(Not Just) Another Bar on Water Street

By Raymond Johnson A new building is under construction on Water Street, and Milwaukeeans interested in contemporary design should smile. Mike Goldberg is developing a narrow slot of land at 1129-1131 N. Water St. into a restaurant/lounge named Terrace Bar to be operated by Nick Howell, founder of Cush and owner of Sauce. After running into opposition from Milwaukee Ald. Paul Henningsen and neighboring bar owners, the new building is finally underway — in part due to recent changes to the city’s zoning code. The zoning changes have been in the works for years, and it seems that Terrace Bar will be one of the first beneficiaries. The old code would have required the building to have eight on-site parking spaces. The new code, passed by the Common Council in May 2002, allows the parking requirements to be met by leasing spaces off-site within 700 feet. The code was revised for precisely the reasons that Terrace Bar is being built without a variance — to allow new construction on smaller lots, on which including parking would be prohibitively expensive. It’s unfortunate Goldberg has to deal with parking at all. When the city revamped the code, it did not go far enough — it should have done away with parking requirements altogether. They are artifacts of a time when accommodating automobiles dominated the minds of planners. Milwaukee should be getting out of the business of regulating off-street parking, and let market forces decide the appropriate amount and cost for it. The new zoning code is a step in the right direction, but hopefully not the last. The Starbucks of ancient Egypt? In addition to parking fears, neighboring bar owners seem to fear the contemporary design. Their attorney, Michael Whitcomb, compared the new design to putting a Starbucks next to the Sphinx. Huh? Howell clearly doesn’t share the old guards’ concerns. At Cush, Paige Heid created a comfortable minimalism of blank walls, plywood floors and cushy backless seats. For Sauce, Howell partnered with the Design Office of Catherine and James Donnelly, who designed the glowing translucent wall enclosing the kitchen. At Terrace Bar, Howell will have a contemporary two-story building with a rooftop terrace. The materials will be concrete, steel and glass. The north and south walls, a stacked-bond concrete block, provide a raw, yet clean frame for the space. Behind the bars, individual blocks are rotated 90 degrees to project from the wall where liquor bottles will be kept. Two large garage-style doors (one for each floor) will make the entire place an open-air bar during warmer months. The interior will be unusually open and spacious for such a narrow building. A long stair running much of the length of the north wall is the reason. The two stair landings, termed “pods” by Jeremey Shamrowicz of Flux Design, will act as mezzanine floors. The pods were built by introducing columns into the narrow building, which does somewhat compromise its openness. Albion Group, the architects for the project, could have hung these […]

All Arabs are the Same

By Frizell Bailey Recently, Mhammad Abu-Shawish, local business owner and former Director of Arabian World Fest, was indicted on charges of conspiracy, visa fraud and the misappropriation of $75,000 in federal block grants. For members of Milwaukee’s Arab American community, this is most certainly another blow to their battered public image. People of Arab/Middle Eastern descent are unfortunately learning what African Americans have known for quite some time. The acts of a few can mean big trouble for the many. It has long been the case in the United States for black folk that you are not just an individual, but also a race. Now in post-9/11 America, people of Middle Eastern descent have joined the club. I guess you could call it the “monolithic me” syndrome. All those (fill in the blank) people are the same. It doesn’t take a black child in this country long to realize that whatever successes or failures he or she has will likely be writ large onto his or her race. If a black person does well, he is a credit to his race. If he makes a misstep, it is because black people are incompetent, lazy, violent, et cetera. I can recall watching the evening news with my father and noticing him come under a mild panic if the anchor mentioned some horrible crime to be reported on later. I could tell what he was thinking: please don’t let it be a black person. These days I can imagine an Iranian American child watching his father wince in pain as he watches a news report of some suspected Muslim extremist under investigation for some alleged conspiracy. What he knows, as my father knew, is that these individual crimes will most likely have ramifications for everyone that looks like the suspect. Fearing a possible backlash, the Arab American Community of Wisconsin, Inc. issued a statement in an attempt to distance itself from Abu-Shawish, who is a former member of their board of directors and founder of what is now called Arab World Fest. Joseph Makhlouf, executive director of AACW, expressed his concern in a recent article in the Journal Sentinel. “Since we are the Arab festival and this will be in the paper, they’re going to say that all the Arabs are the same,” Makhlouf told the Journal. “That’s what we’re concerned about. That people will judge us by one person and one action.” Mr. Makhlouf’s concerns, as most would admit, are well founded. We can all recall the acts of violence against people of Middle Eastern descent in the weeks and months after 9/11. In my hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, someone tossed a metal trash can through the front window of a Muslim museum. Never mind that most of the staff and a number of members of its board are American-born. The curious thing, of course, is that there were no such attacks on businesses or organizations owned by white men after Timothy McVeigh drove a rental truck loaded with explosives into […]

By John Hughes Daisy Cubias, poet, activist and educator, sat in her cozy Milwaukee living room and, amidst her tumble of heavily accented words, told me of murder in her native El Salvador. “They Just Vanished.” “My family was killed; my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law. This was during the 1980s. We didn’t see the murders, but Duarte’s death squads were torturing and killing at that time. Duarte was the puppet President installed by the United States, propped up by Mr. Reagan. And Duarte had a push against the Catholic Church back then, because the Church was teaching liberation theology, the revolutionary liberation of the people. Duarte and Reagan didn’t want the people to learn their rights. “My brother and his friends were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. They just vanished. Over 100,000 people were killed like that during the Duarte regime. And then my sister and her husband were driving to an embassy to try to appeal to get out of the country, and they were gunned down. El Salvadorans, Americans, I don’t know.” Footing the bill for murder. Having immigrated to the United States in the mid 60s, Daisy wasn’t always certain of what was happening in the country of her birth. And worse yet, she was helping to foot the bill of the slaughter of thousands back home with her tax dollars. “That whole time was very hard for me, because I didn’t know what was going on exactly. I had moved to New York in 1966, and then to Milwaukee in 1970. But I was in Milwaukee, and my tax money was killing my own family. “So, my job was to educate the American people. I was in an organization, oh, I can’t remember the name of it. We were advocating to senators, congressmen, everybody who wanted to hear. Schools, colleges, churches. I am against war. It destroys people, dreams, families. It is the desire to have power over you, to grab wealth. And so I talked about that.” She speaks these words in a matter-of-fact tone. Before addressing this subject, she has been exuberantly cheerful and warm. Now she is slightly hushed, neither melodramatic nor noticeably angry. I ask Daisy if she feels rage against America, for having taken her tax money to kill her family. “No. The people of America didn’t do it. The U.S. government doesn’t listen to its own people. America, with all its faults, is the best country to live. We could do better. During that time, the El Salvadoran people were killing each other, with the help of the Americans. But, that is all in the past, and I live in the present. “Now, in El Salvador, it is a mixed government. It’s okay. Not as bad as before. At least we’re not killing each other.” Daisy’s Labor of Life. Daisy has dedicated much of her life to the service of others. For several years she worked with Cuban immigrants, helping orphaned young people from ages 17 to 21 settle in […]

Power is Paradise… ?

By Paul McLeary Earlier this year, political theorist Robert Kagan published a mostly harmless little book, Of Paradise and Power, that likely set neoconservative hearts aflutter. The thesis is pretty straightforward: After WWII, as the United States set about the task of becoming the global constable, Europe was given respite from its far-flung military adventures while it rebuilt its cities, repaired its economies and got to work rewiring its badly bruised psyche. As a newfound peace and prosperity took hold throughout Western Europe, Europeans became increasingly tied to a newfound pacifism, while the United States was forced to do the requisite military “heavy lifting” required to keep communism in check. The upshot of all this is that Europe and the United States cannot see eye to eye when it comes to matters of flexing some military muscle. Europe has cultivated a desire for diplomacy over conflict, while the American postwar experience was defined by a nuclear staredown with the Soviets and hot wars with Soviet-sponsored regimes and far-flung military outposts. The current disagreement over the need to go to war with Iraq is, according to Kagan’s reading of history, merely the latest example of the “Europe is from Venus, the United States is from Mars” point of view shared by the neoconservative movement. Embrace Democracy or We’ll Kill You. To grasp the full irony of Kagan’s thesis, one must understand where he is coming from. He’s a bright light in the neoconservative movement, which is mostly made up of disillusioned former leftists and Trotskyites who have moved sharply to the right and now call for a robust American military response to perceived threats throughout the world. Kagan feels that the United States has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of foreign nations, to build democratic regimes and secure U.S. interests. Irving Kristol, often considered one of the founders of the neocon movement, defined, in part, the basic precepts of neoconservatism in the August 25, 2003 issue of The Weekly Standard: “[The concept of] world government is a terrible idea, since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion … for a great power, the ‘national interest’ is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from non-democratic forces, external or internal. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.” Sound familiar? This line of thought has come to epitomize the philosophy of the Bush […]

When the Leaves Fall from the Trees

By Ben Merens This month, SCP welcomes guest author Ben Merens. Lucky will return in December. If you are inspired by parenting and would like to contribute a future column, send Lucky an email at slightlycrunchymama@yahoo.com. My two-year-old daughter and I were talking recently about birthdays. Actually, the discussion began when she asked me to tell about the day she was born. I tell her about mom being in the hospital and calling dad in the middle of the night. (The doctor had planned to induce labor on Friday afternoon. But she fooled us and chose to leave the womb very early on that Friday morning). I tell her about holding her after she came out of mom’s tummy and how we put her under a warm lamp because she was kind of cold when she was born. And then I tell her how mom fed her and told her “I love you” right away. And I tell her about how it snowed on her birthday and we all spent the day in the quiet of the hospital room… just the three of us. We all took a nap together. And then she came home. She loves to hear the story. And I love to tell it. Then I ask her. Do you know when your birthday is? She surprised me by saying “Yes I do!” “Oh really, and when is it?” I asked, anxiously awaiting her response. She is smart enough to tell me when she doesn’t know the answer to a question. So when she said she knew when her birthday was, I knew she’d say something that made sense to her and maybe to me. But I couldn’t imagine what that would be. I was quite sure, however, that it wasn’t going to be November 10th (her actual date of birth). “When the leaves fall off the trees Dad,” she said triumphantly. She smiled with the pride and satisfaction of knowing the answer to such an important question. But how did she manage to come up with this? I wondered. Then I realized that last year during the weekend of her birthday I was raking leaves into several piles in the back yard. And when the day of her party turned out to be a balmy 50 degrees and sunny, she and her friends ran outside and jumped in the leaves until the piles had been completely dispersed, as if they’d never existed. So, that is why she knows her birthday is “when the leaves fall from the trees.” There is something so innocent about the answer. So pure and real that I marvel at the simplicity of it. For my daughter, the month of November doesn’t even exist. But the change of the seasons is as real as she is.

Mojave 3

By Erin Wolf MOJAVE 3 Spoon and Rafter 4AD Mojave 3 has practically perfected the catchphrase, “quiet is the new loud.” With their exit from the shoegazing outfit Slowdive, we find them putting on the airs of alt-country, creating a sound rivaling bands like The Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star. Though select, these UK natives have built a very loyal following. Originally manned by Neil Halstead (vocals, guitars), Rachel Goswell (vocals, bass) and Ian McCutcheon (drums) in 1995, Mojave 3 later added the talents of Adam Forrester on keys and Simon Rowe on guitar creating one of the most pastoral sounds to be exported from England in recent times. Mojave 3 has continued in the vein of simplistic slo-core tinged with twang, and has created an introspective little album, Spoon and Rafter. More poignant and dreamy than 2001’s Excuses For Travelers with its’ upbeat tempo and orchestrations, the current effort shows Mojave 3 to be mellowing. This mellowing, however, may not necessarily be a wise decision when considering their original concept. At points, Spoon and Rafter seems almost too sleepy. Though their characteristic sound is soft and slow, sometimes too soft and too slow can be a recipe for record disaster when one song drones into the next. Aside from the departure into the more serene, the album is not a complete bust, and isquite brilliant in spots. The lovely, soft-but-twangy guitar sound once conjured up by the likes of Neil Young shows in the winsome track, “She’s All Up Above.” While “Too Many Mornings”, one of the record’s high points, calls the intro line from The Who’s “Love Ain’t For Keeping” their own. Hey guys, If you’re going to steal a line, at least make it more obscure… please. Overall, Spoon and Rafter is a nice collection of pretty, demure tunes; harmless and sweet — kind of like your kindergarten crush who brought you love notes on construction paper. At times, low key listening is a good breather for the soul, but, if you’re seeking the honesty and straight forward structure the band has become known for… you may not find it here.

Cheap Trick

By Rob McCuen CHEAP TRICK Special One Big 3 Records Mention Cheap Trick in some circles and brace yourself for the smug salvos that are sure to be flung your way. What can I tell the clueless dorks who think the Trick are an old and tired joke? Special One, Cheap’s first offering in six years (and dare I say it)? is better than Woke Up With a Monster, Robin’s hate-laden divorce record. While I’m at it, it’s damn near better than Revolver. Yep, Rockford’s lovable lads are back to span the globe and expand your mind with a flourish, and go see ’em, cuz they’re still the best live act in da biz when they wanna be. If shimmering power pop nuggets of love, loss and longing are your bag, run — (and don’t let me catch you downloading it) — don’t walk, to your fave retail outfit and purchase this gem like a man. You’re welcome, but I can’t waste all my energy pointing you into the right pop closets. Hell yeah they’re arrogant. They’re fabulous and the rat bastards have out-Beatled the Liverpool mop-tops themselves with this effort. Make no mistake, this is Robin’s record, and the thin man flexes the velvet of his million dollar voice on each and every number. He’s a street walking cheetah with a heart full o’ napalm, hate and menace on “Sorry Boy.” On the outstanding “Words,” “My Obsession,” “Pop Drone” and five other peerless instant classics, he is the perfect blend of Lennon, Bryan Ferry, Marc Bolan and Roy Orbison . “I Want You to Want Me” this ain’t. So yeah, so what if they only “rawk out” in two songs? This is a sad, melancholy soundtrack to lose your love to. I pace, I sing, I cry. For three days, I didn’t leave my house cuz I was obsessed with first “Words” and later “Too Much.” Robin never stops aching and yearning and the diminishing minor chords ala George Harrison guitars will saw your soul in half. The band basically lays back — mean, lean and pretty from top to back — and lets Robin’s voice carry the tunes. Robin Zander has simply become the finest white singer of anywhere or anytime. Living or dead, he’s the best there is. Tom and Zander carry their torches from song to song with the biggest and baddest choruses and middle eight bridges since Lennon and McCartney. So there. Oh yeah, Nielsen sings and plays brilliantly and Bun-man’s snare is a 12 pack of M-80’s going off all at once.

The Namesake

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