South Milwaukee, Wi

[celldeath]

Ya, South Milwaukee is a turd. I grew up there from 95-2006. It was quaint enough when my parents bought a horrible house right next to buceyrus on the west side of manitoba ave. It is a blue collar bubble of a community. Kids grow up there, graduate from the high school, marry someone from town, get a job somewhere east of 76th street but south of Layton Ave (i'm convinced people from South Milwaukee/Cudahy don't often venture beyond those markers), and then buy a house in town. It's cultural inbreeding. The fact that there is a tavern per 300 residents and they all do enough business to stay open is a sad fact. It used to be insular yet quaint but what happened in the last 5 years is two things. First, families from the North and South side of Milwaukee discovered you can rent or buy a home for the same price they do in the ghetto (the property taxes are dirt cheap). I take it the parents want to remove their children from inner city environment and put them in a better school. In S. Milwaukee you can afford that but you can't take the ghetto out of the kids. It's all rubbed off on the current generation. When I went to High School there there was some fake gangster kids and plenty of suburban boring jock types as well but the town is infested with ignorrant white gangsta kids or alcoholic druggy trash. Secondly, Racine to the south is a drug hub from chicago. South Milwaukee was a gateway of drug trafficking in the suburbs. my brother is a product of that initial wave of trafficking. Oak Creek maybe between the two but It retains both rural and ever growing subdivision expansion where the tax rate is higher and Home prices remain typical of an upper middle class suburb. South Milwaukee Is low class trash suburb. It has enough commerce to stay self sufficient and insular but no reason for any outsider to have to drive to SM to buy anything special. The "downtown" has empty shops. In a 5 year period there were 3 different leather clothing shops in town. One after another and they all closed down. Nobody learned the first time. Thats south milwaukee blaaaaaagh

The Upside. S. Milwaukee boasts both China Chef and San Fong. Two awesome chinese restaurants.

[smlifer]

I am 37 and have lived in south milwaukee all of my life. My husband grew up in Brookfield and loves it here. It like any town or city has its fans and its critics. Yes there is some crime, but the crime reports are still quite small and yes there are drugs and drinking, but there has always been some of that and I would challenge those critics to tell me of any high school that does not have drugs right now. Even the high price suburban schools have them too.

My husband and I have four children and we are quite confident in the schools here and know they are going to get an excellent education. The schools like every school district is fighting to find ways to function with limited tax dollars and ever growing expenses.

The new high school is awesome, I have a 9th grader and she loves it. WE finally have an auditorium and is used for all school plays, concerts, recitals, awards functions. The football field is right next to the school.

There is a lot of building that has happened by Blakewood, no longer are there swampy fields. It is almost completely filled with houses.

As they said in previous posts, there is a pick n save, blockbuster, and all sorts of shops where Kohls Dept and Kohls food used to be.
There are dollar stores where the pill and puff used to be and Derangos is no a Tonys Pizza. They tore down some houses next to where the Kohls food store used to be and there is another grocery store. Bucyrus has done a multimillion dollar renovation and has made a huge committment to stay here which is great. They have done a lot of hiring.

The Rawson Ballroom was razed and made a parking lot.

St. Johns, St Mary's, St Sylvester's, and St Adalbert's have been merged into one church called Divine Mercy Parish.

Overall it is still a nice place to live. It still a few questionable pockets, but I remember it being that way when I was growing up. I think most citys have that.

[azloafer]

Thanks so much for the info. I haven't been able to go back there for years and I appreciate the information.

[ffknight918]

I've lived near South Milwaukee my entire life and I currently have a job with the city now. I grew up in Cudahy until about 2nd grade. Then my family moved to Oak Creek. However, I went to St. Adalbert's in South Milwaukee until 6th grade. Then transferred to Oak Creek schools. I'm 20-years-old now and still live at home and go to college in Oak Creek.

I am a firefighter for the City of South Milwaukee. I am only part-time though. The city does have a lot of nasty areas, but there are a few nice ones. There is a subdivision off of Pennsylvania and Drexel right on the Oak Creek border where almost every firefighter lives. There are a few other nice little areas as well.

I do not know many of the cops, so I can not speak for the way that they do their jobs. However, the full-time firefighters are some of the best around. Many are a little older and more experienced. If you talk to firefighters from other suburbs, many have told me that they LOVE have SMFD helping them out at a fire. They are aggressive and get the job done.

Like someone said before, there really isn't much of a reason to go to South Milwaukee if you don't live there. Oak Creek is growing at an extremely rapid rate. It is nowhere near the rural suburb that it was 10 years ago. I've seen days last summer where it looked like the slower areas of Milwaukee with all of the people walking down Howell Ave where many of the additions have been made.

The high school in SMHS is awesome. They did a great job with it. And like someone stated before, San Fong is AMAZING. haha