I’ve been to 40 US states

Wisconsin’s more Chicago than Chicago.
-Fred Armisen (spoken in a nasal-y midwestern twang)

Wisconsin! That’s where I am now, in Milwaukee, stopping for a coffee before continuing lakeside through Veterans Park to downtown and the Third Ward.

This is not a travel blog (not that there’s anything wrong with travel blogs), but: 39 Indiana, 38 Texas & 37 New Mexico.

And 41-50 still to come: Minnesota, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Washington.

Minnesota cuts the otherwise alphabetized list because I’m headed there next weekend, both trips to do some “what would living here be like” exploration while Sloane interviews for jobs.

But so, Wisconsin—

Milwaukee’s on Lake Michigan, the western side, and by process of elimination that means Michigan is across the lake, dead east. Down lake, if you hug the shore for an hour and change by car, is Chicago.

Prior to this weekend, my knowledge of Milwaukee was limited to the Brewers (whose logo is among the best in professional sports, contorting an M and a B into a baseball mitt, from an era where logos were clever acts of graphic design rather than plain brand names spelled out in serif fonts) and by extension a vague association with beer. Plus, I have two friends from Milwaukee who are both such good eggs that I’ve entered the weekend with a good feeling about the city itself. (I did also read Matthew Desmond’s phenomenal book Evicted, which was in and about Milwaukee but not really about Milwaukee—more so a case study to shine a light on a broader American problem.)

If you’ve never visited a Great Lake, they register as oceans. I’ve now seen Huron, Erie, and Michigan, all ocean-like. It’s a good feature for a city, being set on water. I’m more familiar with river cities (Richmond, Cincinnati) and harbor cities (Baltimore, New York), but lake cities are charming much the same. And it turns out there’s a river and a harbor here, too. I loved flying in over the water last night and seeing the city lit up from my window seat, 25F, PHL to MKE.

Something about this weekend feels old fashioned, like something my parents would have done in the 80s when they were in this stage of life, prospecting an American city we’ve never been to because a steady job might be here, interviewing for that job in person. Of course, I’m not the one interviewing, so I get just the excitement side of the anxiety-excitement coin, although I suppose I am at least seeing what it’s like to write from here.

This weekend is Doors Open Milwaukee, meaning we can walk into nearly 200 historical buildings today for free. It’s 60 degrees and totally blue in the sky, so I’m going to get back to that walking. I like Milwaukee.