Just another day, part II

Yesterday we spent the gloomy, misty afternoon working on our apartment building- you know, keeping things safe, sanitary, and attempting to make it a little bit nice too. It is adjacent to the high-voltage power lines that occupy a wide green median at 20th street. It's become a dumping ground- and when mattresses end up there, whoa! Instant playground!

Hard to see above, but Red Shirt is airborne.




The nurse part of me that is concerned about public health and safety in Milwaukee's north side population was easily won over by the easily-amazed part of me that said "OMG backflips!!!" and went to get the camera.

Executing high-risk behavior + No Trespassing signs+ bedbugfilled mattresses+being pretty much right in traffic=awesome moves.

Just another day

Went shopping today, hit the thrifts. Blessed Again Resale at 76th and Hampton is always a good bet. There I ran into local author John Hoh and discussion of the history of Lutheran hymnals ensued. So, in the parking lot there is still a giant pile of snow. Not really snow per se anymore- it's shrunken dirt. There was a dude in the parking lot selling CD's and DVD's out of an old van. Business was good. Just another Milwaukee day.

Unnatural disaster

We won't be getting anything from FEMA for the flood damage we got this year, and that's ok. We neither need nor want it. Real disasters like Hurricane Katrina are FEMA-worthy. I'd like some disaster relief for this, though. At least we got to keep his security deposit.

Situation all clear.

(Almost) all systems have returned to normal, as of about 6pm yesterday. The Great Flood of 2010 wreaked havoc in Riverotterland- you may know that we own and maintain an eight-family apartment building and four other duplexes besides the one that we live in, and had a total of three basement sewer backups 7/22. We're finally all clean and sanitized with the currently necessary appliances and hot water heaters running. I have a lot of people to thank for assistance and gifts and time and food and etc. So, in something like chronological order:


Kathy, for food, cleaning assist, extra gloves, hot shower, and gin-and-tonics.


Char and John, for emotional support, food, wet vac, dehumidifier, extra cleaning supplies, and cleaning help.


My mom, for understanding, a huge bag of rags and towels, bleach, dinner, and a box fan.


My boss, who gave me the week off. I didn't even have to ask.

Brain's workplace, who gave him the week off and sent "four womens, ready to work!" They did, too. Awesome.


Kreuter, for tireless work and good company.


My dad, for a dehumidifier and a box fan.


Mr Sebald, for - yes- a dehumidifier.


Pabst Blue Ribbon, for making the situation tolerable.


FEMA, for making a dramatic appearance two doors down with Scott Walker and news cameras, and allowing me to tell them ALL about the turds in the basement. With photos. Which I won't show you here. Here's a monarch butterfly instead.

We now have monarch caterpillars on that plant, fattening up and enjoying life, waiting to metamorphose into their next stage: metaphorically, I am as well, even if it's just back to normal.

Oh, crap.

We had Weather last night, alright. This is a pic from after it had mostly subsided. Treacherous flooded streets. Manholes and sewers spewing poopwater like geysers. Cars with blinkers on and people randomly pulling U-turns trying to snake their way through rising waters. Frantic calls to my mom in the next county hoping she could figure out by telepathy or satellite or something which streets were dry enough to drive on. Finally parking four blocks away and scrambling up the incline under I-43 above the flooding, then wading the rest of the way- soaked. Last night was...intense! At least I didn't end up in a sinkhole or struck by lightning. The constant- literally- sirens we heard while cleaning up the six or seven inches of shitwater from the basement served as a sobering reminder that there were lots of people out there who were worse off. Our downstairsika cooked us an amazing dinner and made me a gin and tonic, we comiserated with the neighbors, and then we got to work carrying bucket after bucket after bucket of Hepatitis C and gonorrhea and ringworm and ... out of the basement.

Home Depot was out of bleach this morning and sump pump hoses and dehumidifiers, expecting trucks from neighboring counties to bring more supplies for the gloved hordes. We had one bottle left from last week's sewer backup floating around down there.

Guess I'd better get back to work.

I can see your Kiku

I wish the owners of the Kiku restaurant downtown would not have named it something so obscene.
It's kind of like this. But maybe I'm the only one that thinks so.

Ex Fabula

What? There really is forensics for adults? YES! It's called Ex Fabula- a series of true-storytelling events. Last night it was held at Stonefly in Riverwest. Real people (real people, just like you and me!) come prepared, put their names in a hat, and a few are chosen at random to get up on stage to tell their own true story using the night's chosen theme as a guide, however loosely.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous to be in the audience. Would it be anything like the poetry slams they used to have at Y-Not II back in the '90's? (No, thank heavens.) Would any of the storytellers be unrelentingly boring? (No.) Would it be painfully hip? (No!) It was awesome. The proctors or whatever you call them- the people in charge- run a pretty tight ship.


The next Ex Fabula event will be held on Friday, May 14th, in the decadent splendor of the Turner Hall Ballroom.

The Pig!

So, all of a sudden there's a Piggly Wiggly on East Capitol where Lena's closed (and before that, Pick'n'Save). I don't even remember a "Coming Soon!" sign. All of a sudden it was there, fully stocked and open, and even equipped with a liquor license.

I went. I shopped. It was okay.


The staff was exceptionally, almost absurdly friendly. The deli people asked how I wanted my sale ham (piggly, but not wiggly) sliced and then actually sliced it the way I requested. Pick'n'Save? Nope, the sale ham there is already pre-sliced some kind of medium.


Signing up for yet another frequent shopper card, I asked the lady at the table when they had opened. March 17th, you say? What? Well, then. She said that people were telling her they were happy they have a choice now. But the thing is, there already is plenty of choice! Aldi, a treacherous walk across Capitol Drive from the Outpost; Lena's, on Holton and Concordia; Big Lots, for cheap HFCS-laden snacks; and on and on.**
**KD Supermarket, above, at 418 E. Center Street: the only food store I could find anywhere that was open Christmas Day 2008. That's worth something. Photo courtesy of Google Street View.

Speaking of trains...

I mentioned in my last post how so many train tracks in Milwaukee have been abandoned and/or removed.

Below is one such site.

This is the back side of Downtown Auto Body (which is not downtown, really, but behind Holton and Townsend). There used to be a train track along the area at the bottom of the photo, and until the mid-1990's, the Circus Train from Baraboo, WI would stop right there and unload all the circus paraphernalia to head down to the parade site. This was quite a spectacle. This mural, painted last year, commemorates that time. It's really much nicer looking than in my poor photo. You will just have to go see it for yourself.

These tracks were removed a couple of years ago after becoming an attractive place to dump mattresses and construction debris, and a weird curvy trail that appears to be some kind of meandering bike path that goes nowhere was laid down. Stray cats use it, too.

Back to the Future, by train

I'm really excited that the long-abandoned Tower Automotive site on 27th and Capitol will be used for manufacturing trains. The area is so Detroit-style creepy right now. This repurposing makes perfect sense. Of course, it's sad that so many train tracks in Milwaukee and elsewhere have been not only abandoned, but removed- relatively recently, even. Now we (as a society) are realizing that, dang, trains are awesome! What were we thinking?

There's a great textbook that's been in my family for awhile, ¿Habla Español? An Introductory Course. (Lately, I've been poring over the por y para chapter.) It's dated 1976 and as such, a lot of the dialogs deal with subjects like, ¿Deseas conservar energia? Si! So I'm excited that the Ingeteam folks are coming here with wind turbines too. Anyway, el diccionario at the back of the book actually has an entry for el Talgo: "deluxe Spanish train." How cool is that? Maybe I should stop skipping past all the second-person-plural verb forms.

Prophet Blackmon, Milwaukee artist

Prophet Blackmon, whose art I have always found to be exquisitely evocative, died Feb 8th. His obituary is in the online Journal-Sentinel today. "I'm a street preacher," he told The Milwaukee Journal in 1982. "I stay in the streets. The greatest theology is in the streets. The troubles are in the streets. I go to areas where buildings have been torn down, where there are vacant lots and I minister to those people."

It is said that Prophet Blackmon did not recognize his own art when it was later shown to him. "I'm amazed! And I know it's not me," Blackmon said of his work. "I know it's inspiration from God, so I end up giving God all the praise and all the glory."

Warped Cast 2.0

Why do I always take pictures in the dark? Because cool stuff happens in the dark, that's why. You know it's true.

Remember when there used to be midnight Rocky Horror at the Oriental? And people acted it out along with the movie and made the audience dance? That was fun! Now the Warped Cast only do other movies, they do FOUR movies, and just the cool parts of each. That's right- in 2010, people do not have to sit through the boring parts of movies anymore. This is exponentially funnier than Saturday Night Live. If they do Star Wars, I'll go in costume. Really.

Pizza Man

Photo from onmilwaukee.com story.

I would be remiss if I didn't say something about the fire at Pizza Man. A four-alarm fire destroyed the whole block yesterday. I work half a mile away, and it was another one of those things like, "Let's go get a drink after work. We could all go down to Pizza Man," that never happened. We never went- the best of intentions gang aft agley. It's not Haiti or anything- everyone got out ok. But Milwaukee is a little sad right now. That wavy brick pattern on the corner of Oakland and North Avenue, that scrolling sign, gone.

MATC Graduation

I had the opportunity to attend the MATC graduation on December 22nd. I know, it's a community college, and the mid-year graduation and all, but I was expecting some pomp and circumstance. It was at the USCellularena, so the Jumbotron was there to assist those of us in the nosebleed seats. I was too far away to get any good shots of the people I knew who were graduating, one of whom didn't come anyway.
Speaking of Jumbo, plenty of attendees took advantage of popcorn from the concession stand.

I miss Goldmann's.

My brother and I had our annual tradition: Christmas shopping and lunch at Goldmann's Department Store on Mitchell. We would buy "cherries on a wire" for mom, undershirts for me, nonironically retro-esque craft supplies, and other things that only they seemed to sell. The lunch counter was awesome. How can a place-a Milwaukee icon- close after being open for the previous 111 years? Was it because of people like me, who only shopped there once a year? Why didn't I appreciate them more? Where am I going to buy undershirts?

Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah...

...come light the menorah.Happy Hanukkah!

Santa Cycle Rampage!

Weather was fantastic for the Santa Cycle Rampage today. Throngs of Santas (and reindeer and elves and a fairy [?!]) participated. Cops were on hand just in case Santa was naughty.

Santa brought toys to pass out too- effigies of himself.

In a sea of Coca-Cola Santas, Father Christmas stands alone.

Schroeder Books and Music

Schroeder Books & Music, 7629 W. Greenfield Avenue, Westallica: shelves piled high with books and magazines in genres that you can't find anywhere else. (Adjacent to the "Americana" section is "Linconana.") It's always worth a look-see here. I've imagined that every book ever published is in there...somewhere.

I found a Workbasket Magazine from the 1950's, in case I ever want to tat a doily. These are collectible little mags with historical value- not just needlework (presumably kept in a tidy basket by the hearth) but also for the ads. ("Steady pay every day as a Practical Nurse! Enjoy security, no recession for Nurses. Earn to $65 per week, good times or bad. Florence Nightingale School of Nursing.") As I checked out, the lady said,
"We have hundreds of Workbaskets."
Hundreds?
The mind reels!

I mentioned that I'm a longtime customer (sporadically) and used to go to the old store on 7th and Wisconsin, when it was across the street from the old Duncan Donuts, back in the 80's and early '90's. This was before the "revitalization" of downtown Milwaukee. She told me about the fire that destroyed the store- they had two locations at that time- and thousands of books stored beneath the street, all destroyed. But they have plenty again, so make sure you do some Christmas shopping for the lover of historic needework patterns or Linconana aficionado in your life.

Holiday Folk Fair!

I love the Holiday Folk Fair. It's kind of an annual tradition. I made sure to get there hungry today and immediately stuffed myself with a Siopao, the Filipino steamed bun, washed down with hot ginger tea. This was followed by Danish pastry and then Klobasa, a Slovak sausage.Of course, then I was stuffed like a sausage myself, and perfectly content to watch everybody else dance to the amazing accordion-infused live band.

People from all over the world, dancing the same dance! Fantastic!

This year's theme is "Celebrate the Weavings of Culture," which was broadly interpreted as fiber arts of all kinds being demonstrated and discussed in the cultural area. The secrets of knitting cables were imbued on me by a kindly mystical Irishman. Nearly lost arts like tatting and bobbin lace were proudly and nimbly executed by women with lightning-fast fingers. People's willingness to share and explain? Priceless! Especially since I got a miracle ticket!

The Holiday Folk Fair continues tomorrow (November 22nd, 2009) from 10am-7pm at the State Fair Expo Center.

I'd like it here if I could leave and see it from a long way away...

Have you been to the Art Bar on Burleigh?

It is amazing to me that any time I walk in there, it smells like Milwaukee to me. I can't quite define it. It just smells familiar, comfortable, like my own home town that I (usually) love. Do you know what I mean?

We spent ten days wandering generally south, all the way to North Carolina, and then back north again, and visited a lot of places. Louisville, Kentucky (pre-flooding) was probably the nicest and most hospitable. We met a lady there who mentioned a campaign of sorts called Keep Louisville Weird. That is, that the residents wanted to retain the local color and flavor of their city, and support the local businesses that help keep it feeling like a place- its own place- rather than the ubiquitious chains that can make every place feel and taste and seem the same. There is something similar in Austin, TX, she said. Actually, we do have a thing like that here in Milwaukee; it just has a less evocative title.

The whole trip really made me think, what are the things that I would want to do if I were a tourist here? What if I had 24 or 48 hours to visit and wanted to see and do the things, old and new, that make Milwaukee Milwaukee? What would I tell myself to experience?

Leon's, yes, definitely. A brewery tour. Which one? Coffee, where? Alterra? (It's a chain, but a local one.) The lakefront, definitely, and the Calatrava. Live music of a local nature, and a beer- where for that? What about art? Sparrow Collective, maybe? Riverwest? Those are the kind of things I try to do when I am somewhere else- experience the real place, not (anathema!) the McDonald's version.

I've talked to people who have lived here and are moving away. An oft-cited reason is "it's too small." I really don't think so. Trying to come up with a list like that above, I am conflicted: there is a lot of choice. What do you think?