Atomic Tattoo victim of personal taste and undue influence

Normally it’s considered proper etiquette to author one’s own blog, but I received this open letter from three local folks who brought to my attention the poor treatment received by one new local business – Atomic Tattoo on E. North Ave. – from another – Hooligan’s. I was so incensed when I read this letter that I felt I had to post it in its entirety. Please leave comments and show your support for Atomic accordingly. Whether or not they are a business you would personally patronize, this kind of treatment is at least part of what keeps our neighborhoods from flourishing. Thanks, Jon Anne Dear Neighbors, Recently, Atomic Tattoo opened up on North Avenue by Open Pantry. I don’t know the owners well, but I was really enjoying watching them get set up, especially when they started working on covering the building with a cool mural they designed themselves. The paint hadn’t even finished drying before the owner of Hooligan’s stepped up to see to it that no freaky tattooed people got to represent too much of themselves on what he viewed as his turf. He rallied his troops and forced the shop owners to paint over hours and hours of their hard work. First of all, I am not aware of anyone who has ever claimed tattoos have ruined their lives, but who isn’t aware of an organization called Alcoholic’s Anonymous? The guys at Atomic are selling art that is so deeply meaningful to the people that buy it they brand it on their bodies. More tattooed people than not will tell you the story of why their artwork is so precious and about the healing it’s offered them. Hooligan’s sells booze. So who’s really the bigger detriment here? Who’s really poisoning and doing more harm community? I’ve heard story after story of people whose lives have been destroyed by alcohol, but not one about a tattoo that ruined someone’s entire life! The owners of Atomic have jumped through the same hoops and faced the same headaches every other business owner has had to go through to set up shop and they deserve to represent themselves in the way they choose. It’s a tattoo shop! What could be a more fitting façade for their building than covering it with their work? Hooligan’s has a sign that looks like it’s from the 1960s with pictures of beer on it. The sign is an eyesore if you ask me, and as far as anyone knows could be enough to tempt an alcoholic to relapse, but nobody makes him take it down. And they shouldn’t, because that would be disrespecting his right to represent himself in the way he prefers. The East Side and Riverwest represent a lot of different things to a lot of different people; that’s one of the best things about it. Most people in Milwaukee think of these neighborhoods as places where the more open-minded people dwell, and that’s another big reason why forcing Atomic to paint […]

Wrong is wrong

Dear Readers, Freedom to say what you want, smoke where you want and carry a gun in your jacket pocket are all under loud discussion at the moment. The question of how much restraint is appropriate in our local schools should also be near the top of the list, though public outcry on this matter is grossly under-reported for reasons that should be obvious to all but the most insulated or ignorant of us. Also not in the headlines is proposed state legislation that would prohibit municipalities from requiring revenue-sharing with cable companies to fund public access television programming. Passage of the bill, co-proposed by our own Jeff Plale, a Progressive in name only, would radically reduce public access programming, the last bastion of equal time broadcasting. With so many axes to grind and fortuitous access to the the Fourth Estate, I’m weighing in this month on several issues in list form. I apologize in advance for the inelegance of the format, but I am limited in word count exactly as anyone else who writes for VITAL. 1. The statewide smoking ban. Guess what? It’s happening. It’s time to stop whining and meet up with modern thinking. To say that a person has the right to fill another person’s space with life-threatening toxins is like saying, to paraphrase smoker Angie Miller, quoted in Ted Bobrow’s cover story this month, that because you choose to hit yourself in the head with a hammer, you should be allowed to hit other people in the head with a hammer. Wrong is wrong. Smoke outside. 2. Handcuffs in Milwaukee Public Schools. Teachers are being assaulted in their classrooms at alarming rates. School safety officers sometimes have to physically restrain students for up to an hour while they wait for police to arrive. I don’t necessarily disagree that these adults need more effective tools to deal with their daily reality. My problem is with the discourse. To pretend this solves any problem is foolhardy, if not downright disingenuous. It’s a band-aid on a massive head wound. We wouldn’t be in this position if the mental and physical well-being of so many of our MPS students wasn’t in such jeopardy. School Board Director Charlene Hardin suggested recently on WNOV AM 860 that what students, teachers and staff need in the schools is parental presence, a whole other can of worms with causes rooted far outside MPS. It needs to be possible. Wrong is wrong. Peel the onion, don’t pretend to patch the missing roof. 3. The right to bear arms. At the time of the framing of the Constitution, the right to bear arms was tantamount to the right to survive. With no organized police force and high consumption of wild game as a food source, a gun in every home was necessary. And I bet they were rarely concealed. But in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy, some pundits have suggested that if concealed weapons had been allowed on campus, Cho Seung-Hui might […]

2007 Short Fiction and Poetry Contest

WRITE ON VITAL’s 2007 Short Fiction and Poetry Contest Sponsored by: BARNES & NOBLE, Mayfair Mall Entry Deadline: June 25, 2007 Submission Guidelines: 1. Entrants may submit one original, unpublished piece of short fiction (max. 1,500 words) and one original, unpublished poem (max 1,000 words). Entries will be judged by professional editors and educators not affiliated with VITAL Source. 2. Short fiction judged in Adult and Youth categories. Youth is defined as students between seventh and twelfth grades (entering in 07-08 school year). 3. All Youth contestants will be invited to a young writer’s workshop to be held in July, with details TBD. 4. Poetry category open only to Adults (18+). 5. Winners will have their entries published in the August issue of VITAL. First and second place winners will also receive Barnes and Noble gift cards valued at $50 and $25. Entries must be formatted as follows: • 8.5 x 11 page • 1” margins all the way around • Times New Roman 12 pt. type, single-spaced body text, 14 pt. title, left-justified • Double-return between paragraphs – no indents • Title and word count at top of page Include your contact information (name, address, phone number, email address), category (Adult or Youth, Fiction or Poetry) and a brief biography (100 words maximum) at the end of each entry. Email electronic entries to: contest@vitalsourcemag.com Mail hard copy entries to: VITAL Source Magazine Attn: Fiction/Poetry Contest 2609 N. Bremen St. Milwaukee, WI 53212 Questions? {encode=”editor@vitalsourcemag.com” title=”Email us here.”}

When The Illusion Drops

Gun control laws save 32 on Virginia Tech Campus

S/T

Finessing The Titanic’s Memory

Cheryl Pawelski

Photo by Audrey Bilger Some people make mix tapes for fun, but Milwaukee native Cheryl Pawelski can list that on her resume. As far as music fans go, Pawelski’s 17 years beat most people’s lifetime of participation. As a young music maven she worked at the old downtown Radio Doctors learning record distribution. She moved to California and in 1990 began a 12-year run at Capitol Records, and in 2005 moved over to Concord Records to run their catalog development. In January of this year she began what many consider a dream job, heading up A&R at Rhino Records. Though music is what pays her bills, she remains a devoted fan. In her words, the whole trip “…only took 17 years. I’d do it all again, too – it’s been a ball.” 1. What is your dream project? Well, I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a couple dream projects. In fact, at this point, I’d have to say I’m working on my dream project in that I’m heading up A&R at Rhino and the catalogs under the Rhino umbrella are some of my favorites. That having been said, I would indeed drop everything to go and work as Bruce Springsteen’s archivist and special project producer. 2. Is there any Milwaukee-related artist or project you’d like to work on? Yes. For years I’ve wanted to cut out enough time to put together a double CD release I’d like to call The Real Happy Days. It’s not a single artist anthology but a Wisconsin-based one. I’ve long been a fan of the single and by that I mean the 45 rpm or 7” vinyl slab. I started collecting records on local labels from the ‘50s and ‘60s a long time ago – Cuca and Raymond among others. I would like to pull together a nice collection of those but just haven’t had the time. 3. What project so far do you think reflects your own personality? The Band box set, A Musical Journey, certainly reflects my detail-oriented, “everything must be right” kind of work ethic. The rockabilly box, Rockin’ Bones, is four discs of really fun and sometimes surprisingly absurd early rock & roll and there’s an earlier compilation I did at Capitol called Rebels & Outlaws, which is basically filled with all kinds of songs about carryin’ on and makin’ a racket, so those all collectively add up to something. I guess sometimes projects can be an extension of a personality but only a small fraction, and at that, the fraction may be based in fantasy or wishful thinking. 4. What do you like best about California? I like everything in California between about Big Sur and Point Reyes (just north of San Francisco). LA for me has been something that I put up with as a trade for getting to do what I do. The best parts of LA seem to be hidden and certainly not advertised – so uncovering the history of LA is a lot of fun. […]

Six things you should know about VITAL

Dear readers, Anyone who’s ever worked in the business of communication knows this to be true: Professional communicators are some of the most ineffective personal communicators. Anyone who’s ever owned a small business knows this to be true as well: By the time you do everything you have to do to get your “product” out there, it’s often the part about explaining what you’ve got that gets neglected. Here at VITAL, we sometimes forget to tell people about the cool things we’ve been working on, so absorbed are we in creating it. So this month I want to take a few minutes to tell you about some things of which you might not be aware, but might enjoy if you knew about them. 1. VITAL is much bigger than it looks. We have a pretty great new website and we publish new content almost every day. There are blogs by myself (Up All Night), Lucky Tomaszek (Oh, Mama!), Russ Bickerstaff (Between Stages), Matt Wild (Please Send Help), Mehrdad (The Prescient Persian) and a biting and often hilarious conservative-leaning perspective from acidic local comic Michael Gull (Messiah Simplex). We publish online-exclusive show, film, music and concert reviews all month, plus articles and interviews – including a recent chat with the Decemberists – and a much more comprehensive events calendar. You can comment on stories, download content via RSS or check out our numerous image galleries. You can print, send to a friend or contact anyone on our staff. Visit us soon at vitalsourcemag.com. 2. VITAL is very popular in the UK. We have a Myspace page, and in the last six months hundreds of people, publications, bands and (for whatever reason) modeling agencies from the UK have not only “friended” us, but have been very active on our page. Tracking our website traffic, we see that a surprising number of our online viewers hail from there as well. They send us letters and leave us comments. They think we’re ahead of our time, for whatever that’s worth. Check out our page at myspace.com/vitalsource. 3. VITAL loves you back. In February we launched VITAL’s eNews You Can Use. It goes out twice a month and keeps you up to date on everything new we’ve published to the website as well as upcoming VITAL events. And, to show our love, we give away stuff to our subscribers in every edition, from concert tickets to sexy VITAL t-shirts and sometimes even bigger gifts. All you have to do is write us back and tell us what you’re interested in – no catches. You can subscribe from our home page at vitalsourcemag.com and unsubscribe any time. Naturally, we’ll never spam you or sell your name. We also offer amazingly cost-effective advertising for local businesses, so you can be better communicators than us. Contact me personally to learn more about our “Love to the Independents” program. 4. VITAL is everywhere. Some people still think that because our offices are in Riverwest and we’re active in our […]

Rites of Spring

On March 9, I accepted Michael Gull’s proposal for marriage. If you read his blog or have ever seen his stand-up comedy, and if you have ever read my column, you may be thinking “I bet they’re fun to watch the news with.” Or not. For those unfamiliar, we’re the new James Carville and Mary Matalin of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with me in the role of Carville. I’ll be honest: I’m the last person I would have expected to see in a life partnership with someone whose political views are so opposed to my own. Or are they? Michael considers himself a “Reagan Republican” by way of explanation regarding his strong feelings that G.W. Bush has really fucked things up. This doesn’t clear up much for me, never having been a fan of trickle-down economics or presidents who star in movies with monkeys, but I always nod understandingly when it comes up. It’s not the point for me. I respect his conviction and appreciate that we can have lively conversations about our opinions that never turn pesonal. I’m also a little comforted by the fact that he’s pro-choice, pro-gay marriage and pro-education. It’s a start. But at my age, “I do’s” come with more than a wedding cake and new pots and pans. When the ring slipped on my finger, I also received four stepkids and a big black cat. That’s six new members for the Tribe counting Michael himself. My sister and her partner just bought a house, which added an adult, two large dogs and a four-and-a-half foot iguana, plus a brother who rented Lucky’s old flat next door. That’s five more. My girl Joy recently got engaged and they also bought a house. He brought a cat. That’s two more, bringing the total of new “official lifetime” members to 13. If you count the original Tribe as me, my sisters (including Joy), and our kids and pets (yeah, we count the pets), we stood sixteen strong before. So now there’s 29 of us, but only 19 with thumbs, unless you count the iguana. Which also means we have way too many pets, and I didn’t even count the fish. I now live my life in a series of story problems. Here’s one I practice a lot, though I still can’t figure out the equation: A woman leaves her office on the East side at 5:25 and drives west at 25 mph. If she has 7 miles to travel in rush hour traffic, what is the possibility that she and her partner can feed the five kids, take one to soccer practice and another to work and still have time to do the dishes and a load of laundry before bed? This is another favorite: There will be 20 people for Sunday dinner in a typical bungalow. If six adults can sit at the dining table and six kids can sit on the striped picnic cloth on the floor, where in the hell is everybody else supposed to sit? […]

VITAL’s Guide to Companies, Art Spaces and Venues

VITAL Source co-publishers on WUWM’s Lake Effect

On March 21, 2007, VITAL Source founder and co-publisher Mehrdad Dalamie and co-publisher and editor in chief Jon Anne Willow sat down with Lake Effect’s Jane Hampden to talk about what it’s like to make it for five years as an independent, alternative print publication in an increasingly aggregated, corporate-owned media world. Click here to listen to the interview.