Diversity has become the theme song of Riverwest. Partly it is a catchword, but it does reflect a significant economic reality. Though some residential properties here are selling in the $150,000 range, plenty of people struggle to stay afloat financially. While coffeehouses open and expand, some of our neighbors cannot afford to put a meal on the table.
Jeff Johnson
Posted inNeighborhood News
The Transfiguration of St. Casimir and St. Mary
In the world of corporate business, mergers and acquisitions are exercises in power, wealth, and influence. But when a church merges it is most often, at least to secular eyes, a symptom of weakness: declining membership, lowering financial stability, more funerals than baptisms, shortage of pastoral and lay leadership, scandal, irrelevance to contemporary spiritual taste.
Posted inBusiness Spotlight
Great Lake Zen Center: A Refuge of Stillness in the Heart of Riverwest
by Jeff Johnson / Photos by Tess Reiss
Gleaming tile floors, plain white walls, green plants, fresh flowers, a whiff of incense, and a solemn statue of Buddha mingle with the rumble of cars, trucks, and buses on Locust Street. This is meditation, not on some mountain top, not out in the woods, but embedded in bustle at the center of the city. And indeed there is stillness.
Posted inUncategorized
Dominos!
by Jeff Johnson – en espanol
On almost any evening at Club Caribe, or Club 99, or the Barceloneta Lounge, groups of four quiet men hunker over tables dedicated to dominoes. This ancient game of Chinese origin has a passionate following among the Hispanic residents of Riverwest. And not unlike the bowling leagues that grew up at the Polish Falcon from Polish interest in ten pins, a domino league meets on Sundays to play the “bones.” Twenty taverns, ten from the Milwaukee area and ten from the Chicago area, send teams with as many as 150 people participating.
Posted inNeighbor Spotlight
Brewzerkus
by Jeff Johnson
Riverwest is home to [an] urban, post-modern circus. Proclaimed in flyers as the “Scariest Show on Earth,” Milwaukee Brewzerkus quarters in a Booth Street home known by its inhabitants as the “Clown House.” There a front porch spills over with “tall bikes” used for parades; a backyard harbors a car and van festooned like clowns; an attic and basement brim with puppets, stages, and props; living room, kitchen, and bedrooms host costumes, makeup, and poster/stencil making materials.
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