Black Cat Alley and Explorium Beer

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday. It was a weird day, because one of the lights in my plant room burned out, and then when Travalon tried to put in a new bulb, the whole fixture came off the ceiling! Because it's connected to the other three, I was afraid it would pull them all off, but we propped it up with some books, and that took the pressure off the others. Richard Bonomo came over, and after we fed him a takeout fish fry from Mariner's, he fixed it. He did point out that two other bulbs are about to burn out, so hopefully we don't have to go through this whole adventure again. Then I talked to Tiffy as usual, and I was saying how I used to want to write screenplays, but as a teenager I didn't really understand the laws of physics, so I would have the main character rolling under a moving car and not getting run over. Tiffy said with CGI you can do anything, so why not have that happen? Then I was talking about a musical I wrote about Pizza Bear, basically an extended version of the double entendre "He REALLY delivers!" and Tiffy said, "Oh, so this wasn't a children's story?" I said no, he was delivering to lonely female large cats, like Mrs. Lion and Mrs. Tiger and Miss Panther. Somehow we had Pizza Bear rolling under the moving car, and I said, "What about his pizza?" and Tiffy said, "He could throw it over the car and catch it on the other side," and I said, "That's genius!" But don't look for this movie at a theater near you anytime soon - the screenplay still needs a lot of work. 

I get all sorts of random emails, like from both sides of the political spectrum, and for some reason a lot about travel. I enjoy reading those, which are often lists of "Craziest road side attractions," or whatever, and sometimes I have actually been to one or two of the places they mention. The other day I got one about the five coolest murals in the country, and one was in Milwaukee! How could I have missed something so close by? So this morning Travalon and I headed to Black Cat Alley. 

Our ride there was almost interesting enough to be its own blog post. A car ahead of us had a license plate that said "LMBO" and I said, "Look at that! It says 'Laughing my butt off!'" but Travalon pointed out that it was a Packers license plate, so it was probably a contraction for Lambeau, as in the field where the Packers play. Then I had brought a "rosary" from Brodhead, but one "decade" only had six beads, and another had a missing bead... and then as I was praying the Joyful Mysteries, I realized about two decades in that there were two extra decades! It must have been a Franciscan rosary of the Seven Joys of Mary, and I don't exactly remember those, but they are basically the Joyful Mysteries, and I think the two extra are the Visit of the Magi and the Resurrection of Jesus, so I just added those two. I would not have expected this rosary to be a Franciscan one, since it didn't have a San Damiano crucifix, but it just goes to show you really have to count all the beads on these antique rosaries because you never know what you are getting.

We got to Milwaukee and got lattes before setting out for Black Cat Alley, which is an outdoor gallery of murals. We took loads of photos. Then we walked to a spot from which you can see the lake, and then we drove to place where we could park for free and catch the Hop, which is the free streetcar that goes through downtown Milwaukee. We took it to one end and saw a Christmas lights display in a park, then we took it to the other end and saw some fire pits, so we walked over and found a brewery called Explorium, which had some very tasty beer. We had a flight with turtle cheesecake tart, peanut butter cup stout, and toasted coconut porter, and we also got a taster of creamsicle ale and a sip of peach gose and what they called a "Big A-- Pretzel." (We had to take two thirds of that home.) Wow, was the beer ever good! We bought some cans of the peanut butter cup and coconut to take home. The craziest part of that was that our waiter is from a Basque family, so he actually spoke a little Basque to me! Our trip home was uneventful, and now Travalon is watching the Badger game that we taped. We saw bits and pieces of it in Milwaukee, and I think it didn't have a happy ending for us, but we don't actually know yet.

Here are a bunch of photos of the murals in Black Cat Alley. There was art everywhere, even on the sidewalks!

This is the sign outside of the alley. We have been by it many times and never knew it was there!

We also found this outside the alley on the other side.

And there was a lot of artwork just outside the alley too.

These are photos from when we took a walk to a place with a great view of the lake.

And here are some shots of what we saw from the Hop.

Update: now we have learned that the Badgers lost to Northwestern, so Travalon just deleted the recording of the game after we saw the one beautiful touchdown they did manage to score. They kept turning the ball over, and who needs to watch that??

Famous Hat