The Bee had an article today bemoaning Sacramento's low ranking (169 out of the 800 biggest cities in the U.S.) as concerns breweries of craft beer. There are some solid, longstanding brew pubs in the area, like Sudwerk in the City of Davis and Rubicon Brewing in Midtown in the City of Sacramento. There are also some very good new breweries in the Sacramento region, such as Bike Dog in the City of West Sacramento, and it seems like new brew pubs are opening all over with regularity. But what about Arden Arcade? How many brew pubs do we have, say, per 100,000 people (our population in round numbers)? None. Zip, zero, nada. Which is kind of weird when you consider the local demographics -- lots of people with disposable income -- and add in our Supervisors' apparent affection for businesses that sell alcohol. Further, craft beer is a multi-billion dollar industry with 8% or so expected annual growth, which translates to a big economic benefit for California. There used to be two craft brew pubs in our area: Sacramento Brewing at Town and Country Village and Sudwerk in the City of Sacramento's Point West area on Exposition Blvd. Asheville NC, with 10,000 or 12,000 LESS people than we have has 24 microbreweries, compared to our goose egg. Clearly, Arden Arcade isn't helping the region climb up from its definitely-not-trendy low rating of beer towns across the nation. Nor, it seems, is Arden Arcade able to {pardon the pun} "tap" into the economic engine that is craft beer these days.