The 3/50 project

A woman I work with handed me this flyer the other day (who, I might add, moonlighted at a small store on Downer Avenue that closed last month) . Then I saw it on Facebook. My line of thinking started with, I don't spend $50 a month on "stuff." But of course I do. I try, not hard enough, to spend it at locally-owned establishments. The line "...you'd miss most if they were gone" crystallized this for me, as so many are closing.

Some of my favorite local bricks-and-mortar establishments are listed below the flyer.


Some of my faves, and reasons why:

Fischberger's Variety on Holton: the best place to buy gifts. The lady who owns it (one of the Brew City Bruisers) gave me a zipper once- not sold it to me- gave it to me. The fact that I remember it two years later shows how unusual this small act was.

Top Shelf Guitar Shop in Bay View. The guy that owns it not only checked out and tweaked my bass this year, not charging me because "I really didn't do anything"-- although I saw him tweak it! Then he ran out in the rain to bring me the patch cords I bought and then forgot on the counter. Truly excellent customer service every time.

Ruhama's Yarn and Needlepoint for getting my craft on.

Kellner's Greenhouse for decorative plants and herbs (especially since Weber's on Green Bay just north of Capitol closed last year).

Laacke and Joys, downtown location, "when nature calls you outdoors." It's a big store, and probably not on the verge of closing or anything, but it's a Milwaukee icon and always seems to have what I need. Or want.


What are your favorite local stores? Why do you like them?

Red-tail hawk

I took advantage of the beautiful weather today and got out my kayak, going up Lincoln Creek to just past the abandoned St. Michael's Hospital building. This hawk let me get within 20 feet, occasionally pausing his dinner to glance in my direction.


The water was just deep enough to get through the northwestern part of the river in Lincoln Park to the confluence, but I scraped bottom in more than a few places. Without the dam, such a trip would be impossible during any of the summer months. These birds of prey have been around for at least the past two summers; they do live on the river when the water is high, as do the herons that seem to be more abundant every year, catching fish in the park.

Just for the record...

...a little bit about me.
I live on the banks of the Milwaukee River, right smack dab between Lincoln Park and an I-43 on-ramp. My husband and I own the duplex we live in. When we first saw it eight years ago, we looked at each other in wonder and knew this was just the place we wanted to live. We love having the river in our backyard. We paddle regularly in the summer...the dog swims in the river too. We pay high property taxes to live here, because it is waterfront property. So, yes I do think we should have a say in what happens to the Estabrook Dam. If you want to travel here to fish, well, you could just as easily travel elsewhere to fish. My apartment was for rent, and you did not rent it, nor did you rent my neighbor's apartment, nor did you rent my other neighbor's apartment. There were recently two houses on our street for sale, and you did not buy either of them.
That said, on to the next logical environmental argument: the dam creates a lake within Milwaukee County, usable by kayakers, canoeists, and yes, small motorcraft. A city person (have I mentioned that there are 600,000 people in the city of Milwaukee alone? and two million in the metro area?) does not have to travel far to use any of the public boat launches. A person in Milwaukee does not have to drive to Pewaukee, Okauchee, or Nagawaukee lake to do this stuff: a short drive, saving fossil fuels and the cash to pay for them, and you're right at this nearby treasure. People fish all the time by the Blatz Pavilion. All the time! If you want to go to the free-flowing part, that's right below the dam at the dolomite falls, and all the way down to Lake Michigan.
As I have previously mentioned, this is a city...a great place full of "stuff we have built to accommodate people" (roads, buildings, etc); the infrastructure is here. I subscribe to the New Urbanist theory of limiting or halting suburban sprawl. I remember seeing, when I was a kid, farms within the county. Not just Growing Power, but real farms, right on Mill Road. Now they are houses, and it's houses and stores pretty much all the way to Madison. That's why we need to limit sprawl from taking up all our green space for NEW infrastructure, so people can live even FARTHER from the center of the action and drive even MORE.
To recap my argument: save gas...live in town...kayak in the city. Leave the Estabrook Dam in place.

Save the Estabrook Dam!

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I am the River Otter. I live by the Milwaukee River. I love the river, I love nature; I try to conserve gas by riding my bike; I reduce and reuse. I also love to kayak (if by myself) and canoe (with my dear husband) on the Milwaukee River and Lincoln Creek. That is by far the most influential reason we moved here (and it's close to where we both work).
Let me explain: the Estabrook Dam was built as a WPA project in the 1930's, as part of the economic stimulus package during the Great Depression. Bedrock had been removed from the riverbed and the water level was low as a result. The dam, an innovative design that won an award and influenced later dams, raised the water level to essentially its original level. As part of this project, wetlands were drained and islands were formed in what is now county park land in Lincoln Park. It is beautiful...peaceful...an urban oasis.
Now, I am not a big proponent of draining wetlands, and if such a project were proposed now, I would be opposed.
However, we live in a built environment, an urban environment that has been altered. John Gurda's fantastic documentary series _The Making of Milwaukee_ illustrates how humans have altered the land, from the time people noted that the confluence of rivers and the natural port on Lake Michigan were a great place to settle, all the way to now, when we have a population of nearly two million people in the metro area. Removing the Estabrook Dam won't return the area to a pristine natural setting such as existed three hundred years ago; leaving it in place allows the park to exist as it does now, an urban paddler's paradise.
See also my posts about the recreational benefits of the impoundment, the original state of the confluence, and some more of its history.