After more than a half-century of attending Summerfests, I’ve seen plenty of dramatic improvements – like pavement!
I remember when Summerfest was essentially Mudfest after the frequent rainstorms in those early years. Sloshing through mud from stage to stage was an interesting spectacle but not always that enjoyable. Then, when the inevitable blazing sun returned moments later, the mud-encrusted shoes, pants and assorted body parts began crackling and cracking (painful, depending on body part) with any movement, particularly the dancing on tables (I was much younger then). Along those same lines, I’m also an avid supporter of the beautiful and expansive stages built over the years where audience members stand on concrete, not lakes and rivers. Although it does make a table dancer’s tumble a bit more painful. (Yes, I’ve seen a few over the years.)
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Obviously, there have been tremendous improvements to the grounds over the years – from better sound systems and giant video screens at several stages so fans even at the back of packed shows can still watch their favorite musicians jamming, to improved and expanded restrooms. Does anyone else remember when the lines for women’s bathrooms stretched from stage to stage? Drunk and distressed women with full bladders would often enter the men’s bathrooms to jeers but men would generally clear a path for them to get to an empty stall past the peeing men at the urinals. That was the easy part. What freaked the women out (according to my complaining female friends at the time) was finding a pee-covered toilet seat if not worse. But at that point, they had no option but to hover over the toilet and do their business. Thankfully, as some point, Summerfest realized women also drink beer, a lot of it, and unlike men, they can’t just zip in and out of a restroom. So, with its expanded restrooms, Summerfest, essentially implemented its own version of the Equal Rights Amendment.
The New Three-Weekend Format Not Working
Again, I’m a proponent of all things positive at Summerfest. But I am having second thoughts about one major change Summerfest implemented after the pandemic. The move from an 11-day run (Wednesday, through the following Sunday, with the Monday off in the middle) to a three-weekend run (Thursday to Saturday over three weekends) was made in 2021, following the pandemic and the cancellation of the 2020 festival. I thought the 2021 festival worked OK, even though it was temporarily moved to September to allow for more time for vaccines to work their magic. The temperatures were cooler and the grounds weren’t as crowded. The following year, 2022, it was moved back to June and July, as well as last year, but the three-weekend format has been retained. I was generally OK with the format, as it seemed to feature better bands in the daytime. And since I come in every year from Colorado, I figured the three weeks might give me more time on the off days to explore lakes and other recreational opportunities in Wisconsin.
This year, though, I’ve come to the realization, like most of my friends and family in Milwaukee, the three-weekend format isn’t working for the Summerfest regulars. The fest is just extended out too long, over the three weeks. From a practical point of view for me (coming in from Colorado), it means I have to block out three weeks in Milwaukee if I want to attend each weekend. I also have to ask my brother and his wife if I can stay for three weeks at their upstairs apartment (we call it the Bed and Breakfast, even though I sleep on the sofa and usually bring my own cereal and milk).
I’m sure there are practical (financial) reasons for Summerfest to do it over the three weekends. I’ve heard and read various explanations. Easier to book bands on weekends. Easier to find workers on weekends. And so on. But let’s face it, by having more people attend over the weekends, they sell more beer and food on those days. They avoid those slow Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons when the grounds were a bit desolate. (Not great for bands’ egos to play to empty stands but great for Summerfest regulars who want to meet musicians at a private show and get food and beer unencumbered by crowds.) But Summerfest over the nine-day format hasn’t exactly been setting attendance records. It did rebound last year, to 624,000, but is still at least 100,000 to 200,000 less than what it was before the pandemic and the new three-weekend format.
Hogging Three Prime Summer Weekends
Summerfest has also taken over three prime weekends of early summer. That means competition for other festivals like church festivals. As a good Catholic, I always like supporting church festivals, but I could only find one on the first weekend of Summerfest, and it was way out on 160th and National, in New Berlin, at Holy Apostles Catholic Parish. And since I could only make it there on Sunday, when Summerfest was off, I missed the rollicking bands on Friday and Saturday nights plus the Friday fish fry and Saturday chicken dinner. Instead, there were two people singing essentially karaoke to “yacht rock” songs.
When Summerfest was 11 straight days long, the city’s other festivals and other events essentially shut down, and they worked around that schedule. If I wanted to attend a church festival, I knew it was not going to be on a Summerfest weekend. Now, even the big Greek Fest at State Fair Park had to compete with that first weekend of Summerfest. Normally, I’d be all into getting some gyros and watching some Greek traditional dancing, but this year I just ran out of time with Summerfest occupying so much of my weekend.
Aside from Summerfest sucking up three summer weekends and all the personal and community conflicts that creates, Summerfest fanatics like myself find they have to pack in too much each Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’ve always been pretty good with moving from stage to stage to see the bands I want to see (and usually even catch the songs I want to hear), but I’ve already missed a few this year because the scheduling is tighter. For example, I would have loved to have seen the Black Pumas, Goo-Goo Dolls and Umphrey’s McGee last Saturday but only saw Dawes (the rainstorms that night didn’t help my planning) and I missed a few others that were on my list as well, like Three Dog Night on the first Thursday and MUNA on the second Thursday. But that might be more of a “Me” problem – it seems less attractive to fight the crowds to rush to all the different stages than when I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s….
A (Lighthearted) List of Demands
At this year’s opening ceremony (yes, I still attend this, even though they haven’t given away free beer to toast the festival for years), a friend and I listened a bit to the city officials and sponsors and other dignitaries praise each other. After I noted to my friend that they used to blow a foghorn to officially open Summerfest and toast with a free can of Miller Lite, I joked that we should prepare a list of demands to hand to the new CEO of Summerfest and Milwaukee World Festival’s Sarah Pancheri. We laughed as we talked about things like all-day happy hours and bringing back the Miller Jazz Oasis, featuring jazz all day and every day, but decided to hold off.
Nevertheless, over the past few days of Summerfest, I kept developing a list in my head. Things like having fewer booths with people selling new doors and windows and more with the cool vendors giving away stuff. I’ve lost track of how many packs of peanut butter M&M’s I’ve collected this year – although I noticed the packs in my pockets had turned into incredible artistic mini-sculptures when I pulled them out of my drenched pocket the morning after spectacular thunderstorms. The bean hats being given away by Bush’s Beans are pretty cool, but I haven’t joined the long lines to spin the wheel. (I think half the line are the returning people who intend to spin all day until they get the hat.) The Wisconsin cheese samples from Black Creek are a great offering as well. And keep adding to places providing free beer samples.
Other ideas that have gone through my head while wandering the grounds this year include: feature a jazz day, a blues day, a country day, etc. with only that genre of music on one stage (as in the olden days); cut back on the DJs and recorded music – I walked past three stages the other night that all had DJs; have individual taverns open up their own stands, with their own deals and prices, much like at the Wisconsin State Fair; speaking of the State Fair, how about a State Fair Cream Puff Pavilion; have a Summerfest parade every day instead of selected days – those always are kinda fun and spontaneous; stop blocking off reserved sections at front of stages to sell to people at extra cost (the sections for disabled people are wonderful, but I noticed at least one section is available to access for an extra cost); do you really need to sell 24-ounce cans of beer ($13.50) – who needs that much beer (and practically, wouldn’t the beer be warm and wouldn’t you need to go to the bathroom before finishing it)?
But my main suggestion would be to go back to the 11-day format. Summerfest doesn’t need to hog three prime summer weekends in Milwaukee. Summers are short here. And, OK, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to once again hand out a free can of Miller Lite to anyone who braves all the boring speeches at the opening ceremony. Oh yeah, bring back the foghorns, too.
Kris Kodrich, a Milwaukee native and a journalism professor at Colorado State University, has been attending Summerfest regularly since he was a little kid with his family at that very first one in 1968.
