Tag: First Person

30 years of ‘Tommy Boy’: Celebrating all things Chris Farley at Farley’s Pub in Ringle, Wisconsin

March 31, 2025

Mitch DeSantis is Milwaukee Record’s Rural/Northwoods Wisconsin Correspondent. Find his dispatches HERE. One of my earliest childhood memories involves watching Saturday Night Live. I don't remember much abo...

Music streaming injustices: A call for indie musicians to stick up for themselves

Brett Newski

February 26, 2025

In 2016 I made a song called "Fuck You Spotify." I recorded it during a performance at Paste Studios in New York City. For years, I hesitated to push this track, worried that Spotify would suppress my reach or ...

Madison locations of Milwaukee-based restaurant chains: The Milwaukee Record Review

Tyler Maas

January 29, 2025

broadstreet.zone(174512); Let me start this article by saying that I really like Madison. Though I personally love Milwaukee far more, Wisconsin's second-most populous city and its capital is home to some very...

Mandatory Milwaukee: Remembering Bob Uecker (and everything else)

Matt Wild

January 28, 2025

broadstreet.zone(77472); Some Milwaukee things come and go, while some become icons. Mandatory Milwaukee is all about the latter. This week: Uecker. On the morning of Thursday, January 16, I was planning on...

Dry (but a little bit high) January: We evaluated a bunch of local THC beverages

Rusty Drinkswell

January 14, 2025

When the clock struck midnight almost exactly 105 years ago to the day, the "noble experiment" of Prohibition began. Many towns, cities, and states had dabbled in various dry laws prior to January 16, 1920, but...

New Year’s lessons from Bret “The Hitman” Hart

Barry Robert Weber

January 8, 2025

In 1993, I high-fived Bret “The Hitman” Hart in downtown Milwaukee. I was 11 years old, and I was attending my first live pro wrestling event: a non-televised “house show” at the Bradley Center. The undercar...

How a curbside dollhouse renovation helped subside holiday loneliness

Emmy Yates

January 7, 2025

From my own experience, "Hail Mary" art projects unfortunately motivate me the most efficiently as an artist and procrastinator. When I found a gutted Victorian dollhouse on the side of the road in Milwaukee's ...

Breakfast in America. Breakfast in the Wisconsin Dells Big Boy.

Matt Wild

December 23, 2024

Stop me if you've heard this one before: A once-great institution withers and fades, or so we're told. A charismatic businessperson emerges with the promise of bringing the institution back, of making it great ...

Remembering when I was 11 and I got a Guns N’ Roses cassingle for St. Nick’s Day

Matt Wild

December 6, 2024

This heartwarming tale of St. Nick's Day and Guns N' Roses was first published in 2022. If there's one thing that Wisconsinites love, it's celebrating all the "quirky Wisconsin things" that make our state un...

Pickles, pizza, and Polish brandy: How I destroyed deer camp dinner (and an outhouse)

Mitch DeSantis

December 3, 2024

Mitch DeSantis is Milwaukee Record's new Rural/Northwoods Wisconsin Correspondent. Welcome, Mitch! Another Wisconsin deer hunting season has come and gone. The blaze orange is packed away, and the routine of...

Brett Newski shares seedy story from new tour journal collection, ‘Piss In The Wind’

Brett Newski

November 13, 2024

Milwaukee musician Brett Newski has spent the past decade-plus releasing countless albums of earnest indie rock, playing countless shows across the globe, and even penning his own book. Now, Newski has mashed h...

On last meals (and saying goodbye)

Tyler Maas

September 26, 2024

I can't tell you exactly when I last had Kim's Thai, but I know what I ate. As always, I ordered Jungle Curry with chicken, spice level four. My girlfriend got Pad Kee Mao, spice level 3, and gave me a bite. We...

I rappelled down the side of the 13-story Milwaukee Athletic Club for…reasons

Matt Wild

September 24, 2024

It's Friday and I'm in a small utility room near the top of the 13-story Milwaukee Athletic Club, watching Bango the Buck get a crash course in rappelling down a building. "This is an emergency mechanism," e...

On The Run From RNC: Dispatches from Route 66, Day 5: A direction home?

Tad Kriofske Mainella

July 19, 2024

To our Milwaukee: I understand I left you in your week of need. Sure, you didn't need me gonzo-ing adjacent to the RNC, but you could've used Barry with a bullhorn downtown to drown out some of the nonsense wit...

On The Run From RNC: Dispatches from Route 66, Day 4: The road narrows

Tad Kriofske Mainella

July 18, 2024

Things are getting weirder than weird as the Republican National Convention invades Milwaukee, so two forlorn Milwaukeeans are choosing to follow Route 66 to remember, to recharge, and to take pilgrimage at the...

On The Run From RNC: Dispatches from Route 66, Day 3: Civil war and fictional podcasts

Tad Kriofske Mainella

July 17, 2024

Things are getting weirder than weird as the Republican National Convention invades Milwaukee, so two forlorn Milwaukeeans are choosing to follow Route 66 to remember, to recharge, and to take pilgrimage at the...

On The Run From RNC: Dispatches from Route 66, Day 2: Honest Abe and Mother Jones

Tad Kriofske Mainella

July 16, 2024

Things are getting weirder than weird as the Republican National Convention invades Milwaukee, so two forlorn Milwaukeeans are choosing to follow Route 66 to remember, to recharge, and to take pilgrimage at the...

On The Run From RNC: Dispatches from Route 66, Day 1: American giants

Tad Kriofske Mainella

July 15, 2024

Things are getting weirder than weird as the Republican National Convention invades Milwaukee, so two forlorn Milwaukeeans are choosing to follow Route 66 to remember, to recharge, and to take pilgrimage at the...

RTDs in MKE: We evaluated a bunch of local canned cocktail brands

Rusty Drinkswell

July 9, 2024

As pretty much all of you know, summertime in Milwaukee is pretty much magical. The front page of this very site at any moment between the first 69 degree day (nice) and the Packers kicking off on a not-yet-fro...

Some semi-deep final thoughts on Summerfest 2024

Matt Wild

July 8, 2024

To paraphrase a great band that played Summerfest in 1983: it's the end of Summerfest 2024 and I feel fine. Of Summerfest 2024's nine days—divided into three consecutive Thursday-Friday-Saturday chunks—I att...

Tagged First Person