Built on beer and stubborn civic pride
Milwaukee was built on beer and has never quite gotten over it. Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller all brewed here, and by the 1880s the city was turning out more beer per resident than anywhere else in America — Schlitz calling itself the beer that made Milwaukee famous was marketing, but it wasn't much of a stretch. The city also spent most of the 20th century electing socialists: three mayors between 1910 and 1960, less interested in revolution than in sewers, parks, and public bathhouses. Opponents called them sewer socialists, and they kept the name. Santiago Calatrava's addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum opened in 2001 with a 217-foot brise soleil that unfolds over the lakefront each morning and folds down at night. Frozen custard stands are treated as neighborhood institutions, and the Friday fish fry is less a meal than an obligation.
