Milwaukee Specialty Food and Coffee

Current Affairs: Milwaukee Needs a Transit Authority Now

If Barrett becomes Governor--as I imagine he will--Robert "Chairman Bob" Mariano should be our next mayor.  Too many decisions in Milwaukee are ideologically rather than pragmatically based.  As a man whose job it is to get food to people, Chairman Bob can't afford to make ideologically based decisions.

Link: Milwaukee Needs a Transit Authority Now

Current Events: Restaurant News: Pizza Man

I was saddened to learn of the fire that destroyed Pizza Man overnight.  I'd been there only exactly once, but from everything I'd heard, the owner is a well-respected and well-liked businessman.  I had been to Grecian Delight several times, which seemed to have changed hands.  I wonder if that will be rebuilt.

Current Affairs: Halloween

I've never been a fan of Halloween, but for whatever reason, I found myself enjoying it this year--though I didn't actively participate in any observances.  Doing a little Google research, it was good too see, for example on Wikipedia, that its pagan origins basically have to do with a festival commemorating the end of the lighter half of the year and the beginning of the darker half.  ("Good" in the sense that it's hard to see the outrage of more Levitically-minded Christians as being justified, at least by that particular fact.) In the meantime, of course, the holiday has become Christianized or at least intermingled with Christianity, specifically All Saints' Day.

Current Affairs: The Politics of Proxemics (Part 1)

I'd like to devote a post or two to why I believe discussions of urban sprawl, transit and related issues on this blog are really not that off topic at all.  All are affected by the science of proxemics. I think one of the main reasons coffeehouses have become such a force in American society and, indeed, the world over the last couple of decades is the fact that they provide a venue where people are physically closer to others--particularly random others--than they would otherwise have the opportunity to be.  During this same time frame, the political sphere has taken us physically further apart from each other than ever before.  I'd argue that this is by design.  Isolated, frightened people can be more easily influenced.  Such people are, for example, more receptive to the messages that have emanated from a certain faction of the Republican party over the last twenty-odd years.  (Mind you, in another lifetime, I might well be an Eisenhower Republican--I just don't think that's the right choice for this lifetime.)  At the same time, the marketplace has been only too happy to provide us with the equipment we use to draw a bubble around our bodies and our consciousness.  Imagine a stock index made up of the iPod/iPhone, SUVs, big-screen TVs, and the possibly $10 billion or even higher adult entertainment industry.

(To be continued.)

Editorial: Religion: A Word to the WELS

A church body with lots of lovable eccentricities in which many people look pretty much alike, i.e. pretty much like me--how could I resist?  For the last several Sundays, I've been hearing word of how my beloved church, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, is having financial troubles (note: I do not endorse the linked site, but recommend reading it nonetheless).  I feel that the source of the problems is more obvious than others have picked up on.  The WELS demographic is heavily exurban and small-town.  For instance, the congregation to which I belong, Grace, is made up of perhaps half members who come from far away: outer-ring suburbs and beyond.  A survey of the streets surrounding the church building on any given Sunday makes it pretty clear where those folks' money has been going (at least in part) over the last two or three years.  They drive Big Steel.  At the risk of sounding xenophobic, I wonder how those Christians square their faith with the practice of funding the Saudi government and other oil-producing nations who are not exactly promoters of Christianity.  In a bitterly ironic twist, the WELS is pulling missionaries from the field while its members bankroll the caliphate with their transportation choices.

At some point, the WELS became, in my estimation, too identified with the middle-class American lifestyle and its aspirational spending tendencies.  Must have coffeehouse!  Must have granite countertops!  Must have SUV!  This is all the more regrettable due to faith's power to convey real identity, rather than the artificial smoke and mirrors of the aspirational lifestyle.  In fact, it gives us the ability to do things such as walk or bike for transportation, while wearing modest clothing, without this throwing us into an identity crisis.  One could think of this as walking like Jesus, and perhaps even walking for Jesus...

Editorial: Wanted: Wallet Viagra

I must be about to die or something, as I have a backlog of about a week's worth of positive experiences that I haven't gotten around to writing about.  Actually, one part of me already has died: the free-spending part.  I actually flinched just now at the counter at Sears.  That's pretty sad.  I haven't been that much of a Sears shopper in my lifetime (Tarzhay all the way here), but more so over the last couple years. This is mostly to spite Bayshore's disrespect of the store--today, I noticed that the East parking lot turns into a lunar crater-scape when you approach the low-end retailer.  In addition, I've heard rumors that Sears is likely to be the next headline-grabbing closure (though this was on the plane down to Arizona--who knows what difference the intervening months of prolonged recession may have made), so bargains seem especially likely.  Today, though, my purchases didn't scan in at 30% or less than the tag price as they usually do, and I just couldn't do that $26 wallet--which, ironically, I could fill at the moment...

However, feeling flush isn't translating into spending.  And I'm the biggest spendthrift I know!  For whatever reason--as a (still) overemployed person, the reasons are less quantifiable for me than for many others--the buzz was killed in a big way earlier this year and hasn't returned.  I also note that the note struck by the media has changed from trying to tell us it's our patriotic duty to spend to making frugality look like the latest and greatest bandwagon.

Current Affairs: Paper Boat Boutique & Gallery

In another Facebook development, a group has been launched to save the Paper Boat Boutique & Gallery, which I've joined.  I've never been there, but it looks like a nice place.  Maybe all the struggling/closing coffeehouses should combine with all the struggling/closing businesses in other categories to create some interesting "mashups".  A pot of coffee, some Wi-Fi, and I know I'd be good to go...

Current Events: Is It Over Yet?

Hard to believe it will be over 20 degrees tomorrow (Saturday).  Hard to believe I'm excited about that.  And hard to believe I'm in a Starbucks in Whitefish Bay listening to Country music. 

But all of that pales in comparison to this: Tuesday is President Bush's last day in office. 

Hard to believe.

Editorial: Rick Warren

Now that Milwaukee Specialty Food and Coffee is a "we" again, I have to make it clear that I'm speaking strictly for myself.  With that in mind, people are protesting Rick Warren delivering the invocation at Obama's inauguration?  Give me a break. . .I think I have more respect for people who just say that they're atheists and think it's all nonsense than people who strive to make Christianity dilute itself beyond recognition.  If the selection of Warren (who, to me, embodies Xtianity Lite--the kind of folks who don't have crosses in their churches because they're not "seeker-sensitive") is offensive, very few Christian clergy would be considered acceptable.  My personal attitute of late has been "live and let live," and I note that "Will & Grace" is now probably my all-time favorite TV show.  But where does this end--if anywhere?  I fear we're embarking on a dangerous slippery slope that ends in China, where religion is co-opted and tolerated only insofar as it propogates the party line.

UPDATE: My comment about Warren merely reflects my personal reaction to hearing the news and may be qualified by futher research.  I note that the website for his Saddleback Church displays the cross prominently.

Current Affairs: Dirty Dining Database

You can search the Journal Sentinel's "dirty dining" database for the keyword "coffee".  Most infractions are rather minor (YMMV).  Contrary to my expectations, Rochambo had perhaps the most negligible infraction.