The Rep’s Return
As a prophet once said, “Guess who’s back, back, back. Back again, again, again. Shady’s back, back, back. Tell a friend, friend, friend.” Except, in this reading of the scripture, “Shady” is “the Milwaukee Rep,” which hosted a live show for the first time in 13 months this past weekend. Alexis J. Roston took to the stage to sing Ella Fitzgerald to a not-very-packed house (25% capacity limits, and all), but the quality of those soulful old hits and the joy of the Rep’s return made up for the temperature checks and roped-off seats.
The Greatest Pizza in Milwaukee
Zaffiro’s took home our Pizza Bracket crown this weekend, beating out Transfer Pizzeria Café in the final round after four rounds of head-to-head combat. It was a hard fight, and the sacrifices of our saucy fallen brethren will not be forgotten. Check out our MilMag Live interview with the folks at Zaffiro’s and Transfer to hear from the owners behind the muzzadell, plus see 88Nine’s Tarik Moody do a live tasting.
In related news, this bracket and our burger bracket both did really well, so I’d like to officially announce that every story I write from here on out will be in bracket format. “The Common Council passed a new resolution to improve election accessibility. WE PITTED EACH COUNCIL MEMBER AGAINST EACH OTHER IN A NO-HOLDS-BARRED BEATDOWN BRACKET. VOTE HERE NOW!!” It’s really going to up my journalism game, I can already tell.
Big Daddy’s BBQ in Franklin
Here’s salute to Big Daddy, one of Adam Sandler’s best films and also a beloved BBQ joint on Humboldt. It’s opening a new location in Franklin at the Shops of Wyndham (the BBQ joint is, not the Sandler movie, also starring Jon Stewart and a young Dylan and Cole Sprouse, which is a film and therefore incapable of opening a barbecue restaurant ). After last week, when we announced yet another restaurant closure, we’re glad to hit you with some happy restaurant news. Almost as glad as when Adam Sandler turned his life around and became a real father at the end of Big Daddy.
Summerfest Headliners
The crew at Summerfest dropped a partial lineup of headliners this Thursday. There’s still five slots to be filled, including one of the big three, but we still got quite a few names on the board here. The Jonas Brothers, the Dave Matthews Band, Miley Cyrus, Chance the Rapper, Luke Bryan, Chris Stapleton and the Zac Brown Band. I can already hear my high school classmates belting out “a little bit of chicken fried” while wearing cutoffs and sipping keystone light. Summerfest is back, baby.
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Summerfest Headliners
Dave Matthews Band? The Jonas Brothers? Meh.
Wisco Tourism Plummets
We pretty much already knew this, but the Wisconsin Department of Tourism announced this week that statewide tourism spending dropped nearly 30 percent in 2020. That’s a $4 billion dollar loss. Think how many Playstations you could buy with that money. A lot. Eight million actually. Man, think how well you could numb the pain of a meaningless existence with all those Playstations. So does anyone know where to get a PS5? They’re sold out freaking everywhere still.
But anyway, there is a little good news here. The DOT is hopeful about 2021, with what seems like good cause. Acting Tourism Secretary Anne Sayers told Urban Milwaukee that people are “getting revenge” on COVID-19 with new vacation plans. I tried getting revenge on COVID-19 myself the other day, but I just ended up getting tackled by some nurses and thrown out of the hospital, so I guess vacationing really aggressively will have to do instead.
Brady Street Festival Canceled
Another one bites the dust. We’ll miss you Brady Street Festival. See you in 2022, darling.
Website Crashes
If you clicked on over to milwaukeemag.com on Monday or Tuesday, excited to delve into some quality content (such as this story I wrote, or this story I wrote, or also this one which I also wrote), then there’s a good chance you ran into a 502 error. First off, we’re sorry. Our web suppliers had some problems, and it just screwed up our whole site. Dozens on dozens of stories were inaccessible, and all we could do was repeatedly berate tech support with our complaints. “Five oh two? I’m about to five oh lose my sh-t if I get this screen one more time.” Long story short, our website is working again and my phone number is now on our IT department’s “Do Not Answer” list.
UPDATE: Our engineering team resolved the service issues. Customers should be seeing a return to normal performance. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and understanding.
— Network Solutions (@netsolcares) May 6, 2021
