‘Small Town Throwdown’: Appleton, Wisconsin
This column is part of a promotional partnership with the Discovery Channel. “Small Town Throwdown” premieres May 20 at 10 p.m. on the Discovery Channel and discovery.com.
I’m not going to lie, when the Discovery Channel told me that I was going to Appleton, Wisconsin, to find out if it really deserves its reputation as “The Drunkest City in America,” I was excited, but also a little nervous. As a standup comedian, perpetually on tour, I’ve often discovered that “drunk” can mean wildly different things. Was Appleton going to be chill margarita drunk, or wild and crazy whiskey drunk? Was it going to be one big block party, or something out of a “Mad Max” nightmare?
When I first arrived in Appleton in mid-January, it was utterly freezing, and so naturally, my first thought was, “Of course people get drunk here, what else are you going to do during six months of perpetual tundra?!” And admittedly, when you drive into town you do see a lot of bars, but oddly enough, what you don’t see, are intoxicated people. Which raises the question, are people in Appleton just really good drinkers?
And, as it turns out, that might be the case. While taking a ride along with Appleton Police Department Lt. Jack Taschner, who just so happens to have once played for my beloved San Francisco Giants, I learned that despite Appleton’s
reputation, the people are relatively well-behaved.
Intrigued, I made it my mission to experience as much of Appleton as I could, beginning with an early morning “Polar Plunge” into the icy Fox River, which apparently is an Appleton tradition. Was it fun? Not to me, but then again, I did it twice, so, maybe it was fun and I was just too cold to realize it at the time.
And “Polar Plunging” proved to be just one of the many extreme things they do in Appleton to maximize the long winter months, another being a “Snow Plow Roadeo.” This loud, boisterous event, is put on by snow plow drivers, in order to have some fun and test their skills, by racing their plows through a rigorous obstacle course, trying to make a good time without murdering too many strategically placed mailboxes. I actually got to take a spin myself, and let’s just say that I could have done better in a regular car while black out drunk.
From there I went ice fishing, and if standing a mile and a half out on a frozen lake didn’t seem magical enough, I learned that magician Harry Houdini grew up in Appleton, and honed his skills on those very streets. Which made a lot of sense to me, because what I was coming to learn was that far from being Drunkville, USA, Appleton is an outgoing, fearless community, with a desire to push things to the limits. It also possesses an inventiveness that allows it to make the most of what it’s got.
Which leads me to my conclusion, that Appleton is not the drunkest city in America, not by a long shot. Drunk people would never be able to create such exciting and physically strenuous activities, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t be able to survive them. What I found up there was a cold place, full of warm people who enjoy drinking, but not as much as they enjoy their town itself.
(No mailboxes were injured in the writing of this article.)