Ever so humble

Jan. 6 – Milwaukee, WI

While hardly bustling on a foggy, wet, unseasonably warm Sunday in January, Milwaukee lacks the air of dejection that permeates so many cities of its rank. Currently at #22 in the nation, Milwaukee's population of about six hundred thousand puts it just ahead of Boston and Seattle, although its metropolitan area is much smaller than both. As a result, the city occupies an uncoveted niche between mid-sized manufacturing center and bona fide megalopolis, an ignominy exacerbated by its location in the penumbra of Chicago.

What's more, Milwaukee seems to boast more theaters and performance venues per capita than any city I know, along with an inordinate number of aesthetically imposing churches and a veritable plethora of bridges spanning the Milwaukee and Menomonee Rivers. Architecturally, Milwaukee shows a penchant for stripes, a perception reinforced by the proliferation of parking garages downtown, but the motif is repeated with remarkable harmony in some of the surrounding edifices (such as our hotel, the Hyatt International Space Station). Still, other styles prevail, from utilitarian office towers and the colossal neoclassical county corthouse (far surpassing the US Supreme Court in mass) to the German vernacular façades of Old World Third Street and the ornately detailed German Renaissance City Hall, currently encased in an even more ornately detailed matrix of scaffolding.

Against all odds, and in a fit of Midwestern self-reliance, Milwaukee carries with it neither the misconceived perception of world-class status (an ill-founded conceit that Boston wears like a Red Sox cap on its head), nor the disconsolate ball-and-chain of post-industrial urban defeatism (Detroit may be troubled, but it's not exactly Mogadishu). Instead, the city abides with neither smugness nor despondence, achieving a balance enviable in the sprawl-scape of twenty-first century America. That's quite an accomplishment for a town whose chief rallying point is bratwurst and beer.

(The above paragraph has been brought to you today by the hyphen.)

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