When the WHO-directed Scotland, Zambia, Mexico, and (tag-along) cross-cultural surveys were conducted in 1979 (was it?) I was quite struck by the broad similarities in drinking-pattern and drinking-problem frequencies between the U.S. and Scotland and by two striking differences: (1) Scots drank at pubs/U.S. at home and (2) Scots showed a marked differences in beverage preferences by gender (men drank beer, women sherry) whereas the U.S. did not show strong gender-based preferences. This led to some interesting exchanges between Bruce Ritson, head of the Scottish project, and myself. Both cultural differences could be read as a greater separation of the masculine and feminine realms in relation to drinking in Scotland. By extension, these two findings suggested greater persistence of a (gender-) status-based traditionalism in Scottish drinking norms and practices. I also remember sitting next to a fashion salesman on a European flight in this period, too. We got into a conversation about differences between European and American fashion sensibilities. He said (as I recall) that lower middle class Europeans spent more on fashion (relatively) because they preferred to entertain "out" (at a restaurant or pub) because their homes were less suitable status vehicles. Americans, on the other hand, spent more on furnishings for their homes--and tended to entertain in them. Drinking-in vs. drinking-out should, one would think, imply lots of broad corollary differences in drinking's cultural "locations" and meanings, culture-specific arrays of drinking problems, etc. But the WHO project was strongly tethered to policy-related ambitions that left little room for pursuing "interesting" "sidelight" findings such as these. Nevertheless, I'm sure some tables illuminating the drink-in/drink-out divide in Scotland and the U.S. can still be found on the shelves at the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley or in Bruce Ritson's group. Ron Roizen