Looking in the mirror at Milwaukee's image

0 Comments | Milwaukee Journal, The, Apr 2, 1995 | by Rick Romell

Think of Milwaukee as a comfortable suit of clothes durable, unpretentious and generously cut. The fabric is a sensible, low-maintenance poly-cotton blend. And some of the pieces, perhaps, don't quite work together.

The subject, of course, is image, and in Milwaukee that's a source of pride, amusement and doubt.

On one hand, we're stable and steady, and quietly contented about it. If the rest of the nation has never slathered Secret Stadium Sauce over a grilled brat, that's their loss.

On the other hand, we're subject to recurring spells of civic hand-wringing. Cryptosporidium and Laurie Bembenek have exited the local scene, but so have the Packers. Jeffrey Dahmer's gone, but the Brewers may be, too.

We're hypersegregated and, when it comes to matters of race, hypersensitive. We're near the top of the heap in teen pregnancy and racial disparity in home loans which is to say we're near the bottom.

We're still trading on characteristics that have unraveled a bit: tidiness, pleasant parks, industrial muscle.

We may yet be solid as a three-bedroom bungalow, but when it comes to change we're about as flexible. And we're just a tad self-conscious. * * *

"If the stereotype of French people is that they're haughty and prideful and everything, then the stereotype of Milwaukee would probably be very modest. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. By the same token, the other side of that is that they're modest, but it's sort of the Groucho Marx thing: They wouldn't want to join any club that would have them as a member."

Advertising executive and

"Mr. Angry" radio commentator

Stephen Eichenbaum

"Milwaukee has the world's largest collective municipal inferiority complex, and Milwaukeeans are constantly worried about what the rest of the world thinks about them, I think to the point where it becomes self-defeating in a sense."

Former County Executive David F. Schulz * * *

That's one view, and Schulz and Eichenbaum who believe Milwaukee needn't feel inferior aren't alone in holding it. But it's only a sliver of a complicated picture.

To much of the country, Milwaukee is a cipher or a name in a tabloid headline. To area residents, we are, by various accounts and in alphabetical order: balanced, clean, complacent, divided, easy-going, hard-working, insular, low-key, relatively safe, segregated, slow-paced, slow to change, solid, straight- shooting and strong on substance but short on style.

That may sound contradictory, but certain themes come through. No one said "exciting." No one said "glamorous." No one said "progressive" or, despite rising fears, "crime-ridden." * * *

"There was a historian named Bayard Still who did what's still the standard history of Milwaukee, though it came out in 1948, and he said that what Milwaukeeans were after was a substantial, agreeable and well-ordered way of life. Those adjectives, I think, still apply. Part of it is sort of the old German `gemuetlich' expectation, that things are made for comfort and not for show, for enjoyment and not to impress. That's still certainly part of the city's psychology.

Local historian John Gurda * * *

Don't push that too far, Gurda warned. You can't simplify so much that you turn the area into a cartoon. And what is true about image at a certain level "falls apart completely when you get down to individual lives," he said.

But there are good reasons why some of the cliches about Milwaukee have become cliches. The city is relatively clean. Compared with other big urban areas, it still is relatively safe. It does have a remarkable number of taverns.

And while it has big-city amenities such as professional Leg 1 ends here sports, it offers some advantages of a smaller town. * * *

"Where else could you leave your house at 7:15 and get down to the Bucks game, park your car and get into the Bradley Center at, like, 7:31, just as they're finishing the national anthem, sit in your seat and you're there? In L.A., that's unheard of. People take that stuff for granted until they're somewhere else and they realize that in order to go to a game they've got to leave like an hour early, and then if they're going to have dinner before that they've got to (allow) two more hours. It becomes like a field trip just to go to a game and have a drink before or after. Those are things we take for granted here that are really easy and really nice."

Stephen Eichenbaum * * *

Positive perceptions go beyond ease of movement, though, and are held by a wide range of area residents.

"People tend to like wherever they are," said Jean B. Tyler, outgoing director of the Public Policy Forum, a civic watchdog group. "There's a human syndrome about that: If I'm here, then it's a good place.

"But I think it's more than that in Milwaukee. People here really do value the old ties that are very positive, that are very rich, that are very historical the sense of place. . . the gentleness of the Wisconsin landscape. Leg 2 ends here I think people here do like it here," Tyler said.