Milwaukee Sucks?

It’s a late summer evening and I’m standing on the chalk-white boulders of the Pier Wisconsin breakwater looking into the city. The triple masts of the S/V Denis Sullivan form a silhouette against the shimmering skyline. Two condominium towers, sleek and modern, rise above the Prospect Avenue bluff. To my left, a powerboat cuts the water between the glassy pilothouse of Discovery World and the Lakeshore State Park island. To my right, the art museum’s winged Calatrava reaches toward Lake Michigan’s blue horizon.

Over the past decade, Milwaukee has come into its own. From the revitalization of Downtown and the Menomonee Valley, to the trendy residential development along the Milwaukee River, to the cultural boom across the city, it’s hard not to marvel at the progress.

Yet, to listen to critics, Milwaukee is a hellhole awash in problems.

“Milwaukee sucks,” is how Waukesha Freeman columnist Pete Kennedy so eloquently put it last June. “It’s not just the crime, either. The city can’t get through a water balloon fight without dumping raw sewage into Lake Michigan… So I wonÕt argue with those … who say Milwaukee is a rotten excuse for a city.”

What’s this, the Freeman’s nod to regional cooperation? Imagine a Milwaukee publication declaring that “Waukesha sucks.”

But trashing Milwaukee is completely acceptable. It’s the blood sport of talk radio. “I may live in Milwaukee but it seems my role is to be the protector of the suburbs,” Mark Belling recently wrote as he condemned an idea to link city and suburbs via public transit. This from a guy who claims to be “standing up for Milwaukee.”

Our friends in Madison have never been shy about putting us down, either. Like this cheap shot at Summerfest, titled “Bummerfest: It’s the quintessential Milwaukee experience,” by Isthmus writer Andy Moore: “Milwaukeeans will pay for beer the same way SUV owners will pay for gas. Whatever it takes. Brewskis are up to five bucks apiece at Summerfest now. They could be 50 bucks and it wouldn’t matter.”

It’s a recurring theme – Milwaukee as a second-rate city, as a haven for deadbeats and criminals, as a burden to the state, take your pick. The attitude was captured by former Gov. Tommy Thompson in 1995 when he told out-state residents to “stick it” to Milwaukee.

The contempt is palpable among state legislators, as members of the Milwaukee delegation soon discover. “You always have to fight a little harder when you say you’re from Milwaukee,” says state Rep. Tamara Grigsby (D-Milwaukee). When she was elected three years ago, Grigsby had expected to encounter this bias. “I just didn’t know it was as pervasive as it is,” she says.

Not a day goes by when the city isn’t painted in a negative light, says Rep. Jason Fields (D-Milwaukee). It’s not just Democrats versus Republicans, he says, but rural and suburban legislators versus big city. “It is a huge hump to get over.”

Any city shortcoming is seized on. When voters refused to unseat Alderman Mike McGee Jr. in a recall election last spring, legislators used this “as an excuse for not doing anything for Milwaukee,” says state Sen. Lena Taylor, also a city-based Democrat.

This hostility goes way back, says Republican Margaret Farrow. It’s been fostered in part by former Milwaukee mayors, who viewed the suburbs as nonessential to the city’s well being, and in part by out-state legislators who “lack a true understanding” of the importance of the city to Wisconsin, she says.

Farrow was once lieutenant governor and a state senator from Elm Grove. Her district included part of Waukesha County and portions of Milwaukee’s city and suburbs. She remembers ushering groups of out-state legislators around Milwaukee – from public schools to the zoo to the juvenile court center.

“Even though we’re all in Wisconsin and think we know the state, we haven’t got a clue,” she says.

It’s easy sometimes to see the glass as half-empty, I admit. A recent report found one of every four Milwaukee residents lives below the poverty line. Crime, teen pregnancy, underperforming schools – Milwaukee faces challenges. But what major city doesn’t? People who can’t afford to live in the suburbs – the poor, the jobless, the homeless – can find refuge in the city. But should we blame the city for welcoming all Americans?

That very openness and diversity is also what makes the city fascinating. Where else would you find a Shakespeare theater company, a concertina bar, and restaurants serving Korean, Turkish, Puerto Rican and Ethiopian food? A Polish music festival, a domed baseball stadium and an art museum with wings?

The city is messy sometimes, but vibrant, vital. It might seem simpler to avoid all the thorny complexities, but you’d take away the bitter only to lose the sweet. Through all the traffic and noise and hubbub, the city is a daily reminder of the American melting pot. Nowhere is the kettle stirred more strongly than in this place we call Milwaukee.