Category Archives: Writing about Writing blah blah blah
Tea’s Weird Week: We Can Battle A.I. with Dive Bars
I’m honored to say that an article I contributed to, “High Dive,” for Milwaukee Magazine, won a National City & Regional Magazine Award in the “Lifestyle/ Leisure” category. Bar culture is big here in Milwaukee, so this piece lovingly took a look at some of our city’s best “dives.” I’ve spent over half my life hanging around one bar or another, so it was music to my ears. I was assigned what I’ve named the “apostrophe beat,” Just Art’s, Dale’s, Gordie’s, and Mamie’s, all great places in their own way.
The other writers on this package were Chris Drosner (who also edited), Tom Kertscher, and Spencer Creal, fantastic photos by Aliza Baran, designed by Chelsea Mamerow.
I’ve won a few awards now and when that happens, I like to try to reflect on what made it stand out. They ain’t all going to be winners, that’s for sure, so what makes this one special? Well, as my mind tend to do, my thoughts began wander. I’ve been running into a lot stories about A.I. these days and it perks my interest, but usually not in a good way. There are a lot of people trying to “cheat” with their writing by using A.I. to do the heavy lifting for them.
I really don’t get it– why be a writer if you don’t like to write? People are publishing books written by A.I. RFK Jr.’s recent “Make America Healthy Again” report had fake citations as A.I. generated papers “tend to hallucinate references,” as Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch says in a USA Today article (the White House says it was a “formatting error.” Yeah, sure.) It’s all kinda depressing to me.
But not everything is online and able to be stuffed into an A.I. meat grinder, and it struck me that this piece was a great example that. Some of these places have little internet presence at all. Part of the package was a guide of signs that you’re in a dive bar. I think one we forgot is “Facebook page that is only updated once every three months” or “stopped with status updates six years ago, but still open.”
We’re still a ways off from an A.I. robot putting on a pair of pants or a bathrobe, heading down to the corner bar, taking a shot with the bartender and chatting with some regulars about the weather or the Brewers or sharing a dirty joke. A.I. can’t really duplicate that experience (yet). They can’t hear the slamming sound of a game of bar dice or smell the mixture of rail whiskey and frozen pizza and secondhand smoke wafting through the door when someone opens it.
Thank the stars for that. The next round of Schlitz is on me (but only if you can prove you’re human).
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Please Clap (and donate) Dept.: Speaking of not being A.I.-generated: Fundraising for QWERTYFEST MKE is underway and we got a long way to go to meet our goal. Our fundraiser page is here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2025 and includes great perks like tickets, shirts, zines, even a historic bobblehead. We’re also doing a “Telethon” at Sugar Maple (which will also be livestreamed) on Sunday, June 22. More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1529533825125088/ Please help make it happen!
Tea’s Weird Week: If You Don’t Support QWERTY, You Might End Up Butt-hurty (Revisited)
I wrote a similar column title last year in a plea to get people to support something I’m proud of– QWERTYFEST MKE. QF was officially started by me and my co-organizer Molly Snyder in 2023. This year will be our 3rd annual event (though I should note we do smaller events throughout the year, too). It’s been a wild ride, but I absolutely love some of the things we’ve accomplished with the resources we’ve had available.
So what is QWERTYFEST? The inspiration comes from a Milwaukeean named Christopher Latham Sholes. Sholes was an inventor, newspaper editor, and politician. He worked with collaborators at the Kleinsteuber Machine Shop, which was kind of like a Makerspace of it’s day, located on State St., right next to Turner Hall (where our QWERTYFEST opening night party will take place), it was located where State Street Pizza Pub is today. Although there had been attempts at a typing machine before, Sholes developed the first commercial typewriter. Part of that design was the QWERTY keyboard configuration (named after the first 6 letters of the first row), which we still use on our computers and phones today.
Oh, by the way, I’m giddy to say we teamed up with the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame to create a Sholes bobblehead, which you can pre-order HERE.
I won’t go on and on about typewriter philosophy, but in a world filled with parasitic AI programs, deep fakes, spam bots, disinformation, trolls, cyberbullying, privacy concerns, vapid influencers, social isolation, etc. etc. it is a relief to sit in a space with your brain and a piece of paper you can clack-clack-clack away at. QWERTYFEST gives you a chance to do that and hang out with other people who love creativity– writers, readers, artists, musicians, builders, and other creators.
But as much as we love to see (and hear) typewriters in action, QWERTYFEST is more than a “typewriter convention.” We like to celebrate the QWERTY keyboard in all iterations. This year we’re going to be working with DarkFusion Systems to feature more mechanical keyboards people can try out. Our Quick Brown Fox Typing Contest will be back with manual and electric typewriter categories, as well as a texting one. Equally important– we want to celebrate writers of all genres who use these keyboards. New opportunities for local writers to connect and showcase their work is something we love to see.
We also have an appreciation for other analog/ vintage technologies and are working some of that in– pre-digital cameras, board games, records, stamp collecting, stereoscopes– if anything like that is your passion, let us know. Last, me and Molly are both advocates of Milwaukee culture in general, so we like to share Milwaukee history and innovation and collaborate with local businesses we feel are making the city a better place.
Me and Molly are the familiar faces of QWERTYFEST, cause we’re the organizers, but I want to mention the incredible support we’ve gotten both locally in Milwaukee and in the typewriter community. It’s humbling to say that there’s too many people to thank– I would feel awful forgetting anyone. So this is just a huge blanket THANK YOU to everyone who has helped support QWERTYFEST and our related projects (like our zine, QWERTY Quarterly).
And one of those supporters could be YOU. We launched our 2025 fundraiser on Indiegogo. We are trying to raise a lot of money. Venue rental, paying entertainers, artists, and other guests, plus a ton of other costs that pop up here and there adds up to a lot really quickly, but we’re glad to say that almost all of that money goes to local businesses and creators. Our pledge levels include great perks like subscriptions to QWERTY Quarterly, our beloved “We Built Milwaukee on Beer and Typewriters” T-shirt, tickets to our QWERTYFEST events, typed letters or poems, and more. Donations help, so does sharing the fundraiser on your social media, email lists, or wherever you can.
Look, here’s the short version: we want to do big things with QWERTYFEST MKE and you can help make that happen by supporting our fundraiser here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2025#/
Next week on TWW: The Nadine Zine! Want TWW delivered to your inbox? You can sign up for my Substack HERE. Follow me on: Facebook Bluesky Instagram
Tea’s Weird Week: TWW Returns! (plus, a psychedelic time travel boat dream)
As things tend to go with me, at a certain point I was overworked and struggling to keep up and so my beloved column, Tea’s Weird Week, fell into hiatus. I think politics played a hand in this, too. It has felt overwhelming and fruitless to write about weird topics with the current climate of turmoil. But in times like these, we need to find our happy places to hide out in and take a break, and one of those refuges for me is writing about some strange shit.
I’ve missed having this venue to write about whatever I want and to update on some of the many projects I’m working on, so Tea’s Weird Week is back! Every Thursday (except the ones I don’t). We (me and my collaborators) had a good run of a Tea’s Weird Week podcast. Can we bring it back? I hope so. I’m thinking about it. But to start, here’s a weird dream I had and some brief updates.
On Tuesday, me and QWERTYFEST MKE co-organizer Molly Snyder had a meeting to discuss plans for the fest (Oct.3-5 this year!) but we took a break to watch the effort to finally remove Deep Thought, a boat that was beached and ditched way back in October. The abandoned, soon to be graffiti covered boat became a local celebrity of sorts, with lots of local media interest. After several failed attempts, a local towing company was called in to pull the sucker off the beach. We observed part of this effort (it took a long time) as they yanked the boat up onto the rocks, eventually hauling it away on a flatbed truck.
That night I had a dream– I was back at the beach, and Deep Thought was still wrecked there, but we had both time travelled back to the 1960s. The beach was filled with hippies, sitting around smoking weed. A guy with long hair and a beard was walking around hawking a newspaper (I would guess Milwaukee’s 60s underground paper, Kaleidoscope). Hippies were circled around playing hacky sack (this part of the dream might not be historically accurate) and some were playing acoustic guitars and bongos. The hippies offered me a joint, and I took some tokes. Sleepy, I climbed up on the Deep Thought and fell asleep in the sunlight. I woke up in my bed. The boat was gone. Faaaaaar out, man. Far-fucking-out. Good-bye Deep Thought.
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QWERTY Quarterly: Speaking of QWERTYFEST MKE, QQ is a zine edited by me and Molly, that is the official publication of the festival. I’m very proud of it, every issue features the work of talented local writers (poetry, fiction, articles, columns) and artists. You can pick up a copy at Lion’s Tooth and Woodland Pattern here in Milwaukee, Quimby’s in Chicago, or get it mailed anywhere via our Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/qwertyquarterly
More QWERTYFEST MKE news soon!
Other recent writing: I wrote two short pieces for the May issue of Milwaukee Magazine, about local ham radio enthusiasts and a travelogue about a guy who faked his kayaking death here in Wisconsin, then took a meandering escape route to eastern Europe. I’ve got some entries in the Summer Guide issue out in June, and I wrote about a local “hoedown throwdown” between line-dancing groups for their website HERE.
Clownwatch 2025: last fall, I published a zine/ ebook titled Political Monsters, which explores the correlation between the party in power and the number of films starring zombies (higher during traditional Republican presidencies) vampires (Democratic Party), or in the case of Trump, killer clown (MAGA) movies being made. Trump’s first term saw the largest spike of killer clown themed movies in film history. Are the clowns back? We’ll see– I am tracking and cataloging all killer clowns released over the next 4 years, starting here with our first entry for Trump 2.0. I will update on more films as they are released.
1. May 9: Clown in a Cornfield (directed by Eli Craig) release date. Based on a 2020 novel by Adam Cesare, features a cornfield-lurking clown named Frendo, who enjoys killing horny teens.
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Next week on TWW: It’s going to be a hot cryptid summer!
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Tea’s Weird Week: Favorite Words of 2024 (and where I wrote ’em)
Words! Some just feel better rolling off the tongue than others. I’ve been trying to keep track of some of my favorites over the last year. Here’s 12 I love (and by extension, some of the best articles I’ve written for various publications this year). I’m looking forward to more word usage in 2025. Happy New Year!
LANDLUBBERS: “Goth Barge has developed a following for their Dark Wave fueled boat cruises, but they do plenty of sets for landlubbers too.” —Madcap Milwaukee Calendar: Who Will You Ask to the Goth Prom?, Shepherd Express, Jan. 30.
LYNCHIAN: “If you want to make the experience even more immersive, show up ‘dressed in your Lynchian best’ to win a prize in the costume contest.” — Madcap Milwaukee Calendar: Furries and Motorcyclists Assemble; Music for Your Lynchian Lifestyle, Shepherd Express, Feb. 14
PENDING: “Pending approval, the statue will be placed in a corner of Elm Park they hope to rename Gygax Park and will feature a likeness of Gary Gyagx sitting at the head of a table, where visitors can sit down and join him for a game.”– Dungeons & Dragons All Started In This Tiny Wisconsin Town, Atlas Obscura, March 28
CAPRINE VINYASA: “Share your yoga mat with a baby dwarf goat in a session of “caprine vinyasa,” or goat yoga, a trend that dates back to an Oregon farm in 2016.” — Madcap Milwaukee Calendar: Buffy Prom is Ready to Slay, Shepherd Express, May 8.
GOTHABILLIES: “These sour goths don’t like looking out their window to see their moonlit lawn filled with cybergoths, dark wavers, deathrockers, gothabillies, and other new-fangled creatures of the night.”–I’m on a goth boat: All aboard Milwaukee’s Goth Barge, Milwaukee Record, June 4. Please Clap Dept.: This article was included on the “25 favorite Milwaukee Record stories of 2024 list.”
TERRAZZO: “Waitstaff zipped across the hall’s terrazzo floor, delivering plates of fried cod and perch to the maze of tables, each decorated with a centerpiece vase featuring minature American and Serbian flags and colored carnations nestled amongst the condiments.”– Generations of Politicians Have Passed Through Serb Hall, Milwaukee Magazine, July 2024
CLACK: “With both parties satisfied with the deal, Dul sits at his Olympia SG-1 typewriter, and with a clack clack clack he types the customer a receipt, turning a crank to pull it free from the platen (the roller that holds the paper).”– Gen Z is into typewriters, Chicago Reader, Sept. 19
CLOWNADO: “The success of those movies led to a score of low budget entries like Killer Clowns: Unleashed (2016), Crispy’s Curse (2017), Clowntergeist (2017), Clown Motel: Spirits Arise (2018), and a film title that perhaps sums up the Trump administration in a single word: Clownado (2019).”– Political Monsters: How Presidents Influence Horror Movies, zine/e-book, October 2024
BLOWHOLE: “The band’s logo, a mohawked humpback whale in a leather jacket (with an enormous safety pin piercing the noble animal’s blowhole) breaching the water while defiantly raising a flipper, was a common sight on the streets, plastered everywhere on flyers and stickers slapped on dumpsters and electrical boxes.”– The Terrible Curse of the Humpbacks, Riverwest Radio Ghost Walk booklet, October 2024. Please Clap Dept.: Illustrator Ashley Altadonna captured what I thought this logo might look like exactly:
SCHTICK: “I sell a drink, put the money in the register; at the end of the night, I count the money – immediate gratification,” Guenther says. “I make a new customer, I tell a joke, people laugh, and that’s my schtick.”– A Short Guide to Milwaukee’s Dive Bars, Milwaukee Magazine, October 2024
HODAG-GREEN: “Then, in 2018, he went all in, giving the exterior of the shop a Hodag-green coat of paint and rebranding as The Hodag Store.”– Do You Know the Legend of the Rhinelander Hodag? Milwaukee Magazine, October 2024
KRAMPUSSCHLAP: “Krampuschlap,” a game where people slap each other as hard as they can, is revealed to be “the favorite game of Krampusnacht” in the action comedy Red One. At Milwaukee Krampusnacht, we partnered with Best Place on a “Krampusschlap” drink special (cider and Fireball) and set up a photo opp so people could pretend they were being slapped by a Krampus hand. —Milwaukee Krampusnacht website and social media promotions
TWW: It’s “Political Monsters Week!”
Alright, well, it’s been a while since I’ve done anything significant with Tea’s Weird Week. But we’re getting into the Halloween season and this weekend I’ll be tabling with my Political Monsters zine at the Milwaukee Paranormal Conference on Saturday and at a special party at Lion’s Tooth on Sunday. Leading up to that, I thought I’d do some posts here this week tying to the project.
Today, let’s start at the beginning. What is the “Political Monsters Theory?” In 2008, a theory began to circulate that found a correlation between the political party in power and monster movies. It suggested that we get more vampire films during Democratic Party administrations and more zombies during Republican ones. The idea is that these monsters play into stereotypical visions of those parties. The short version: Democrats being kinky necksuckers and Republicans being a mob consuming everything in their path and warmongers.
My research found that the numbers checked out pretty well from the Carter through the Bush administrations.
During George W. Bush’s administration there was an explosion in zombie movies. 9/11 and war in Iraq in Afghanistan was one factor. Easier accessibility to affordable camera and editing software for low budget filmmakers was another. The theory was upended somewhat during Obama’s administration as there were far more zombie movies than vampire ones. However, as I argue in Political Monsters, if you look at another metric– box office money vs number of films, the sparkly vampires of The Twilight Saga far outpace all the zombie movies of that era combined with a total box office of $3.36 billion.
Then, in 2019 I made an observation. A political outsider, Trump, had broken the theory with a new trend…killer clowns. During the chaotic MAGA Party administration, we saw box office hits like Joker and the two-part It movie adaptation, as well as a surge of low budget imitators. After Trump packed up his clown car and left the White House, the vampires returned with Joe Biden. The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, Abigail, Salem’s Lot, and Nosferatu are just some of the titles from 2023 and 24. In Political Monsters I also share a special tie one-term presidents Carter and Biden have with the most famous of vampires, Count Dracula.
Tomorrow (Thursday), I’ll be writing about “The Late, Great Hannibal Lecter” and on Friday I’ll give a monster forecast: “4 More Years: Vampires or Evil Clowns?”
You can get a copy of Political Monsters…
In person: Saturday, Oct. 19: Milwaukee Paranormal Conference, I’ll be on the vendor floor 10am-5pm at the Irish Cultural & Heritage Center. Register for a free ticket here: milwaukeeparacon.com
Sunday, Oct. 20: Political Monsters Party at Lion’s Tooth, 3-5pm. Admission is free. I’ll talk briefly about the project, we’ll do a round of horror trivia, and if you dress like a zombie, vampire, or killer clown, you get a free copy of the Political Monsters zine!
You can also buy copies at Lion’s Tooth here in Milwaukee and Quimby’s in Chicago. You can order a print copy via the QWERTYFEST MKE Etsy page: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1778576030/political-monsters-how-presidents
And an e-book version is available through Kindle/KU: https://www.amazon.com/Political-Monsters-Presidents-Influence-Horror-ebook/dp/B0DFJ7DZKQ/ref=sr_1_1
Tea’s Weird Week: Riverwest Ghosts, Typewriters, Political Monsters, etc.
September was a busy one! Here’s a roundup of some writings and media I did.
Chicago typewriter scene: I wrote my first piece for Chicago Reader, “Gen Z is into typewriters,” which appeared in their print edition and online. It’s a look at a fairly new typewriter service shop, Typewriter Chicago and the Chicago typing scene in general.
Riverwest Radio Ghost Walk: This is a unique, fun project created by Jill Capicchioni. Writers and artists provided fiction and nonfiction ghost stories and business and homeowners decorated their buildings to correspond to them. The stories and a map of the participants are collected in a booklet you can buy at several Riverwest businesses (see flyer below) for $10 and the proceeds benefit Riverwest Radio. You pick up a copy, then check out the spots at your own leisure, whenever you want between October 4-31. I contributed two short write ups based on people’s stories of supernatural experiences at Cafe Corazon and Nessun Dorma and a short fiction about an ill-fated punk band called The Humpbacks. I haven’t done a lot of fiction writing, so that was fun. More info on the project: https://www.riverwestradio.com/riverwest-radio-ghost-walk/
Political Monsters: My zine detailing the correlation between the political party in power and vampire, zombie, and evil clown movies debuted this month. I’m doing a little party for it Sunday Oct. 20 at Lion’s Tooth. I’ll talk briefly on how I discovered the theory and we’ll have a quick round of horror trivia. Anyone dressed as a vampire, zombie, or evil clown gets a free copy of the zine!
More stuff: I wrote about Dungeons & Dragons again for Milwaukee Magazine and talked about it briefly on Lake Effect. Speaking of MilMag, check out the October issue, it’s like the Krulos Olympics in that issue– I wrote about dive bars, the hodag, and puppets! Also, I was a guest on the Indecent with Kiki Anderson podcast to discuss my 2019 book Apocalypse Any Day Now: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2X5taeOs5BAxB0ri9rYM1X
Please Clap Dept.: I’m a producer of the horror host documentary I’m Your Host, directed by Alicia Krupsky, which I’m glad to say won both “Best Wisconsin Feature” at Port of Fear Film Festival in Kenosha and “Best Documentary Feature” at the New York Tri-State International Film Festival this month. Nice!
October forecast: Leading up to my party at Lion’s Tooth Oct. 20, I’ll be featuring a “Political Monsters Week” of related material here on my site every day from October 14-18.
Tea’s Weird Week: OUT NOW: Political Monsters are Creeping Your Way This Fall
I’m thrilled to say that I have a new publication (a short zine/ e-book) out in time for the horror season (Halloween and Election Day) titled Political Monsters: How Presidents Influence Horror Movies. It’s a study of a pop culture/ sociology/ horror film trend.
Hell’s Bells, here’s a blurb:
“Political Monsters explores a theory that dates back to the Obama administration that suggests that we get more vampire movies during Democrat administrations and more zombies during Republican ones. During Trump’s MAGA Party reign, journalist Tea Krulos noticed a new trend– lots of killer clown themed movies were being made, in fact the single biggest cluster of this theme in film history (vampires returned with Biden). Krulos decided to look at some data in his mad scientist lab to determine how much truth there was to this theory. Did it hold up? The answer is: for the most part, yes. The main section of Political Monsters explores the trends and data, but there’s also some bonus appendix material about the history of these genres.”
You can buy a print copy of the zine at the QWERTYFEST MKE Etsy store here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1778576030/political-monsters-how-presidents
E-book version available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DFJ7DZKQ
I’ll also have copies at these fantastic events:
Sunday, Sept. 22, 11am-5pm: Awkward Nerd Events Book Fair @ Tripoli Shrine Center (3000 W. Wisconsin Ave.)
Sunday, Sept. 22: 5-7pm: Records and Typewriters QWERTY Quarterly #6 Release Party @ Wiggle Room (2988 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.)
Saturday, Oct. 19: Milwaukee Paranormal Conference 2024 @ Irish Cultural and Heritage Center (2133 W. Wisconsin Ave.)
Sunday, Oct. 20, 4pm: Political Monsters Party @ Lion’s Tooth (2421 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.)
You can also buy a copy at:
Milwaukee: Lion’s Tooth (2421 S. Kinnicknnic Ave.)
Chicago: Quimby’s Bookstore (1854 W. North Ave.)
If you’re interested in having me for an appearance or on your media outlet, drop me a line at: teakrulos@gmail.com
The fang-tastic cover art is by Ashley Altadonna.
Tea’s Weird Week: Goth Barge (and other recent excursions)
One of my favorite things about writing is the chance to have a unique experience and share that with other people in a story, so I was delighted to step aboard Goth Barge and write it up for Milwaukee Record. They got a good thing going on with this cruise.
Back in high school and into my early 20s I identified as a punk rocker. I had a mohawk and usually sported an Operation Ivy or Dead Kennedys T-shirt. But I was fortunate in that the circles I hung out in featured a variety of subcultures, including oh, you know, the Goths, the Vandals, the Huns, the Saxons…all the enemies of the Roman Empire.
I loved quite a few goth classics, my favorites being Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Joy Division (I dropped those in the article), Bauhaus, New Order, and The Damned. I also really liked a lot of 80s/90s industrial like Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. It’s a mood, as the kids today say. Anyway, I’m glad to see that the article appears to have gotten a good reception from goth and not-so-goth readers alike.
You can check it out it here: “I’m on a goth boat: All aboard Milwaukee’s Goth Barge.”
More recent writings:
– I wrote an article for Milwaukee Magazine‘s website on local writer and game designer Jex Thomas, creator of Bump in the Night. I had a chance to sit down and play a session and had a great time. They created a crowdsource campaign to raise funds for a new edition and I’m glad to see it’s going really well. Read more and find the link here: “‘Bump in the Dark’ Is a New Tabletop Game by a Local Designer“
-As I said on Facebook, this story is like a weird dream: I dreamed that I found an unmarked secret building built into a railroad bridge and discovered a model railroad club that’s been in there for 8 decades. Well, it’s reality: “Milwaukee Model Railroad Club Is Hidden in Plain Sight” (a print version appeared in the May issue of Milwaukee Magazine).
–QWERTY Quarterly #5: have you heard the good word about QWERTYFEST? It’s happening soon– June 21-23. I’m co-editor of QWERTY Quarterly, official publication of QF. I wrote bits and pieces of the new issue, along with many other talented creators. This issue has a lot of material that ties into QF– a full schedule, articles on (or by) participants, there’s also poetry, fiction, a word scramble, a new comic strip and more! You can buy a QQ subscription (and we’ll have individual copies of QQ#5 listed soon) here: https://www.qwertyfest.com/qwerty-quarterly.html
And check out the full QF schedule (and ticket links) here: https://www.qwertyfest.com/qwertyfest-2024-schedule.html
-“Madcap Milwaukee Calendar” is a column I write for the Shepherd Express every two weeks. I find about five unique/unusual/ nerdy events around town to spotlight, so if you’re looking for something interesting, check it out. You can find the latest column here: https://shepherdexpress.com/culture/madcap-milwaukee-calendar
Tea’s Weird Week: A-well a-doncha know about my surfin’ article a-werd? Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!
Hey there Surfin’ Birds, I’m glad to say that I won a GOLD Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism Award (in the “Best Sports Story” category) for my article “Surfing the Fresh Coast,” from the July 2023 issue of Milwaukee Magazine. This is my third gold and fourth overall Press Club award. The article examines the local scene of people who surf the waves of Lake Michigan.
As always, I want to take a moment to thank some people and speculate on the win.
Thanks: This article idea was brought to me by my editor Chris Drosner, and I immediately knew this would be a good fit for me. I appreciate Chris’s faith that I’ll dig in and find a good story. The rest of MilMag’s editorial staff is great to work with, too. Magazine articles need to be visually appealing in addition to being well written. It’s not surprising that MilMag also picked up gold for their design team. Incredibly talented photographer (and surfer) Andrew Feller provided the fantastic photos for this article.
And, of course, thanks to all the surfers who kindly made time to talk with me.
Why I think this one was a winner:
A couple things– first and foremost, I’m a sucker (and I think a lot of readers are) for stories of people following their dreams, whatever that might be. Take for example Jake Bresette, who was working as an insurance claims adjuster in Madison– a job he was good at but had no passion for. Jake would dream of surfing the lake, and I like this paragraph describing his dilemma:
To feel a little bit alive, some days Bresette would wake up at 4 a.m., drive to Milwaukee, get in a little surfing, then drive back, take a shower and clock in at work by 11 a.m. It wasn’t enough to satisfy him. While voices would drone on into his earpiece about deductibles and liabilities, he’d pop open a window on his computer. “There are webcams on the beaches in Sheboygan, Port Washington, all over the lake. I’d be on calls assisting people, looking at the waves. I called it cubicle torture,” Bresette says. Sometimes he’d see people surfing. “I wished I was there.”
This led to a pretty big leap of faith for Jake– opening up a surf shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Lake Effect Surf Shop is now the hub of the local surf scene. In addition to Jake, I got to round out the story with an eclectic cast– Eric “The Teacher” Gietzen, Ken Cole, Jennifer Vice-Reshel, and Keliana Licup. I think one skill I have as a writer is an ear for a good quote, but that only works if the person you’re interviewing has something interesting to say. Well, the surfers shredded in the good quotes department!
I’m a fan of a well-placed sidebar, and this article has a couple on Milwaukee’s surf band The Exotics, and I talked to surf legend Larry “Longboard” Williams about Sheboygan’s legacy as the “Malibu of the Midwest.”
It was a fun and interesting assignment, and I greatly appreciate this recognition. You can read the article here: https://www.milwaukeemag.com/all-about-milwaukees-surfing-scene/
See also: My other three Milwaukee Press Club Awards:
“Reporting Live from the Street,” Gold, Short Hard Feature, 2020
“The Last Frame,” Gold, Short Soft Feature, 2022
“Wanna Buy a Famous Tugboat?” Silver, Soft Feature (online), 2022
Please donate: Time is running out on our QWERTYFEST MKE fundraiser. We’ve still got a long way to go. QWERTYFEST celebrates the typewriter and QWERTY keyboard we still use today, invented here in Milwaukee. It also celebrates history, innovation, writing, and the arts in general. Our fundraiser includes great perks like tickets, merch, and a subscription to out publication, QWERTY Quarterly. With your help, we can make it happen. Any donation amount helps us reach our goal: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2024/#/
Tea’s Weird Week: I Wanna Magnet Fish Those Brothel Keys Out of the Milwaukee River
Back in the wild plague year of 2020, I, like many others, was figuring out what to do with myself. With everything shut down, I tried to think of a hobby that would get me out of the house and into (hopefully COVID-19 free) fresh air. Magnet fishing seemed like a good idea.
Magnet fishing is taking a powerful magnet attached to a long, sturdy rope and throwing it into bodies of water to pull out some of the mass of trash dumped by humanity for generations. Bicycles, radiators, license plates, fishing lures, boat parts, pots and pans, etc. Junk fishing seemed fun, so I bought a magnet and gear and… never did go out and do it. I think one of the hang ups was that I was pretty sure I’d find ditched guns in the Milwaukee waterways and was not quite sure about what to do in that situation.
We’ll get back to this, but let’s switch gears for a minute. Recently, I got a copy of the March issue of Milwaukee Magazine. I always enjoy seeing an article of mine that has made it into print, and this issue I wrote a feature on the career of 95-year-old photographer Tom Ferderbar. As I was flipping through the magazine, I was glad to see Matthew J. Prigge’s byline on an article. Matthew has written a great body of work exploring Milwaukee’s interesting and sometimes violent, macabre, and odd history in articles and books like Milwaukee Mayhem: Murder and Mystery in the Cream City’s First Century.
In Milwaukee Magazine, Prigge’s most recent article is titled “Life on the Line,” which delves into the history of Milwaukee’s red light district in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which was called “The Line.” (The article is only available in print for the time being, I will update with a link when it gets posted online).
Prigge reports that the area of The Line was located on River Street (now Edison Street) spread east of the river “from what is now Highland and Wells Streets and as far east as Market Street.” He also writes that a more working class version of The Line ran across the other side of the river “along Wells Street as far west as 6th Street.”
But here is the key line, how this column all ties together. From Prigge’s article:
“Legend had it that when a new house of prostitution, all-night saloon or gambling den would open on The Line, its operator would toss a key into the Milwaukee River. The ritual was a symbol of their intentions in the area- to hold their doors open, to neither be locked in nor locked away.”
Now do you see? It could just be a “legend,” they might have all been eaten by sturgeon or something, but maybe (just maybe) those keys might still be down there. I will try to find them on some magnet fishing expeditions. Will I be successful? Probably not. But as treasure hunters have asked throughout time…
what if I do?
Please Clap Dept.: If you’re looking for unique, interesting events in the Milwaukee area, please check out my bi-weekly column for the Shepherd Express, “Madcap Milwaukee Calendar.” You can find the most recent column here: https://shepherdexpress.com/culture/madcap-milwaukee-calendar
See also: Another Milwaukee hidden treasure is one buried by Byron Preiss, author of The Secret. I wrote an article on this about a year ago for Atlas Obscura: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-secret-byron-preiss-milwaukee
I can always tell when AO recycles this story on social media, by the way, because I get at least a couple messages from people who claim they’ve cracked the code. My message to them is always the same– dig it up and find it, and then let me know first so I can get the scoop on writing about it!
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