Lola and I spend the night at an hotel in Glendale following Sprecherfest. After check out, we decide to drive into Milwaukee for lunch. It is a very hot Sunday morning and there is almost no pedestrian traffic outside along Port Washington Road or Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. It always amazes me how Milwaukee dramatically changes from neighborhood to neighborhood. Madison has a few poor areas but nothing on the scale of Milwaukee.
I understand the history of Milwaukee’s white flight to the suburbs, and the industrial employers moving out of the city leaving few jobs for a population without cars or drivers licenses or an educational system teaching children you need a license to get a job in 21st century American society. I know Madison’s affluence is dependent on tax dollars flowing into the city to pay for State employees. What I have not seen is tax dollars returned to Democrat controlled Milwaukee administrations making any meaningful difference over the years.
We find parking on Brady Street and walk the neighborhood searching for an interesting restaurant before settling upon Cempazuchi Comida Brava on the 1200 block. East Milwaukee has the same bumper stickers as those pasted all over Madison, like one proclaiming “Bush was warned about 9/11 and did nothing”. I thought the enchiladas were pretty mild as if not to offend anyone. In the kitchen’s defense, Lola points out that you can not un-spice cooking so bland is safer. Then she notes she ended up pulling hot peppers off her Cuban pork sandwich to tame it down. The peanut salsa was mighty tasty.
In the hot noontime sunshine we walk past a condominium complex being built for wealthy individuals. I warn Lola that both heat and zombies can suck the brains out of people. Personally, I wonder about people who believe purchasing the air rights at a defined height above a parcel of land, and a portion of the communal holdings associated with that parcel of land, is a sound financial investment. I doubt anyone living immediately south of Capitol Drive will be purchasing any of this investment grade airspace, although they will probably also vote for same party as the ones that do buy.
