Even though you were born in the city of Milwaukee and therefore have every right to call it your hometown, the truth is that you’ve spent most of your life in the suburban outpost that is West Allis. You grew up there, attended St. Aloysius Elementary, Frank Lloyd Wright Junior High and finally Nathan Hale High School. You spent your summers exploring the wilds of Beavers’ Woods, and chasing after fireflies in the wild ecosystem at the foot of your block. You rode your bike each summer to the McCarty and Greenfield Park swimming pools, and often got yourself tossed-out for rambunctious behavior. You played football at Reservoir Park, delivered the morning Milwaukee Sentinel on a route near your house, checked-out books at the West Allis Library, and saw movies at the Paradise and Capitol theaters. You got your soft serve ice cream from Boy Blue, your fish fries from Dutchland Dairy, and the world’s best hamburgers from Trudy’s Drive-In. The city of Milwaukee was always nearby and you visited her often. But, until now, downtown Milwaukee has only been a destination…like Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, or Dayton, Ohio, which is to say, Milwaukee was a place you visited from time to time, but not the place where you lived. But you’re all grown up now. You’ve been to college, begun your career as a commercial artist, and even gotten married. You’re beginning to think that maybe it’s time you broadened your horizons…and now, here in 1977, Milwaukee appears to be calling.

When you were preparing for your career at the downtown campus of the Milwaukee Area Technical College, you still lived in West Allis and made the commute. But during that time you came to feel more and more at home downtown, and occasionally wondered what it might be like to live there. You found yourself exploring portions of the city you never knew as a kid, and it energized you. You loved the hip East Side with its Oriental Theater, and its cool little bars and restaurants. And you loved Brady Street, Milwaukee’s answer to Haight-Ashbury. Like you did when you were just a little shaver, you grooved to the lights, the noise and the pace of the big city. But lately the idea of living in the city has grown into something else, something like an obsession.

So here’s my question: What, in God’s name, are you waiting for? I know, uprooting your life will be tricky, and moving is stressful under the best of circumstances. But kiddo, it’s time to move on. The city awaits!

You aren’t entirely sure when this fascination with urban life began and, to be honest, as I look back through the years I have a hard time pin-pointing it myself. But my guess is that it probably started with the movies. In the movies, “The City” usually means New York City, but it isn’t always New York, per se, that has captured your attention so much as city life itself: the people, the variety, the diversity, and the intoxicating blend of cultures. You are drawn to the idea of all-night coffee shops and Laundromats. The city seems to attract the most beautiful women, and the coolest guys. You even find something exotic about the bums and panhandlers. The city can be dark and even violent, as in The Godfather, Mean Streets, and Dog Day Afternoon. It can be sweetly romantic as in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Barefoot in the Park. It can be wild and dangerous, as in The French Connection and Serpico. And it can be prophetic and even apocalyptic as in Network and Fail Safe.

Milwaukee is small by New York standards, but it is a genuine American big city, and it has all the things that separate any city from the ‘burbs that surround it. It is also the place where Dad courted Mom and, although much of that Milwaukee is now gone, even you remember some of it: The train stations, the trackless trolleys, the streetcars, and the Milwaukee Clipper.

Sometimes you feel as though you were born in the wrong era, and wonder what it would have been like to see Louis Jordan at Lakota’s Theatre Restaurant, Nat King Cole at the Circle Room in the Hotel La Salle, or Jimmy Dorsey at the Million Dollar Ballroom. Well, you can’t go back in time, but you can do the next best thing and move to the city where it all once happened, and let those “little town blues” simply melt away.

If I’ve failed to convince you so far, I’ve got one final suggestion. Go see the film, New York, New York! Yeah, I know, it’s a musical, but so was Cabaret, and that one knocked your socks off. Marty Scorsese directed it and, while it ain’t exactly Taxi Driver, it’s still stylish and romantic and it captures that golden era right after the war when everything seemed to be ‘coming up roses.’ There really aren’t any cities quite like that any more, not even New York, New York. But maybe you can still move to downtown Milwaukee and rub shoulders with some of the ghosts. And one day you might even be able to bring a little of that golden era back to the present.

The Million Dollar Ballroom    1993    John T. McCarthy, Jr.    8-color silkscreen

© 1993 Channel 10/36 Friends, Inc. Milwaukee, WI