A Sunday in Three Acts
A day in the life of a solo creative
The Rot
Franklin and Lyon. A pack of smokes and a Gatorade from Tina’s. The same walk as last week, and for a minute I was in my twenties again.
Stuck, and not sure of what.
The Canvas
Out on Brady Street, knocking on the neighborhood. I’m good at holding a conversation when someone comes to me. I’m not good at opening one. So I practiced. It worked. It gave me something to trust.
“Hi, friends, we’re talking about the neighborhood today.”
The Talk
A walk south on Prospect, a museum, a notebook, a bar seat at the Vig. The talking turned into writing.
Some days you don’t know what to do with yourself. Good. That’s the assignment. Here is one afternoon in Milwaukee that asks nothing of you but your feet.
Fierce kindness, not Midwest nice.
Ogden and Prospect
Start on the bluff. The Ogden corridor still shows the outline of a freeway that was planned and never built. Notice what the city did with the gap. Burns Commons, one of Milwaukee’s earliest parks, is small, easy to miss and worth the detour.
At 1260 N. Prospect, a 1937 Art Deco tower, the Exton, by Tullgren. Bay windows and curved glass. Look up.
White Manor
A small white building set back on the bluff, with a view of the marina. It doesn’t face the street, and that’s the charm. Some of the best things here are tucked back.
Juneau Park
Landscaped in 1870 as the Seventh Ward Park and later named for Solomon Juneau, the city’s first mayor. The Juneau monument and the Leif Erikson statue both date to 1887, and the Erikson is a replica of the one in Boston. Gertie the Duck’s brood was moved to the lagoon here in the 1940s.
Between towers
Is it the windrushing between towerswhispering not yet,reach higher.
Kilbourn Avenue
A City Beautiful boulevard. From City Hall to Prospect the streetscape was rebuilt so you can walk out onto the median and sit among the plantings.
The Woman’s Club
The Woman’s Club of Wisconsin, founded in 1876. Its 1886 Athenaeum was the first publicly owned stock company formed exclusively by women. Across Kilbourn stand six aluminum birds by Magdalena Abakanowicz (2001).
The bridge to the lake
Look for the orange sculpture, Mark di Suvero’s The Calling (1982). Locals will tell you it was here first, and that Calatrava designed the new wing with it in mind.
A tootsie pop
A pisco sour? No, just thefollow to a tootsie pop crunchedbefore I came to munch.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Cross toward the lake and go in. Stay on the first floor.
Start in contemporary
Right around the corner from the leaning janitor sculpture, which I just noticed is off display.
Please do not touch
Then go find
Zurbarán’s Saint Francis (about 1630 to 1634), Kehinde Wiley’s Saint Dionysus, a Reginald Baylor, and the Brooks Stevens chairs. Stevens was a Milwaukee designer, and you know his best-known work: the Wienermobile.
Type on the wall
Sunday is 10 to 5; closed Monday and Tuesday.
The Vig
A bar seat, a notebook, dinner for one.
The Sour Grape. Enthralling?
Up next
Up next:a salad and fries,not girl dinner, notquite.
Let it do the walking
Then take the streetcar home and let it do the walking.
