Henry Winkler
Originally uploaded by chelsea tobe

Urban Milwaukee and Fresh Coast Ventures, LLC would like to throw their support behind the “Bronze the Fonz” campaign. The urban, pedestrian-friendly location of the statue on the riverwalk will only give Milwaukee visitors one more reason to stay downtown, walk downtown, and spend their money downtown.

A couple grumpy art gallery owners in Milwaukee apparently are not seeing how the statue will encourage visitors to “stay downtown, walk downtown, and spend their money downtown”. This would inevitably help their business by increasing foot traffic in the area, but that doesn’t seem to matter to them.

Most important to these art gallery owners is the fact that the statue is an icon of mediocre public art. Milwaukee Art Museum Director David Gordon also appears to be upset that the bronze Fonz might interrupt the development of a fancy new public art development coming to Wisconsin Avenue in a few years (of which I can’t seem to actually find any details other than the artist is Janet Zweig,).

Fonz-implementers have claimed that the statue will be out of the Wisconsin Avenue sight lines of the Milwaukee Art Museum and new Wisconsin Avenue public art project by being placed on the riverwalk. Good, problem solved. Let’s build this statue.

No one is going to make fun of Milwaukee for having this statue and every first time visitor is going to want to see it and get their picture taken with it, just like that “bean” that our neighbor to the south has.

Build the statue. It’s only going to help people have one more thing to do in downtown Milwaukee.