What's your favorite Wisconsin city? (Milwaukee, Madison: home, neighborhoods, theater)

[Rwarky]

What is your favorite Wisconsin city and why?

[7G9C4J2]

Madison is my favorite, which is not too surprising considering that I live here. The reasons include but are not limited to the following:

Beautiful city
Lots of trees, parks and green space
Lakes
Friendly people
Liberal politics
Environmental activism
The university
The arts scene, particularly in classical music and live drama
Bookstores - lots of them!
People walk, run and bike in preference to driving
Wonderful, eclectic restaurants and coffee shops
Home to WisCon (the world's leading feminist science fiction convention)
State Street
The Dane County Farmers' Market
Willy Street Co-op
Four seasons

I could do without the mosquitos, though....

[Empidonax]

Originally Posted by Rwarky

What is your favorite Wisconsin city and why?

I like a lot of Wisconsin's cities for different reasons, but voted for Milwaukee. It's big enough and nicely located to offer a diverse array of people, art, culture, architecture, neighborhoods, cuisine, retail, green space, waterscapes, wildlife, etc., but it's small enough to make it easy to get from place to place without much difficulty.

[magicaldj1]

I voted for Madison...I think there are options of things to do here no matter what you are into. Sports, outdoors, culture, family activities. And if you don't like the big city, you aren't too far from rural areas and also easy access to other parts of the state.

[EnjoyEP]

Milwaukee is tops, unless you are looking for a smaller college town which are largely what the other major WI cities are such as La Crosse, Madison, etc. - all nice towns in their own right.

However, what is great about Milwaukee is that it is a major US city, yet isn't as large and congested as cities bigger such as the Twin Cities in MN, Chicago, etc.

Milwaukee has major leage baseball and the NBA; mainstream universities and associated sports (Marquette and UWM). Miller Park and the Bradley Center are world class facilities - concerts, etc., are always rolling through the venues in addition to sports.

Milwaukee is situated on the gorgeous lakefront of one of the Great Lakes - Lake Michigan - which gives it a natural large advantage right there. It is a city that knows how to celebrate with Miller Brewing headquartered here, along with awesome microbreweries such as Sprecher and Lakefront and Water Street Brewery. Milwaukee's summer festivals are quite publicized.

Milwaukee has an enormous quantity of diverse restaurants for a city of its size, the arts (theater, symphany, ballet, etc.). Cool venues like the Riverside and the Pabst. The Art Museum is world class as well.

Milwaukee has the only mainstream international airport in the state, and its size is that of a perfect sized airport (big enough for convenient travel but small enough to not be a hassle filled airport).

Milwaukee's Downtown/Third Ward/Lakefront/Milwaukee River (along with River Walk) compose one of the most underrated Downtown areas in the US for a major city. The architecture of the vast many buildings in Downtown add strongly to the appeal of Downtown.

Who can disagree also with the frozen custard factor - Milwaukee being home to Kopp's/Leon's/Kitt's/Gille's is hard to overlook.

Historic areas like the 3rd and 5th Wards and Mitchell St., the Mexican culture and flavor of the areas around 2nd - 10th and National/Greenfield, the Sherman Park neighborhood - I could go on for quite awhile.

Milwaukee is a great US city, and it stands out as the great city in WI.

[Milwaukee Ronnie]

Don't believe the hype. Milwaukee is a great city. It is the most interesting, diverse and exiciting place in Wisconsin, period.

[Milwaukee Ronnie]

Originally Posted by MidwesternBookWorm

Madison is my favorite ...

People walk, run and bike in preference to driving

I lived in Madison for six years and the students walk and ride bikes. The vast majority of everyone else drives. The transit system in that town is woefully inadequate, which probably doesn't impact the non-student population too much, since it's a rare sight to see a full bus outside of the University/State Street area. You see people bike recreationally in Madison, during the warm months, but this is a far cry from people "walking, running or biking in preference to driving."

This is yet another example of the wide disconnect between how Madison sees itself versus how it actually is.

I have never been in a place so utterly convinced of its own superiority than Madison, Wisconsin. The town's populace is so drunk on its own kool-aid it can't even tell what is true and what is chamber-of-commerce hoo-ha.

Actually, scratch that. I have been in a town more self-absorbed than Madison: New York City. The only difference is that NYC actually has the goods to back up its contention that it's the center of the known univserse. All Madison has is a bunch of pretentious horse****.

This might come as a shock to you, but Madison is not a center of arts and culture. The town's arts scene is actually on par with other like-sized towns nationally. Which is to say, a handful of galleries, one or two professional theater companies and a smattering of amateur, community theater companies.

Milwaukee has 25 professional, paid theater companies. No one in Milwaukee is silly enough to claim that the city is a major center for the performance arts, because most Milwaukeeans are aware that our 25 companies pale in comparison to the hundreds in Chicago, New York or San Francisco. But in the insular, provincial, deluded landscape of the Madison mindset, two professional theater companies apparently makes your city an "arts center."

[7G9C4J2]

Goodness, Milwaukee Ronnie, I must have misunderstood the question. I thought the original poster wanted to know which was our favorite city in Wisconsin. I sure didn't pick up on the fact - which you evidently did - that the intent was to tell others that their preference was stupid, pretentious and self-absorbed.

I'm glad you live in Milwaukee, and I'm glad you enjoy it so much, and if you have such disdain for Madison, then I hope for your sake that you don't ever have to experience it again. I can assure you that we won't miss you.

[Empidonax]

Wisconsin is very fortunate to have both Milwaukee and Madison, among other cities and towns. Neither is perfect, but that's the breaks. I only wish they were closer together. Though some rivalry between Mil and Mad is inevitable, it seems that the politicians in Wisconsin pit the two cities against each other, much to the detriment of the state's overall economy.

[Milwaukee Ronnie]

Originally Posted by quijote

Wisconsin is very fortunate to have both Milwaukee and Madison, among other cities and towns. Neither is perfect, but that's the breaks. I only wish they were closer together. Though some rivalry between Mil and Mad is inevitable, it seems that the politicians in Wisconsin pit the two cities against each other, much to the detriment of the state's overall economy.

I don't really think there is a rivalry. As a Milwaukeean, I don't feel much of rivalry with Madison. Honestly I never thought much of it until I moved there in the late 1990s. I mainly thought of it as a college town and state capital.

Then I moved there and I found out that apparently Madison is the Single Greatest Place in the Known World, because it has lakes, and State Street, and a "diverse population." I discovered, much to my amazement, that Madison had solved all of the urban problems that have dogged Milwaukee for decades. Madison has solved these problems, I was told, simply because the population there is smarter than anywhere else. Oh, and I was told, over and over and over and over again, that the townspeople were "progressive" and that the town had incredible "diversity" and that there were so many great restaurants there they were practically falling of the trees. I was told over and over and over again, that the town was a hotbed of creative, artistic energy, that there were artists and musicians and smart people and cool people everywhere and that everyone was just so super cool and that there was literally no other place like Madison. Anywhere.

It seemed like a nice enough town, but I guess I just wasn't seeing it. I crumpled my brow and stated what I think is the obvious: that Madison is a college town and state capital, and really is not all that unique or special. I said, sure it might have a few more restaurants than, say, Green Bay or Des Moines, and it might have a better arts scene than, say, Fort Wayne or Shreveport, but this so-called "uniqueness" possessed by Madison was an illusion. In fact, I had been to many towns that were like Madison. Towns like Boulder, Lexington, Eugene, Burlington. College towns.

It was at that point that my relationship with my new town faltered. It didn't seem that that townspeople could accept anything but their own insular, narcissistic point of view that held that they lived in Utopia. I had not fallen for Madison, far from it, I actually was turned off by it.

But that's not why I left. I left because I wanted a real job in a real industry. I didn't want to submit to a job-for-life in the bureaucratic machine that is the State and University. I left because in a few years time I had done everything there is to do in Madison, gone everywhere there is to go. I was bored with the so-called Shining City on the Hill.