So drinking attracts the demographic that advertisers and commercial interests are interested in most: young hip consumers particularly in cities where they consume many products from clothes to housing to restaurants, movies, theater shows etc. One article made light of the decrease drinking of the aged by quoting a man in his forties saying he met his wife in a bar downtown but does not go out as much but still "I have always been open to trying new places." (MJS, 9-1-04) linking drinking to staying up with the trends.
Thus the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's regular promotion of drinking reflects the sanitization of the city and particularly of the elimination of associations of drinking with class divisions. Drinking downtown in places other than upper class restaurants and clubs is no longer associated with alcoholism or "skid row." It is much more often linked to youth rather than the aged. The images in the press are uniformly of youthful drinking.
Redevelopment Literature
With the decline of manufacturing cities have grown more dependent on tourism and the service economy. Cities are focused on consumerism rather than production. Downtowns attract tourists by building new entertainment and sports centers. Cities produce festivals that attract tourists. Cities create and promote historic districts, build museums, stadiums, and ethnic districts. City boosters promote the city like any other commodity.
A vibrant nightlife is important to attracting urban tourists as well as permanent residents. Nightlight attracts young, educated workers, often singles, who choose downtown over a more family-oriented suburban residence. Attracting younger professionals is important for cities as they compete for technological and media-oriented companies.
A vibrant downtown, moreover, serves to contrast the city from the suburb. City leaders attempt to emphasize this contrast by promoting an image of "urbanity." City boosters desire to promote the image of urban freedom and diversity and represent suburbs as restrictive and homogeneous. Central to the idea of urbanity is social diversity. This includes diverse people (race, class, and age diversity), venue types and clientele, lifestyles (gay and straight) living arrangements (condos, houses, apartments), and events (ethnic festivals for example).
Creating the vibrant nightlife is only half the battle. City boosters must sell the city. The media play an important role in creating the image of the city. The press shapes the common view of a neighborhood by describing it as having great "potential" for redevelopment (ie attractive architecture, low valued real estate, good transit links) The media also encourage redevelopment by using terms that indicate the city needs to remain competitive with other cities, and will face dire straits if the economic situation is not reversed in order to get public support for redevelopment projects.
Urban culture is "sold" to the populace through various media including the press, television, and radio. The public is inundated with the message that "this is fun and you should enjoy doing it in this city." (Short, 1999) Urban boosters promoted the city as exciting, diverse, fashionable, and the hot place to live and play. The focus of these media campaigns is mostly on the youthful consumer. Media tie-ins are important. Cities feature media-oriented restaurants like the ESPN Zone, Hard Rock Café.
The media's desire for live sporting events rests on low production costs, ie no paid actors or writers are necessary, high advertising revenues due to target audience of young and middle age males with money leads to the proliferation of sporting events. As these events inundate the television they help create a desire to "be there live" and part of the action, not to sit at home and watch. If not able to be at the event, one can vicariously enjoy the event in a downtown bar with other fans.
Thus festivals and other events in the streets, along riverwalks, stadia and arenas, create dense crowding that many enjoy because crowds embody urbanity. The popularity of these events is their unstructured nature. The city is a stage and the public is part of the event (people watching etc) Museums, malls, riverwalks, sporting events, and festivals, and even the city itself, allow a high degree of individual freedom of when and how to interact with others, when and how to attend or participate in an event. That degree of freedom is an essential part of the image that cities endeavor to project.
But who projects that image of freedom? This paper argues that alcohol consumption is increasingly used by the press and city leaders to symbolize urban freedom and that alcohol is central to the promotion of urbanity.
Why Do City Boosters See Alcohol as Beneficial to City Redevelopment?
One criticism of
the tourist economy is that it mainly draws "outsiders" to the city and
is not inclusive of local residents. (Eisinger, 2000) However, in
Moreover,
references to beer and the remaining brewery landscape link the current city to
its history. While the city was an
industrial power,
Miller Brewing has
a heavy presence in the city. The company is the main sponsor of
Miller also has a large presence at Summerfest, an 11-day rock and roll festival. It also sponsors stages during various ethnic music festivals all summer long. Miller's presence shapes events like Harleyfest. Harley and Miller co-sponsored the weeklong celebration. Bars and restaurants throughout the region advertised to lure bikers for the celebration.
The significance of Miller Brewing to the city means that drinking is highly accepted. Beer consumption and alcohol more generally is part of the culture. The saloon and tavern lobbyists are powerful influences over state and local government. The state was one of the last ones to raise the drinking age to 21 and to lower the legal blood alcohol level from .10 to .08 and only did so after a long, drawn out campaign by the tavern owners to remain at .10.
Though alcohol is
central to
The Press: Redevelopment and Alcohol
The urban press, it has been argued, promotes urban redevelopment because growth of commercial activity and population increases circulation and advertising revenue (Logan and Molotch, 1987). City newspapers also own property in the downtown which increases in value with urban growth. The press also benefits from advertising purchased by owners of bars, restaurants, and liquor stores. The press also benefits from advertising purchased by the organizers of city festivals and the operators of sports teams. Downtown entertainment venues are heavily dependent on the availability of alcohol, which attracts patrons to the emerging nightclub district.
Besides advertising these venues, the press frequently publishes review of bars, restaurants, and events. These reviews help create the image of a new, growing, hip urban entertainment district and publicize the establishments.
However, the press also covers the negative impact of alcohol including drunk driving accidents, urban riots, vandalism, and community complaints about drunks in the neighborhood. However, even while covering the negative impact of alcohol the press does not place limits on the amount of space devoted to alcohol advertising.
Different types of papers accept different types of alcohol advertising. Neighborhood retailers and bars advertise in the smaller community press where rates are cheaper. The neighborhood press emphasizes its role as supporter of the neighborhood's businesses, including its bars and microbreweries, dance clubs, restaurants, and street festivals. Similarly, in the city-wide progressive press (ie Village Voice or Bay Guardian) there is more freedom as to content that leads to larger advertisements by adult services and strip clubs.
The point is that the various forms of the press, urban press, community press, and progressive, all depend heavily on the advertisements by alcohol providers, retailers, and promoters. Therefore, all newspapers increasingly promote alcohol consumption in a variety of ways: advertising, articles and reviews of bars, restaurants and festivals, articles on social drinking (ie “tailgating culture” see MJS, need citation)
Changes in the alcohol industry have made it central to financing urban redevelopment. As alcohol companies merge, large transnational firms compete through extensive advertising that benefits the city (through such things as corporate sponsorship) and the press through advertising.
These firms advertise to shape the image of a product. Because drinking tends to diminish with age, companies focus on the 21-35 age bracket . This means advertising emphasizes images of youth. Advertisers link alcohol consumption to youth, style, fashion, fun, freedom, community, and leisure (Babor, 2003).
All of these images correspond to the symbolism urban promoters and capitalists seek to associate with their cities, particularly in entertainment districts (Short, 1999). Urban promoters seek to link their entertainment districts with youthful vibrance. City promoters see the advantage of luring young adults who lack children thus reducing the social burden on cities (Kotkin, 2000)
Thus the construction of downtown sports stadiums and arenas has brought a new urban focus to sports-related alcohol advertising and consumption. (Turner and Rosentraub, 2002) A synergy effect is part of the strategy as city leaders hope that downtown stadiums will provide benefits to local bars and restaurants. When teams are winning, downtown merchants near the stadiums benefit from fan activity before and after the games.
Conclusion
This article
argues that the celebration of alcohol consumption plays an increasingly
prominent role in urban redevelopment strategies as cities have become more dependent
on the hospitality industry. The analysis of a weekly series "No RSVP
Needed" in the MJS showed that alcohol consumption serves to link downtown
to youth, diversity, and fun. The series
also demonstrates how advances in printing technology have increased the power
of the press to promote urban redevelopment. “No RSVP Needed” displayed the capabilities of
the new printing plant capable of reproducing sharp, color photographs of indoor
scenes. The arresting photographs, I
argue, serve as advertisements for the press, the alcoholic industry, the
nightclubs, and
The series also promotes
the image of downtown
While they accentuated personal freedom, the images in the MJS were, nevertheless, highly scripted. The images reflected a desire to see drinking as a component, not the main activity, of the clubs. There were few pictures of individuals physically drinking. Most appeared playing darts, talking, or dancing. Thus, the photographs suggested that drinking was not the main attraction of these venues. The photographs framed drinking as one social activity among numerous possible bar activities. Those photographed enjoying themselves in nightclubs thus appeared wholesome, employed, and worthy citizens attracted to the thriving downtown entertainment districts.
In
Understanding the role of alcohol in this newspaper series required a historical perspective. The view that alcohol was a social problem in cities changed over time. In the 19th century, middle class reformers railed against the workingman's club which they linked to graft, working class politics, and ethnic culture. Some in the middle class fled to the suburbs and created "temperance towns."
With post-war urban decentralization, problem drinking in cities became linked to a new urban space call "skid row." As urban renewal displaced skid row, problem drinking shifted to public spaces, particularly homelessness and drinking and driving. The crack down on alcohol consumption in public spaces allowed urban redevelopment promoters to embrace the consumption of alcohol in highly regulated entertainment districts oriented toward the middle class imbiber. In the 1980s cities became more dependent on nightclubs, sporting events, street festivals, conventions, and music concerts. As a result, promotion of alcohol consumption increased.
Urban studies
scholars argue that control of urban images is central to the urban economy.
Urban images served to include and exclude particular groups and activities from
the city. 'Throughout history,"
writes Craig (1999), "those in power have used images to establish and
maintain authority," or as Sharon Zukin states, to ask "who has the
right to inhabit the dominate image of the city" leads to fights over
"symbolic representations"(Zukin, 1996: 43). The MJS series "No
RSVP Needed" presents images of the city and region that suggest that the
city is primarily valued as an entertainment zone where consumption freedom reigns.
But this is a highly limited imagery that largely excludes from mainstream
imagery gays or the working class.
The series linked the city to alcohol's symbolic qualities. Alcohol advertisements associate drinking with fun, youth, sports, and sophistication, all characteristics that city boosters desire to associate with their cities.(Short, 1999); In essence the city benefits by linking its downtown with the images projected in alcohol advertising. These images included personal freedom, youth, fun, sophistication, leisure time, sports, and social interaction.
Scholars of redevelopment too often focus on the importance of building architecture and facades and often ignore how representations of interior space serve to promote urban redevelopment. For example, Zukin notes that: "Historic preservation connects an ecology of urban buildings and streets with an ecology of images of the city's past" (Zukin, 1996) Yet a building's exterior and the streets are only one aspect of the modern urban redevelopment project. Presenting attractively that which goes on inside buildings is also a means of encouraging certain desired groups to venture downtown while excluding undesirables. The MJS articles featured modern photography and printing technologies to reveal interior scenes that feed into the creation of downtown’s imagery.
Finally, Eisinger
(2000) and others have argued that urban redevelopment strategies increasingly
focus on encouraging outsiders to visit and spend money. This emphasis on outsiders leads local
residents to protest some redevelopment efforts. Yet in
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