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"Sociology arguments that tell us that over time our social networks are becoming more dispersed over space. We might know people, but we don’t necessarily know the people in our neighborhoods. We have very rich social networks, but they’re dispersed all over the city, all over the country. And we depend on the car in order to make face-to-face interactions with our social contacts."
-Steven Farber, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Utah, from Atlantic Cities - Is Your City Getting in the Way of Your Social Life?
An argument against commuter culture, in favor of creating communities, working in city centers and gathering in common places. I live in a city with a huge commuter culture, where moving out of the city into surrounding suburbs is seen as an indicator of status. There is little public transportation to speak of, and what does exist functions best and most effectively during rush hours - to and from work. It makes socialization between different neighborhoods in the city impractical for people without cars. It makes drunk driving a huge issue. It divides people into social strata by neighborhood. I haven’t met a new person in this city since I started a new job, last year. The only new people I meet are new employees we hire. I occasionally meet friends of friends. My closest friends live in other Midwestern cities or have moved to cities around the country. I don’t count on a quickly or easily accessible support system, outside of my family. It is strange, sometimes, to think that I’ve just stopped expecting that.
When you live in a place, when you rely on a place, when you enjoy activities there, you feel connected to it. You feel responsible for it. It creates a sense of obligation, on both ends. Without that, it’s difficult to feel tied to the fate, and consequently, the success, of our communities - especially our cities.
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Name: Time To Run
Artist: Lord Huron
Album: Lonesome Dreams
Sometimes I feel like living in my hometown is physically crushing me.
But I know that becoming the kind of person who still lives in my hometown is ruining me, and slowly killing off anything I’d hoped to do with my life.
It makes people forget about you. It makes people forget the things you wanted to do and it negates the things you have done. It ensures that the first thing people will always remember about you is the fact that you’re the girl who still lives in Milwaukee. It makes people assume that you’ll always be around, you’ll always be free, you’ll always be hanging out at the same bars in which you’ve spent the last eight years.
And to a certain extent, they become right.
Eventually, things become frozen. Time doesn’t necessarily stop, but nothing is ever noticeably different. The boredom that comes from never meeting anyone new, but only shadows of people you’ve met once before, who know a friend of a friend, who are the sister of your meanest high school classmate, turns into a slinking sadness once you realize that your city is covered in shadows.
And then eventually one day, you wake up and you realize that you’ll never get out. You’ll always be Milwaukee-good. Milwaukee-pretty. Milwaukee-skinny. And that’s how you understand that you can’t ever leave. You’ll take it out on people who have. You’ll harbor a jealousy that feels physical. But like everything else that comes with living in your hometown, eventually it will subside, slinking away until it becomes just like your sadness – the kind of thing that buries itself under the trappings of a normal, daily life, the kind of thing you barely notice at all anymore, until you somehow remind yourself that everyone’s moving around you, past you and still, you’re stopped.
Finally, gradually, in a city surrounded by people you’ve known vaguely for nearly your whole life, you realize that you never knew it would be possible to feel so completely and incurably alone.
I’ve posted this before, but it is as painfully true today as it is always.
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High ResolutionSmart.
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“You know I like my girls a little bit older.”
Bon Iver covers “Your Love” at the Riverside Theater - Milwaukee, October 12, 2009
I need to add that I was at this concert, and later went to the after party backstage, because I need you to know that I used to live an awesome life and that I have friends who are very talented. Because I like my girls a little bit older.
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High ResolutionThis is a hanging paper heart with an attached koala. Apparently koala-themed Valentine’s decorations are a thing at this bowling alley. I’ve never been sober-er or happier at this bowling alley, ever. And I was the kind of too-cool teenager who came here to learn how to play DDR from men who shouldn’t have been talking to teenagers.
(at Oriental Landmark Lanes)
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"
As a person who got her start in the civil rights movement by volunteering to work on Southern Christian Leadership voter registration campaign in Alabama, I know that those who oppose any curtailment of voting rights are not in the traditions of Martin Luther King and James Groppi.
As the widow of a man who after we married not only drove a bus, but became president of local 998 Amalgamated Transit Union, as a person who remembers that Martin Luther King was killed while he was working to organize sanitation workers, I know that anyone who works to curtail union rights is not in the tradition of Martin Luther King!
And as someone who is a member of a family that loves Wisconsin’s natural resources, I know, that if you endanger those resources, you are not standing with us.
You do not get arrested thirty plus times, you do not get assassinated, for being a photo-op do-gooder. Father James Groppi was more, and did more, and so he lives on. He believed in addressing the root causes of poverty, and those causes are backwards social policy. He believed in the tradition summarized by St. Thomas Aquinas that the “super-abundance of the rich belongs by natural right to the poor.” He believed, like Frederick Douglas, that “power concedes nothing without a demand: it never did and it never will.
"-Dr. Margaret Rozga, wife of Milwaukee civil rights activist Father James Groppi, accepting a post-humous Martin Luther King Heritage Award award on his behalf in Milwaukee yesterday.
In an audience that included Governor Scott Walker, she made several notable references to his racist, ridiculous policies.
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High ResolutionInquiring minds want to know.
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High ResolutionThere’s a secret people don’t tell you about being extremely single for a very long time. There’s really nothing wrong with actively choosing to be single, which at this point is what I’d say I’m doing. But there is something wrong about slowly, loudly becoming everybody’s creepy aunt. Because, well, that’s what’s happened to me. It’s not even so much that I don’t know how to get people to like me or to appear attractive in social settings. It’s that I actively run from that behavior. It’s that I’ve lived life long enough with out anyone to impress that I’ve started to believe it’s acceptable to do things that I know are not acceptable.
This weekend I cried in a bar because all of my friends have left Milwaukee and I feel alone and unable to leave. I suppose by itself, that’s pretty standard twenty-something, Gallery Girls-level behavior. BUT. Then I met someone and loudly told him I’d always had a crush on him, while wiping tears from my face. Because apparently when you’re so far entrenched in a solitary life, honesty is the only thing you can think of to save yourself. I don’t know if it’s impossible to recover from this huge fumble, but I do know that I could probably live to be at least five years older and continue to refuse to believe that my strategy of putting everything all out on the table is anything but hilariously adorable. Want to know a secret? It’s not.
Soon I plan to make a Powerpoint of all my drunken Photobooth pictures and call it, “Drunk Narcissism, or my early twenties.”
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There’s no excuse for sloppy police work, Milwaukee.
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President Obama had such a great time in Milwaukee, you guys.
Here he is at Usinger’s with Mayor Tom Barrett.
How could you not have fun with over 70 varieties of old world sausage? Milwaukee is the best.
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High ResolutionWhen you win an award for your advertising in Milwaukee, this is what you win. A big ol’ nut. Just like this. And this is what it looks like from the other side.
So that is what I did last night. I drank a lot of beer and watched a lot of ads and some of them won awards. And it was good.
Today? Not so good.
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High ResolutionMy friends are participating in a Sunday Funday at some sort of mini-bowl, but I’m trapped inside, chugging coffee on this overly sunny Sunday because I have to write three more website pages about windows.
If you wish your life could be more like college, you should consider becoming a copywriter.
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Today in awesome things:
Lakefront BreweryInc. has introduced Wisconsinite, a new unfiltered Weiss-style beer made entirely of local, Wisconsin-grown ingredients.
The beer was created around a new native Wisconsin yeast strain envisioned by Lakefront president Russ Klisch and developed by Jeremy Kingof home brewing supplies distributor Northern Brewer. The new strain is believed be to the only North American-grown yeast in commercial use today as well as the first native brewing yeast from Wisconsin, according to Lakefront Brewery.
All products used in Wisconsinite come from local sources, including its water (Lake Michigan), malted barley (from the Milwaukee location of Malteroup), wheat (Chilton) and hops (Mazomanie).
Klisch hopes the distinct flavor of the new yeast will eventually create a new category of beer called Wisconsin Weiss. Because he believes the flavor is so distinct, he plans to forgo compensation to make it available to other brewers in order to perpetuate the new style.
The new yeast is available for purchase by home brewers through Northern Brewer in Milwaukee and Minnesota.
Related: How delicious does it look to garnish your beer with a cheese wedge? I think we can agree that it looks SO DELICIOUS, and might actually embody the idea of “treating yourself.”
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"It’s fashionable to become well-adjusted to injustice."
- Cornel West at UW-Milwaukee on April 3.(Source: thirdcoastdigest.com)
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Lifted, a public art project created through the partnership of Express Yourself Milwaukee.
via mullendesign925
(via fuckyeahmilwaukee)
a little bit self-centered
just make sure the plane you're on is bigger than your carry-on baggage.
@oh_ew
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