milwaukee jane where ms. unhinged has currently located herself. tell us a bit about it, would you, doll? 080718 ... unhinged well.... on the positive side, it's a little city trying to be a big city which for artists like me can generate some exciting opportunities with less competition for them to boot. the milwaukee art museum is a stunning piece of architecture right on the lake that has some good traveling exhibits come through and a moderately decent permanent collection. there is a local business movement around here that i particularly enjoy, which translates into good fresh roasted coffee, good independent book shops, good little boutiques for almost anything you could imagine, really good beer.... ah, the beer in milwaukee. her saving grace and her downfall all in one fell swoop. it seems like any bar worth it's salt on the eastside has their own beers that they either brew themselves or commission from small local breweries. lakefront brewery is my favorite. you probably can't get 'em in california because they refuse to ship that far in an effort to consciously stay small, but if you ever find yourself faced with the choice of a lakefront beer, especially on tap, you MUST try it. there are local alcohol fanatics in a neighborhood just across the river from where i live that started their own distillery for vodka and gin (rehorst). milwaukee is an alcoholic's town. with all the bad stuff that goes along with that. i.e. last night someone almost got beat up outside my bedroom window AGAIN. oh and the state of wisconsin has one of the highest incidences of dui in the country which translates into fatal and tragic accidents on a pretty regular basis. one of the other really bad things about milwaukee is it's the second most segregated city in the country next to detroit. which means you can drive from the ritzy part of town with huge houses that cause half a million right on the lake to the ghetto in about five minutes. which makes the racial tension pretty high. which makes it weird for me because i could give a shit about that. the buses are some of the worst in the country based on price and service because the county executive is a republican asshole that bases his policy on 'no new taxes' and tax cuts for the rich/corporations that is running the middle class and poor into the ground. to end on a positive note, it's actually not that hard to be a vegetarian in milwaukee on the side of town i live on. i had some awesome tofu fajitas at a place that is mostly veg yesterday. and the independent weekly free paper, the sheperd express, is the only newspaper i read. they have awesome objective political coverage (their special column 'do you really know john mccain' is one of my favorites) and an awesome arts/entertainment section. but i need out of the midwest. stat. 080719 ... unhinged yes, i can pretty safely say the only things i will miss about milwaukee when i leave are alterra coffee and lakefront beer 080719 ... jane when i left new york i had an extreme nostalgia for the bagels & the pizza. since then my yearning for them has long dissipated, and i don't eat either anymore. 080721 ... unhinged for me, milwaukee is all about the fresh roasted coffee and the amazing fucking beer. milwaukee is such a beer town that good upscale places here have beer from all over the world. i had anchor steam before i even got to san_francisco. i can't unibroue on tap at nessun dorma anymore and i was quite sad about that. comet has a beer menu that looks more like a binder of official documents than a menu. landmark is a bar that has a bowling alley and a gameroom in it, but there are three different bars/rooms that each have different stuff on tap. there is a place out by the airport that has around one HUNDRED different beers on tap and if you try all of them and get this little card stamped they will give you a stein to commemorate the occasion. i'm a microbrew snob now. i only drink pabst, leinenkugel, and capital brewery in a can now. pabst definitely being the low end. but it's good for low end german milwaukee swill. but i don't even think the brewery is located here. they turned the pabst mansion downtown into a cool ass venue though. i need this symphony job. it will keep my mind and my pocketbook off being alone. 080721 ... unhinged to give you an idea of the general level of intelligence of most people from southeast wisconsin, i read a news article on yahoo today about a man from milwaukee who shot his lawn mower because it wouldn't start.....his mug shot was drunk and scary looking. his facing some kind of felony for the gun and a misdemeanor for being disorderly about it. i hope he gets the maximum of almost seven years in prison just for being stupid enough to shoot his damn lawn mower. can you get a dui for operating a lawn mower when drunk? there's a lot of conservative wahoos that take the second amendment to close to heart in this state. milwaukee just happens to be one of only two liberal cities worth visiting in the entire state. 080725 ... unhinged no. 9 on the top 40 cities for young professionals list i guess i don't qualify as a young professional considering my income is less than half of the median listed in that article forbes.com 080726 ... unhinged technically i don't live in milwaukee anymore; moved on up to the northshore. still in the same zip code though *shrugs* 080805 ... past how big are zip codes? i cross the road and my postal code changes. 080806 ... unhinged it has to do with population density. since i live in a mid size city the zip codes are pretty small. i've lived in a couple different ones in only like a thirty block radius. in comparison, where my parents live in ohio, like the whole county is the same zip code cause it's pretty rural. 080806 ... unhinged you know you're a beer snob when you take a 12er across town on the bus to a keg party (i mean whatever i didn't drink was staying in his fridge as a birthday/hospitality present, but_still. i admit; it was damn snobby of me. but unless it's lakefront in the keg, i'm not drinking it) 080816 ... past their are worse things to be a snob about 080817 ... unhinged already, when the sun is shining in the winter it's bitter cold. but it's only december *pout* my morbid imagination is getting carried away with february. i have a feeling it will be like my very first winter here. 20 below before the windchill for two weeks straight...bbbbbrrrrrrr. 081207 ... unhinged (shouldn't the world stop turning when it gets that cold?) 081207 ... past it's warm somewhere else. 081207 ... unhinged too bad i don't live somewhere else. the necessity of down (while cuddly) and wool (not so itchy once you get used to it) is kind of a bummer 081207 ... past i'm sure it's warm under all that, just like my own pile of blankets (twenty below, near thirty in the wind, and yet still no need to turn my heat on... thank you quasi-usurers downstairs, your souls heat me well) 081209 ... unhinged holy nasty snow storm batman up to 11 inches up north and about 6 around here *sigh* 081209 ... sing songy cr0wl we've got 55 degrees! nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah! 081209 ... unhinged you know you live in wisconsin when.... the thermometer says 23 and you think to yourself 'wow; it's getting warm' 090119 ... unhinged if it could just stay above freezing i'd be happy. since spring isn't coming to me anytime soon i brought spring here with a arranged bouquet of green and purple prettiness. i forgot how happy flowers make me. in the winter here, they are almost a necessity. cause sometimes it feels like spring will never come around again. 090228 ... cr0wl spring is coming, silly. it's cranky old jack frost. he's dreading that train ride back north. 090228 ... unhinged spring isn't the same here as where i grew up. the tulips and daffodils don't dare show their faces til may and then you turn around and it's hot humid summer already. i miss the langorous unfolding of spring. that quarter of an inch on the map makes a serious seasonal difference. 090228 ... unhinged six months of winter four months of summer leave a quick transitive spring and fall this year summer stuck around til the first week of november (the leaves were prettier longer than i've ever seen here though) and by the first week of december there was six inches of snow on the ground maybe spring will pick up the slack fall left behind 090228 what's it to you? 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