4/14 Milwaukee Day in Review

The view of the city skyline from the vitalized Lakeshore State Park is perhaps the best one around. Unless you’re standing atop the hill overlooking Miller Park from the ancient parts of the VA Hospital grounds. It looks pretty sweet from the North Avenue curve overlooking the Milwaukee River, too. There are many ways to see the city, but it’s easy to lose perspective on how great it is when you work and live here every day.

Milwaukee Day (4/14, matching the city’s area code), organized by Timm Gable, Andy Silverman, Brent Gohde, and some friends, is slowly turning into a joyous celebration of everything endemic and good about this place. The mayor even recognized the event with a proclamation Friday. These gentlemen were certainly in fine form on Saturday night, traveling between The Hotel Foster, Cactus Club, Riverwest Public House and the Brewcity Bruisers after-party at Turner Hall Ballroom.

We here at ThirdCoast Digest decided to follow their example, carving our own paths across Milwaukee Saturday. We stayed in contact with each other and our readers via Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare, and ultimately curated a journal through Storify, capturing photos and moments from locations like Milwaukee Public Market, the AIGA FootPrint Show in the Kenilworth Building, Rummage-o-Rama at State Fair Park, and even a quiet moment at Kaszube Park. Check back later today for a Flickr gallery of images (cultivated from Instagram, Twitpic, Lightbox, and more), and our integrated Storify mapping out our travels through Wisconsin’s greatest metropolis.
_

From Brian Jacobson, Photo Editor:

I’m standing in line at Leon’s Custard and the crowd, awaiting cones and chili dogs, is thick. It’s a central point here on the southern edge of the city, where races, ages, income brackets and attitudes sync up beneath the stand’s iconic neon and fluorescent lights. I forget sometimes how much this town means to me, when all I read about in the news are the struggles and strife we face.

Earlier in the day, I was sitting in the courtyard of Best Place with the statue of Frederick Pabst as my only company as I sipped my Schlitz. I was reviewing my photos from a brief tour of Miller Valley, and listening to Jim Haertel give another presentation about beer to some out-of-town guests. Soon, I would be chatting up Mike and Eddie Glorioso at their new store space on Brady Street.

Very early in the day, I was trying in vain to get into the Milwaukee County Zoo. It was Family Free Fun Day, and it appeared that half the county’s population had shown up. Late in the afternoon, I was smelling bacon curing in Cudahy while trying out the new restaurant of famed Conejito’s server “Lala.” I was both doing things I’ve done hundreds of times, and crossing things off my bucket list. I had a whole itinerary planned out and only reached a fraction of it. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one out in the city._

From Lucky Tomaszek, Social Media Specialist:

When I was 17, I left my Iowa hometown (pop. 2,200) and moved to Boston. I found a family that needed a nanny for a year. I dreamed that my little charge and I would ride the T everywhere, finding favorite parks and little shops.

Of course, reality was much different. The baby I cared for was less than two months old when I arrived, and required intense care that I was barely capable of at my age. My fantasy of finally being a city girl was squelched almost immediately, and I had to be content with strolling our peaceful neighborhood with the baby in a pram.

When my year was up, I realized that I had spent a year in a city I had hardly seen. My last three days in Boston were spent in a whirlwind of doing everything I had missed. I went up and down streets, trying to permanently imprint the city on my brain.

Fast forward a decade. In 2000, I moved my little family to Milwaukee from Des Moines. I had two daughters (ages 2 and 4) and a baby on the way. I was on bedrest due to complications of the pregnancy, and after my son was born, I remained homebound as I recovered. Once I was up and around again, I tried to get us out of the house, but we rarely made it much further than the Public Museum or the Zoo.  I’ve now lived in Milwaukee for 12 years, and I finally feel like I’m getting to know the city. A little.

Along comes Milwaukee Day, bringing me the excuse to drive the streets and get to know her a little better. As my partner and I flew from one public art installation to the next, I remembered the feeling of those last days in Boston. It was exhilarating and inspiring! And this time, I didn’t have to leave when it was over. Milwaukee Day was just the beginning – I can keep falling in the love with the city over and over, for years to come.

From Matthew Reddin, Assistant Culture Editor:

I’ve lived in Milwaukee for almost four years now, since I came to school at Marquette. But there’s something about being on campus that keeps you from leaving. Call it convenience, call it complacency; either way, Milwaukee Day gave me the excuse to pop the bubble.

So my two roommates and I scaled the parking garage, hopped into our silver sedan and took off. We started in a whirlwind, blowing up the highway to the Kopp’s by Bayshore, where we took silly pictures and slurped up our fast-melting custard and shakes ASAP, and left almost as soon, slipping past our land/slum-lord’s office and my roommate’s Nana’s house and down Lake Drive.

We didn’t stay long by the lake either — too cold, we determined, although two of us were rolling our eyes while we said it — and so we found ourselves walking into Cans, the bar I’d never noticed hiding between Beans and Barley and Hotch-a-Do. And so it was here — at a little before four on a Saturday afternoon, drinking a beer each while getting stared at by sound-checking musicians — that we finally sat down for a moment to enjoy ourselves.

It wasn’t the last stop on our Milwaukee Day adventure, nor was it the most quintessentially “414.” But it was the one that reminded me why I’ll always have a place in my heart for this city: You don’t need to find the “perfect spot” or the “hottest new thing” to have a good time. All you need are friends who love this place as much as you do, and the opportunity to decide which gem to discover next.

To see more of TCD’s adventures via Storify and Flickr, click here.