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I would be curious. If you *had* to pick either Milwaukee or St. Louis (and I realize there are numerous advantages / disadvantages to both cities naturally), which would you pick and why?
That's a good question, and strictly only a personal preference answer and not to guide anyone else.
I'd pick St. Louis. There are obviously similarities and differences. In the grand scheme of like are they all that different, no. Why?
Weather
Size
Amentities
Economy
If you isolated the two metros away from everywhere else, St. Louis has more of a size I personally prefer. I'd actually prefer a little bigger than Stl. But it's close or closer to my size preference. Stl is about 3 million metro.
Weather. 4 equal seasons trumps the long unforgiving winter and late Spring. The wind is simply a killer, as is the snowy years. St. Louis can get cold, but it just doesn't feel anywhere near as bad. It's also slightly sunnier in Stl than Milwaukee.
Amentities. St. Louis isn't Chicago. However there is still a sizeable difference in the amount of amentities, and quality.
Economy. St. Louis has been the headquarters of tons of Fortune 500 companies over the years and still is home to several.
I like Milwaukee. I am well versed in Milwaukee. I'd like to see Milwaukee keep making progress in the Menomonee Valley area. I'd like Milwaukee to be a little more aesthetically pleasing outside of the beautiful Lake, Bluffs, and River that Stl doesn't have. The festival attitude and spirit is great. The compact nature of the metro is an asset. The fact that the downtown and neighboring urban areas in Milwaukee are safe and active is a plus compared to a lot of other places. I'd like to see more white collar jobs in Milwaukee and a much stronger marketing effort to life its image even more. The past 10 years have been good in that regard. I wish the baseball stadium was more urban but I didn't get to choose. (Yes I enjoy tailgating like everyone else but I believe it's impact would be greater to Milwaukee elsewhere. But that's spilled milk.)
St. Louis has poor city management, too many chiefs, not enough Indians. It takes way too long for progress. Lots of great urban areas (Wash Ave, Soulard, Tower Grove, South Grand Central West End, etc...but all aren't connected well) Light Rail is poorly managed, and needs a lot of improvement, but it's a start. St. Louis needs a more centralized arts and theater district.
Great analysis, Fishtacos...thanks for that! Very interesting read.
I have been back in MKE metro now for a bit over a year, and I am stacking it up with my primary points of contrast (Albuquerque, Chicago, and El Paso TX). I have been viewing things - both good and bad - through a different lense. Reading your analysis is thought provoking for myself.
One thing, somewhat "superficial", on the weather:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fishtacos
The wind is simply a killer, as is the snowy years.
I couldn't agree more. Good Lord, this is the most underrated part of the crummy aspect of MKE weather. The wind. I work Downtown and walk a great distance to/from my office from where I park to save drastically on parking. I don't mind that and actually enjoy the exercise, but wow - the winds from OCT until May are just wicked. I lived here for much of my younger life and remembered the gray and cold of winter, but had overlooked the factor that the wind plays. It is SO windy here in the colder months.
Even today, it wouldn't have been *that* bad a late-October day at all. It was in the mid-50s and sunny out. But at lunchtime, I hit the Laura's Popcorn red wagon out on Wisconsin Avenue for a treat (I love that thing), and the winds were just whipping so hard off the lake, it just madel things frigid.
In April, May, etc., temps were *trying* to warm up, but you get those almost-every-day 15 or 25 mph gusts off of Lake Michigan, it just gets really old.
I love Milwaukee though. In many regards, the weather almost adds to the culture and uniqueness that Milwaukee is, for better or worse. I always think that if Milwaukee had a Sun Belt climate, it would be the best city in the US...but then again, it wouldn't be Milwaukee and thus *wouldn't* be such a great city.
I personally prefer Albuquerque I am finding and the Southwest in general but Milwaukee does have much going for it. If only it could add about 2.5 more months of spring in place of its windy cold winter.
People tire of weather disucussions and I know that gets old, but it's a significant factor on so many aspects of daily life. Let me give you an example. I was in Nashville TN recently. It's city/urban size is very similar to Milwaukee, with Milwaukee's surrounding burbs expanding further and more to create a larger metro than Nashville. But city-wise they are very close in size.
Nashville again, is more of a 4 equal season place. The roads are not constant construction. They are well paved and easier maintained, causing less headache for everyone. We obviously discussed snow, wind, and cold. Nashville will get harsher rain storms and a bit warmer parts of the summer as the trade off, but there is a significant enough difference in weather. Wind was always something people never talked about enough for me in Milwaukee.
St. Louis is also a bit different than Milwaukee because the actually city is only 60 square miles or so and St. Louis City and County are separate entities unlike other metros. That's why crime stats have St. Louis higher often times when inactuality an inner rung burb a few miles from downtown wouldn't be included in the stats which would put Stl closer to 200 in the category. St. Louis is not as densely populated, it's bigger, more spread out than Milwaukee. I was talking to someone recently that compared Marquette U to Saint Louis U, and they are very similar schools in mission, size, etc..SLU was smart enough to keep its Medical school. But even in an urban setting, Marquette is less than 100 acres and SLU is about 3 times its size in campus size.
Nashville and Milwaukee seem more comparable in some regards from an Urban standpoint, primarily size and social outlets. Nashville has the posh West End, and Milwaukee has the East Side. Nashville has The District downtown and Milwaukee has a Milwaukee St and the Third Ward. Nashville has Music Row and the Village, and Milwaukee has Bay View, Brewers's Hill and North Shore burbs. In both cities, the closeness and proximities are great. They are safe areas. Milwaukee and St. Louis have some rough North Side areas. I believe Milwaukee and Nashville do nice jobs with their social scenes given their smaller sizes. In other aspects, weather, industry, race and ethnicity, culture, etc...Milwaukee and Nashville are very different.
St. Louis would be a medium sized, bigger version of Milwaukee, with more white collar opportunity and history. But both have several similarities as well. A lot of people have compared St. Louis to Baltimore. In some regards yes, but in other regards no, but I can definitely see why people have done so.
The Cardinals have had so much success as a baseball franchise in their history, 2nd only to the Yankees. And, to go along with that, they've had a National following too. For a long time the Cardinals were the Western most MLB team, and the most Southern. Their flagship radio station for many decades could reach 48 states and they've had legendary broadcasters like Buck and Caray, famous owners, lots of Hall of Fame players, and lots of successful winning teams.
The Brewers had a very good team in 1982 and I didn't like it at the time that long time popular and successful Cardinal player Ted Simmons wasn't able to share in that WS title for Stl. To this day, if you break it all down, he should be a Hall of Famer imo, and he isn't.
Joe buck is not a very good announcer he only got where he is because of his dad. If you ask anyone in the baseball world if Joe Buck is a good color guy they'll say only as a national tv guy. He speaks very well but messes up a lot when it comes to stats. Anyway wouldn't you rather cheer for the beermakers than a red bird?
Joe buck is not a very good announcer he only got where he is because of his dad. If you ask anyone in the baseball world if Joe Buck is a good color guy they'll say only as a national tv guy. He speaks very well but messes up a lot when it comes to stats. Anyway wouldn't you rather cheer for the beermakers than a red bird?
I don't want to veer off track much further here. But I'll throw in one post on the topic. I couldn't disagree more regarding Joe Buck. Joe Buck is a play-by-play broadcaster. He doesn't do "color," he isn't a "color" guy, which is also known as a broadcast analyst. His job is the top broadcasting job in baseball. He also for a long time continued to do some Cardinals games, only stopping within the past 1-2 seasons. He doesn't show any bias at all for the Cardinals in his National Broadcasting, much to the dismay of some Cardinal fans, and to the delight of the more objective ones. (He's a Cardinals season tix holder so he attends a lot of Cardinal games)
Joe Buck received his start because of his Hall of Fame dad Jack and he readily admits it every time he's asked. He knows well he did well in the gene pool. However, in order to become the #1 NFL play-by-play broadcaster for Fox Sports, and the #1 MLB play-by-play broadcaster for many years, one has to know their stuff, and has to be very good at the job. Also, note that there is a big difference between radio play-by-play and television play-by-play when broadcasting. The pictures do a lot of the talking on tv and the on radio the broadcaster must fill in a lot more and be much more descriptive.
My personal opinion is that most of the time Joe Buck is very good at his job. If anything he occasionally imo gets too bored and too sarcastic in his dry humor. He clearly doesn't treat the game as life or death. He was outstanding on the radio for Stl and on tv. And often times he's equally Nationally. I'd like him to treat every game like it's his first, more often. But there is no doubt he's been the #1 guy in football and baseball for a very long time for good reason.
As for rooting interest, I don't root for teams based on their mascots. (I understand your comments were humor.)
People tire of weather disucussions and I know that gets old, but it's a significant factor on so many aspects of daily life. Let me give you an example. I was in Nashville TN recently. It's city/urban size is very similar to Milwaukee, with Milwaukee's surrounding burbs expanding further and more to create a larger metro than Nashville. But city-wise they are very close in size.
Nashville again, is more of a 4 equal season place. The roads are not constant construction. They are well paved and easier maintained, causing less headache for everyone. We obviously discussed snow, wind, and cold. Nashville will get harsher rain storms and a bit warmer parts of the summer as the trade off, but there is a significant enough difference in weather. Wind was always something people never talked about enough for me in Milwaukee.
it's amazing but if you look at the monthly weather temp. averages for MKE and STL , STL is always 9-15 degrees warmer than MKE *every* month. This means the summers are very hot and humid , almost akin to or even like the deep south but spring and fall are much earlier/later and milder. I agree the winters can be cold and sometimes snowy in STL but overall noticably milder than MKE. One really doesn't have to go that far south to get a more mild, 4 season climate.
I've been looking at STL or Nash or even Little Rock as they are overall much milder and with better opportunities for work. I think MKE is in a difficult spot right now.
I had heard that some parts of TN and KY for instance get rain showers during the day or night in winter but because it gets cold enough during the night to freeze they'll have layers of ice on the roads which is actually worse than 5" of snow in WI as we have plows to deal with it.
Yea thats true when it was barely 34 degrees yesterday in MKE it was 45 in STL. I've been in the city for a whole week now and it's been a crazy experience so far. I've had good times and bad already but those are due to personal reasons rather than the city itself. I like the way the city streets are laid out in a grid manner up here it makes finding places really easy.
In STL the only place where streets function like a grid is downtown all of our other streets go all over the place. Even the few roads that do go from one end of STL to the other end changes names as you travel through different municipalities which is very confusing.
The job market here isn't AS bad as I thought it would be, I actually have been on 4 interviews since I've been here. I'm nervous though because I've seriously run out of places to apply really. I check job postings and I'm able to apply to 2-3 jobs per day. Where as in STL I could easily find 15 openings or more in my field each day to apply for.
All in all I like it though it's a lot more diverse than St. Louis which is pretty much a White & Black city. It's easy to get around and it's close to other cool places like Chicago and Madison. I actually went to Madison yesterday with some friends and I was very impressed. I'm not sure what area I was in but where I was it was pretty walkable.
Anyways I'll keep you all posted on how my experience goes if I can't find much work I have to return home though because I can't afford to really live out of state with no job for to long.
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