Can you tell me how to get to … Boozetown?

You’re sitting at a table with a number of other potential investors.  As it’s 1952, you’re probably a man and so are all the other Mad Men-attired individuals.  All of you are listening to Mel Johnson give his pitch:

Just imagine, he asks his audience, a resort entirely centered on the culture of alcohol. A boozer’s paradise built expressly to facilitate drinking and the good times that naturally follow. Where the bars, clubs and liquor stores never close. Where the police force is there to help drunks, not hassle them. Where even the street names salute sweet mother booze: Gin Lane, Bourbon Boulevard and Scotch Street. An adult playground like no other. Just imagine.

Johnson loved the drinking culture and travelled the world to experience it.   As much as he enjoyed his adventures, he never found the one place that was it.  The one perfect location where everyone could enjoy their drink and everything involved in the occassion.  Thus, Johnson decided, a city devoted solely to drinking would have to be built.

At the end of 1950, Mel was a man obsessed. Made restless by his extensive post-war travels, he spent every waking hour sketching in the details of his dream. First, of course, he’d need to put a name to his drunkard homeland. He considered many possibilities, including El Dorado, Boozeville and Lush Land, before finally settling on the portmanteau BoozeTown.

During the first stage of BoozeTown’s existence, Johnson envisioned a resort consisting solely of themed bars.  His headquarters and home would be a giant martini glass in the middle of the city.

The second stage would entail building an onsite brewery, distillery and perhaps even a winery to supply the many outlets in BoozeTown.  Additional infrastructure would be built within the city to help patrons move about.  Think moving sidewalks.

Finally, BoozeTown would focus on establishing a permanent population.  This new city would surely, according to Johnson, attract artists famous and not-yet-famous alike.

Yes, BoozeTown was to be a drinker’s paradise.

Every bar and liquor store would be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Furthermore, you’d have the right to bring your drink with you anywhere you liked, including banks, post offices, and places of worship.

BoozeTown would have its own currency (BoozeBucks), security force (The Party Police) and newspaper (BoozeTown Bugle).  There was almost no aspect of BoozeTown that Johnson had not planned for.  Unfortunately, he was never able to raised the funds he needed.

By 1960, Johnson completely abandoned his plans for Boozetown.

Two years later, he was hospitalized for paranoid schizophrenia.  He died in that same hospital four years after his admittance.

It is said his ghost still haunts the now-abandoned Bartonville Mental Hospital.  No word on whether the spectre likes to drink or not. 

(Read more about BoozeTown at Modern Drunkard.)