Twenty-twenty-four was, well…it was a year.
Nationally, 2024 was a year of deep political divides, endless culture wars, and the usual bullshit that typically happens over the course of 300-plus days. In Milwaukee, it was a year of deep political divides, endless culture wars, and undead arguments about the flag that have been going on for nearly a decade.
And The Hop. Don’t forget about The Hop.
With the year finally—FINALLY!—winding down and the promise of a bright and beautiful 2025—HAHAHA!—rapidly approaching, I (Matt) thought it would be a good time to look back on a few of the big Milwaukee controversies of 2024. This is by no means a comprehensive retrospective, and the things I’ve included tend to fall on the “dumb and annoying” end of the controversy spectrum. But that’s by design: These dust-ups once seemed very, very important; now, months later, many of them have faded from memory. See? Life goes on! Nature heals itself! This too shall pass! We’ll all get through whatever nonsense the present day throws at us and live to see a better tomorrow!
Hopefully. Oh god, hopefully.
New Milwaukee sales tax—a.k.a. “Eat at Cracker Barrel”
On January 1, 2024, a new sales tax increase went into effect in the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County. The City sales tax increase was a brand new 2% sales tax. The County sales tax increase was a 0.4% increase to the existing 0.5% County sales tax—bringing the total to 0.9%.
This, of course, riled everyone up. Amidst the usual hive of chronically online geniuses claiming they would never shop in Milwaukee or Milwaukee County again (shades of the Milwaukee COVID-regulation outrage of 2020 and 2021), an elected official got in on the fun. On January 1, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann took to Twitter/X and squeezed off this first-county-problem bon mot:
Come to Washington County for the savings, stay for the quality of life! Exhibit A: In the City of Milwaukee, today you will pay an additional $60 for this [$2,500 Ashley Furniture] bedroom set
In response, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson took a shot of his own:
If folks are looking at a high-quality dinner or a theater or a fine dining experience, they can come here, or go to Cracker Barrel [in Washington County].
Happily, the sales tax bumps did exactly what they set out to do: eliminate the deficits in the city and county budgets forever and ever. Right? Right?
The Hop—a.k.a. “Argue about the streetcar”
Can something be controversial just by existing? It can if it’s Milwaukee’s modest streetcar system The Hop!
Seriously: what is it about this thing that drives people nuts? We published roughly a dozen stories about The Hop in 2024—most of them simply reporting the latest monthly ridership numbers. And yet every one of those stories garnered approximately 8 trillion frothing comments. “BOONDOGGLE!” “WHO’S PAYING FOR IT?” and “TALK TO ME WHEN THEY CHARGE A FARE!” were just a few examples of these measured responses. (My favorite: a guy who’s convinced The Hop is just making up its ridership numbers.) That’s a lot of outrage for something that’s been around for five years and has an annual operating budget of $5 million.
As for actual Hop news, it was a fairly busy year. The system’s lakefront-adjacent L-Line and Couture Transit Concourse opened to great fanfare. A bunch of people rode it in early summer. Not many people rode it during the Republican National Convention. (More on the RNC later!) Milwaukee Record fish fry columnist Caleb Westphal used it to build a custom fish fry dinner.
Oh, and then there was this spicy FOX6/Bryan Polcyn headline in October: “Milwaukee parking ticket push; Hop streetcar deficit spurs plan.” Oh shit! Within the article, however:
“[Does this parking ticket push] have anything to do with the $4 million deficit the streetcar is running?” asked FOX6 Investigator Bryan Polcyn.
“No,” [Department of Public Works Commissioner Jerrel] Kruschke said. “It has nothing to do with the streetcar.”
Oh. Okay. Argue about the streetcar anyway! Here’s a prompt: The Hop hasn’t released any new ridership data since August!
Summerfest—a.k.a. “Bring back the music I like! And the old schedule!”
“When it’s likely announced later this week, I expect the 2024 attendance to be up slightly from 2023 (624,407, up 40% from 2022).”
That’s what I (Matt) said in my semi-deep Summerfest 2024 wrap-up article, “Some semi-deep final thoughts on Summerfest 2024.” It turned out that I (Matt) was wrong.
Yes, a mere 555,925 fans attended this year’s nine-day Big Gig. That was 68,482 fewer than 2023, representing an 11% drop. In 2022, Summerfest drew 445,611 fans. In 2021—a late-summer installment and the first year of the three-weekend format—409,386 folks showed up. Summerfest 2020 was canceled due to COVID. Summerfest 2019 drew 718,144 attendees. At the time, the 2019 attendance was Summerfest’s lowest in more than 30 years.
So yeah, it was kind of a down year for Summerfest. (The Big Gig blamed the weather, natch.) This led to some heated and never-ending comment sections filled with the usual “THE LINEUP SUCKED!” “BRING BACK THE OLD 11-DAY SCHEDULE!” and “TOO EXPENSIVE!” bellows into the digital void. And, weirdly, claims that “IT’S TOO CROWDED!” even though Summerfest has factually not been crowded in recent years. (The festival hovered near or topped 1 million attendees in the early ’00s.)
Ahead of the 2025 Big Gig, Summerfest is planning to trim production costs, and says it anticipates a bump in attendance. The list of headliners already announced for 2025 is…promising? It includes Megan Thee Stallion, Riley Green, James Taylor, Cake, Chicago, The Avett Brothers, Lainey Wilson, and Def Leppard. In other words, a very Summerfest-y Summerfest lineup. (And yeah, they’re sticking to the three-weekend thing.)
The RNC—a.k.a. “This feels like it happened 5 years ago, doesn’t it?”
I mean, doesn’t it? According to my notes, the Republican National Convention took place (in Milwaukee!) July 15-18, 2024. That’s five months ago! Why does it feel like five years?
Maybe it’s because the RNC was all buildup and not much of a show. Rumblings of controversy were happening as early as 2022, when Milwaukee was confirmed as the host city. But things got really heated in March 2024 when Bay View bar The Mothership announced it would be closed for the “RNC shitshow.” This led to oodles of national news stories, zillions of outraged comments, plenty of review bombing, and some good old fashioned death threats.
(It also led us to post a joke Facebook update about other Milwaukee businesses closing for the RNC—except all the businesses were fake roadside attractions from the “Weird Al” Yankovic song “The Biggest Ball Of Twine In Minnesota.” People were not happy with the political virtue signaling of the Boll Weevil Monument and Cranberry World!)
Then, in June, RNC-related outrage went through the roof when former/future President Donald Trump called Milwaukee a “horrible city.” Or did he? Did he really say that? Was it taken out of context? Was he “just” talking about crime? Who knows/cares! Trump’s alleged comment inspired an absolute mountain of insufferable discourse and approximately 8,000 pieces of Milwaukee merch with “Horrible City” emblazoned on them. At least Democrats finally learned that ginning up endless outrage at something Trump did or said was a losing political strategy, and that they should focus on clear and concise messages that reach people in both online and in-real-life spaces. Oh.
Once underway, the RNC showed early glimmers of controversial hope. Someone changed the “Herb Kohl Way” sign in the Deer District to “Donald Trump Way.” The Daily Show canceled its Milwaukee broadcasts. A massive protest took over downtown on Day 1. But in the end, the big RNC story was just how much of a public bust the thing was. Downtown was weirdly dead and depressing. Attendees—estimated to be something like 50,000—mostly milled around in the gated-off Deer District. Neighboring bars and restaurants reported lackluster attendance. Headlines like “‘A complete dud’: Restaurants and businesses around Fiserv Forum are struggling” and “RNC 2024 Day 3: Letdown for Downtown Milwaukee businesses” were everywhere. The promised $200 million economic impact seemed…unlikely.
Or maybe not? “We will most definitely hit our $200 million economic impact,” VISIT Milwaukee President and Chief Executive Officer Peggy Williams-Smith said in September. Well, that economic impact certainly wasn’t being felt the day a guy told us “hardly anybody” was visiting the Bronze Fonz.
Jay Weber—a.k.a. “Blubbering bitch”
Remember in August, during the increasingly contentious lead-up to the big ol’ presidential election, when third-string Milwaukee conservative talk show host Jay Weber called Tim Walz’s 17-year neurodivergent son a “blubbering bitch boy”? Remember when everyone got mad about that? Remember when WISN-AM put Weber on leave for two weeks and then just brought him back as if nothing had happened? Good times. At least Democrats finally learned… Oh.
The Flag—a.k.a. “Oh god, this again”
And so we come to the grandaddy of all dumb Milwaukee controversies: the flag.
Nine years after everyone got worked up over a TED Talk that called Milwaukee’s (still-official!) 1954 city flag one of the worst in the country, eight years after the so-called “People’s Flag of Milwaukee”—a.k.a. “Sunrise Over The Lake”—was unveiled, six years after the “People’s Flag” folks tried (and failed) to make their flag the official city flag, and five years after Milwaukee decided it needed a new process to come up with another city flag, the whole flag thing blew up again in 2024. God help us all.
Things began in July, when Alderman Peter Burgelis announced a series of “listening sessions” intended to grease the wheels for the once-and-for-all adoption of the “People’s Flag” as the official city flag of Milwaukee. The Steering and Rules Committee voted in favor of doing just that in early September. But when the full Common Council took up the matter later that month, things stalled out. Again.
And what a stall-out it was. Alderman Bob Bauman introduced a widely mocked alternate flag design that featured an image of City Hall plopped right in the middle of the “People’s Flag.” Other alders decried the issue as a waste of time. Black alders took offense at the lack of diversity and inclusion in the initial “People’s Flag” contest. Redditors and design bros took offense at Black alders taking offense. Everyone argued and got mad. Again. At least the whole thing inspired us to create this IFYKYK beauty:
In the end, the issue was sent back to committee before it was indefinitely tabled, again, in November. The end.
Hopefully. Oh god, hopefully. That kind of sums it all up, doesn’t it? Thanks for a zany 2024, Milwaukee! Here’s to 2025!
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