Author: Justin Kern

The Bucks lost and Brother Ron got his car towed

April 28, 2019

"… Babylon is nothing else than an infinite game of chance." –Jorge Luis Borges The entire sports world stared at Milwaukee, for a while, through a camera's funnel cartography on Sunday afternoon. It felt ri...

Orchestral maneuvers in the dark: Creative uncertainty shapes Milwaukee’s emerging DIY chamber scene

Justin Kern

December 6, 2016

Riles Walsh flips through sheets of poster-sized paper composed of handmade symbols, blown up 16 times his original scribbles in black on white. These symbols seem familiar—perhaps from one of those expensive...

The last (alleyway) picture show? Paul’s Alley Cinema and the dying art of renegade showmanship

Justin Kern

May 5, 2016

// Paul Dorobialski saw the light. The blaring white light from a city utility pole, to be precise, the one that had been burned out or smashed or painted over since the early 1990s. The existence of this l...

A different kind of Purple Rain: Prince’s damp message to a Milwaukee fan

Justin Kern

April 22, 2016

Your own office parties can carry an air of forced interaction. Attending someone else's office get-together removes one layer of humanity from this equation and in its place slaps on all the enjoyment of apply...

Malled by bears: A review of the Leonard Bearstein Symphony Orchestra at the Shops of Grand Avenue

Justin Kern

December 8, 2015

// Three facts: 1. Should a sleuth of real bears gather at the center of a mall, people would scatter in terror. 2. No self-respecting human symphony could be denigrated into playing among the clamor of a s...

Funny and flustered, new laureate Matt Cook scribbles loose plans for Milwaukee’s poets

Justin Kern

August 19, 2015

When is a poet not like an HVAC repair guy? When are they definitely, finally, maybe freed from the lacy cuffs of Wordsworth and worthy of serious attention—or at least recognition from the mothers of the neigh...

Author Justin Kern