1. Dialogue and Document at the Dialogues Documentary Fest
ARCHER PARQUETTE, MANAGING EDITOR
I’ve long dreamt of commissioning a documentary about my life. Just picture it – me sitting at my desk typing, me eating soup alone in a corner, me playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for seven straight hours on Saturday – man, it would be a cinematic thrill of the highest caliber! But in the meantime, I’ll have to be satisfied with documentaries about other, less fascinating people. This Thursday marks the opening of the second annual Dialogues and Documentary Fest, hosted by Milwaukee Film. From Sept. 18-21, you can catch a lineup of docs at the Oriental and Downer, most with filmmaker Q&As afterward. I’m particularly looking forward to An Unquiet Mind, a film about people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
2. Get a Transcendent French 75 Cocktail at Agency
CHRIS DROSNER, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
On a recent Friday night my date and I stopped into Agency, the ridiculously bougie cocktail bar inside Downtown’s Dubbel Dutch Hotel. The cocktails here can be crafted by the bartenders to suit your whims (alcoholic or N/A for everything), or from a preconceived menu “chapter” that riffs on a theme. The current theme is water (though it’s winding down in the next week or so), and I had a lovely concoction riffing off a Zombie called The Sea Witch, highlights of which included chlorophyll, plump sage garnish and a smoldering cinnamon stick. Worth the $20 it cost? … I mean, yeah, probably! But Agency, of course, also makes classic cocktails, and I don’t recall how it was suggested, but I went with a French 75 for my second drink and it was AMAZING. Capital letters. The not-secret ingredient in Agency’s version of this classic gin-Champagne cocktail is Alpeggio hay liqueur, but more prominently the garnish that was described to me as fresh hay – literally a sprig of some kind of plant thing with gorgeously aromatic little flowers. I lack the vocabulary to explain how delicious and unexpected it was, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never taste anything like it again. That’s Agency, in a nutshell. 817 N. Marshall St., reservations recommended
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
3. See Sanctuary City
EVAN MUSIL, ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR
Some theater exists as escapism, while others get straight at the heart of reality. Next Act Theatre’s Sanctuary City is the latter in its excellent portrait of two teenagers brought into the United States as children. Without citizenship, their lives are shaped by fear and limitations. They come to rely on each other – for shelter, for advice, and for compassion and hope. The play takes place in Newark, New Jersey, in the years following 9/11, but the sharp resonance it holds today is unmistakable. The production allows this resonance to breathe by zeroing in on the lives and relationships of its characters, and the cast of three deliver delicate performances. My full review will be up soon, but it’s an exceptional start to the theater season. The show runs through Oct. 5.
4. Pick Some Weston Apples at the Shorewood Farmers Market
ANN CHRISTENSON, DINING EDITOR
Apple lovers, this is your time. I’m right there with you. The best thing is you don’t have to subject yourself to bad, waxy grocery store apples – not if they don’t come from a farm. Yes, you can pick apples. But who’s got time for that? Every year I look for Weston Antique Apples at the Shorewood Farmers Market. They’ve got varieties with names you’ve likely never heard of. Check out the ripening dates on the Weston website. They will be at the Shorewood and New Berlin markets through October. You can also find them at the West Allis market and their own homestand in New Berlin (19760 W. National Ave.) through November.
4. Check Out the Rebooted MobCraft Beer
CHRIS DROSNER, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
MobCraft Beer has reopened – stealthily. New owners Sarah and Ryan Halstead threw open the doors to the Walker’s Point taproom this weekend and will be announcing the opening this week, according to Sarah, who was a finance and HR employee under the previous version of the business that closed in November. They’re jumping right into it with a full lineup of weekly events – trivia on Tuesday, music bingo on Wednesday – beginning this week. The brewery was started by Henry Schwartz, Andrew Gierczak and Giotto Troia in 2013, and the company opened in Milwaukee in 2016. Though it began with a model of crowdsourcing beer ideas and even recipes, it evolved into a more standard taproom-and-distribution model before a series of failed expansions to Denver, Northern Illinois and Waterford in recent years. I’m looking forward to seeing what the new iteration of the brewery will look like. 505 S. Fifth St.
