Weekend in the Mil

We had a nice visit from Mosley, his mom and Auntie Chris on Saturday. He's certainly a big boy - all 16 pounds of him!! He looks alot like his Uncle Mike, minus the facial hair :)

It finally warmed up on Sunday, so it was time to take Bailey out of hibernation and let her go for a walk in Veterans Park. She was happy to get out from under the blankets. It will be nice again today but will dip back into the single digits tomorrow - we'll enjoy a little bit of a thaw before the cold returns. We took a drive along the eastside just to see what's happening and how things are progressing. Thursday night I attended an event hosted by Historic Milwaukee to hear UWM Dean of the Architectural School Bob Greenstreet talk about recent and future Milwaukee developments. Seeing cranes in the city is a good sign. He focused alot on the future of MacArthur Square in front of the Courthouse and what can be done there. It certainly needs some help as they made it a complete eyesore probably in the 1970's. The Milwaukee County Courthouse is such a grand building and it has been blighted by a hiddeous parking ramp with a misused park square. Dan McCarthy from the Pabst Brewery Project which Joseph Zilber is undertaking gave a good report on all that is happening with the old brewery as well as another gentleman Kevin Mantz (sp?) talked about the sustainability study and the landscaping plans. All in all very informative and I am glad I attended.

Friday, I toured the Tripoli Shrine Temple on Wisconsin Avenue. A fabulous building. They recently completed a million dollar renovation which cleaned up the tiles (and there is an unbelieveable amount of tile - it took 3 years for a family from Italy to lay all of the tile in beautiful patterns throughout the building), fixed the lighting and just did an overall sprucing up. Milwaukee should be incredibly proud of this building as it is a one-of-a-kind. I look forward to bringing groups here on tour or for special events. Check out the rental section on the website to see pictures of the dome. I was a dope and didn't take any pictures!

After the Shrine tour, I met with some colleagues at The Knick to discuss some of life's possibilities in Milwaukee especially regarding the Pabst Brewery. Then Mike and I went to Zaffiro's for pizza. What a crazy place - making pizza since 1954 and consistently getting awards for Milwaukee's best pizza. It doesn't look like much, the wait staff looks like they've been working there for years, it's somewhat smoky, but people dig it. Nice and casual with really good super thin crust pizza. Gotta love it.

We then moved on to have a couple of pints of Guiness at the new Irish pub in town, Brocach. Just when you think we've had enough Irish Pubs in Milwaukee, someone comes around with another very cool addition to the city in an up and coming area along the river. I love this place. Brocach is Gaelic for Badger Den. This is appropriate as the bar is built into the side of a bluff. Very narrow so you better not have an affliction to people bumping into you. Great job with the decor. Looking forward to the next visit and a sampling of their food.

Packer Loss Friday

So, like everyone in Packer nation, I was all ready to watch the Packers take on the Cowboys with hopes of a big win. Both teams were 10-1 so it was destined to be a real shoot out. I was a bit nervous as the game was in Dallas and we don't have a good track record there. I was also nervous that they were going to try to take out Brett Favre. Well, my nerves were right. We didn't quite get it done and Brett Favre got hurt. I think this quieted alot of the boastfulness and Superbowl talk and brought everyone back to reality. I still have faith, but I am not betting the farm on championship talk...

I was told recently that the difference between a Packer fan and a Bear fan is that the Bear fan will say "Who are the Bears playing this weekend?" whereas the Packer fan will say "Who are we playing this weekend?" - we take real ownership in our team. It's good to seem them back to winning ways, the rollercoaster of wins and losses is no fun.

Yesterday I had a meeting downtown - before and after the meeting we met at The Knick in The Knickerbocker Hotel. This is one of my favorite areas of the city. There is so much charm in the architecture and I love the lakefront. When I moved to Milwaukee in 1991, I lived on the corner of Kilbourn Ave and Prospect Ave right on the lakefront. (Now our "grassy knoll" is home to two huge condo skyscrapers.) At that time downtown was still pretty "lame" - not much going on, you hardly saw anyone downtown at night or on the weekends. Water Street had a few bars - Rosie's was the major hot spot. Brady Street was a bit scary. The Third Ward was dark and all Cathedral Square had Elsa's and some dark smoky bars. We used to go to Walker's Point for our kicks. It has come a LONG way since then. At that time though we used to like to go to The Knickerbocker Hotel for breakfast - they had a great little diner - I don't remember the name but it was your typical greasy spoon diner with lots of white and stainless steel. And then they kicked it up a notch with a huge renovation and turned The Knickerbocker into an awesome stylish metro restaurant. We took everyone who visited us there. And then as more and more cool places opened, our visits to The Knickerbocker were limited. Then they did another renovation and renamed the place The Knick. Still very stylish, very popular and a great place to bring people as it has really good food and is very comfortable.

Wednesday was a "networking" day - I went to a small networking get together at Brew City Tea in the morning and then another larger networking get together at The Bavarian Inn. It's always interesting to meet new people at these types of events and you typically find out about businesses that you didn't know even existed. It's been a while since I was at The Bavarian Inn - it's a fun place. Good German flavor. I used to take senior groups there for good German food and music. It has a nice dining room and probably could get a little racuous if the beer was flowing. We were thinking that it had a better feel than the Hof Brau Haus in Las Vegas. I wish more people would revel in some of the German traditions. Was nice to run into an old friend that I worked with back in the '90s when I was at The Grand Milwaukee Hotel. He happened to be with a fella that Mike worked with one summer back in his high school days who also worked for his Uncle. Small world...Milwaukee is a big city, but you sure run into alot of people you know or have some connection to.

While I was "networking", Mike went to a couple of shops on Silver Spring in Whitefish Bay. He bought a couple of cute Christmas presents for Bailey's dog cousins at Hounds Around Town. I will have to go back and check it out for myself as he got some really funny dog toys.