Blog Archives
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 Won Two Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism Awards
The Milwaukee Press Club Gridiron Awards were last night at the historic, beautiful (and famously haunted) Pfister Hotel. Yours Truly was there. I had a seat at the big kid’s table with the Milwaukee Magazine staff (I should point out that while I’m a frequent contributor, I’m a freelancer, not staff). That was nice, I got to meet some people in person that I’ve only worked with via email. I sat next to Rich Rovito, a hard working writer who absolutely deserves the five awards he took home.
The ballroom was filled with a who’s who of media– the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel thankfully has enough writers left to fill a table, WUWM was there (Lake Effect host Joy Powers won an award–congrats!–and is always surprised at how tall I am). Concealed Carry Magazine was there, too. I assume they were all packing in case someone tried to run off with their awards.
The awards got over 900 submissions (across all categories), according to MPC. They were judged by other press clubs and organizations around the country. Being judged by my peers is more meaningful to me than some run-of-the-mill online vote popularity contest.
I want to give a heartfelt thanks to all of the Milwaukee Magazine staff– Alli, Archer, Brianna, and especially Carole Nicksin and Chris Drosner for giving me the opportunity to excel. I appreciate their faith in me. Also a big congrats to Matt Ludtke, who won Gold for his fantastic photography on a story I wrote, “The Last Fisherman of Washington Island.”
I’m going to tell you a bit about my two Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism award winners, both in the “soft news” category. Soft news refers to pieces on entertainment and lifestyle as opposed to “hard news” on politics, crime, business (my first MPC award was in the short hard news category, 2021).
The Last Frame (GOLD- Best Short Soft Story)
www.milwaukeemag.com/the-future-of-this-riverwest-institution-is-uncertain
This story already won the best award possible– the approval of former Falcon Bowl owner Lynn Opinski. I’m told she read the article out loud at the bar and enjoyed it. I think a sure bet when looking for a soft news story is to look for a place or event or institution that has a lot of love from a community and try to explore why that is.
In this case I had a good head start– I’ve hung out at Falcon Bowl on and off since my early 20s, so I know firsthand that it is a favorite gathering place for the good people of Riverwest and beyond. I wrote this while the future of the business was unknown, the Riverwest Investment Cooperative (which was another unique aspect to this story) was still in negotiations with new business operators.
Here’s what I think made this article a winner.
1. A strong opening. I can’t tell you what a rush it is when someone gives you a good quote and you can visualize the quote marks hanging around it. I thought Vince Bushell would be a good interview for this article and his story in the opening really paved the path for the rest:
One evening, Vince Bushell was strolling down Clarke Street when the night erupted into sound. The bells of St. Casimir Church were tolling the evening hour; bowling balls were crashing into pins in the basement of Falcon Bowl; somewhere in between, a punk band was screeching out a rehearsal in an attic.
Bushell, sometimes referred to as the “Mayor of Riverwest” for the number of community projects he’s helped foster, had an epiphany: He was hearing the “collective soul of Riverwest floating up and down the street between St. Casimir’s steeple and the lanes of Falcon Bowl.”
2. Lots of color. Magazine pieces need a lot of “color,” (a word for description) and I kept that in mind. What does the place sound like? “The clatter of balls striking pins punctuates her sentences as she talks from behind the counter.” What does it look like, feel like? “Orange and tan plastic seats, beer holders on the scoring tables, racks filled with bowling balls in purple, blue, mottled and standard black – it all feels as comfy as your uncle’s rec room.”
3. A strong ending. I knew it would be key for me to witness the last day of league bowling for the season before the transition to new business owners. I hung out and then captured this end of an era:
Then, at 10:39 p.m., the last ball rolls down lane 4, delivered by a bowler named Ricky. After hitting two strikes, he ends the night with two pins left standing. The crowd cheers and heads upstairs for another round at the bar. The lane lights are shut off. And that’s it … for now.
An update: I’m glad to say that the new Falcon Bowl owners are doing a fantastic job giving the building some needed updates while still retaining the wonderful soul of the place so we can all continue to enjoy visiting, hopefully for many more years.
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Wanna Buy a Famous Tugboat? (SILVER-Best Soft Feature- Online)
www.milwaukeemag.com/wanna-buy-a-famous-tugboat
Where to start with Mark Gubin? I’ve described him as a “cosmic prankster” for his famous roof, which reads WELCOME TO CLEVELAND (it’s on the flight path to Mitchell International here in Milwaukee). My editor Chris passed on an email from Mark (who often ignores media requests), explaining he was looking for press because he wanted to sell his beloved historic tugboat, the Solomon Juneau. The first thing I do when figuring out a story is to Google the person or place to see what’s already out there, so when I saw Mark was the guy with the roof, I was instantly very interested in the story.
Mark made this easy as he’s the ultimate, boss level Milwaukee character. It would be pretty hard to write a dull piece about him.
There were some big struggles with this story internally, but I’m not going to get into that. I’m just happy that this story happened and received this recognition. Most of all, I’m glad I made a new friend– me and Mark get lunch together almost every Thursday. I’m working with two talented local filmmakers, Alicia Krupsky and Stephen Vincent Anderson (also working with me on I’m Your Host) to create a short documentary about Mark. We’ve done most of the interviewing for that already. The working title, of course…Welcome to Cleveland.
Freelancing is tough work. Getting recognitions like this helps you to carry on. I’m grateful to everyone who supports me.
If you’d like to support me and a bunch of other writers, artists, and musicians, I ask you to please consider supporting QWERTYFEST MKE by making a donation, buying tickets, and helping spread the word: linktr.ee/qwertyfest_mke
Tea’s Weird Week: A Big Week for the TWW “Please Clap Dept.”
I don’t know why this moment cracked me up so much, but it sure did. While out campaigning for the presidential nomination in 2016, candidate Jeb Bush faced a less-than-enthusiastic room. After making a point to the sleepy audience, he looked at them and asked them to “please clap.” That was unofficially the end of his campaign and the Bush presidential dynasty.
It’s strange to admit, but in that moment…I kinda felt for him. Well, maybe not him, but the situation he was in. It sometimes feels rough, exhausting, futile, frustrating trying to get attention for things you do. It makes you feel invisible, underrated, like you’re begging the world to notice you. Please clap, dammit— I put a lot of work into this.
At some point in the life of this column, I knew what I would call the little blurb I sometimes add to the end of Tea’s Weird Week to mention things I’ve worked on that are published, recognitions I receive, big media appearances, etc.– the Please Clap Dept. (the “Dept.” part is probably engrained in my brain from Mad Magazine, where they’d call different features “departments.” “Spy vs Spy,” for example was listed as being in their “Joke and Dagger Dept.”
This week, there was a lot of incoming good news for the Please Clap Dept. so I’m going to share these items.
I won two Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism Awards. These are my 2nd and 3rd MPC awards. It’s an honor– unlike a popularity “Best of” contest, this one is judged by peers at different press clubs around the country. MPC says 2022 was one of the most competitive in their award history– over 900 entries (across all categories). My article “The Last Frame” won in the Short Soft Feature Story category and “Wanna Buy a Famous Tugboat?” got in the Best Soft Feature Story (Online Exclusively). I will find out if these stories won gold, silver, or bronze at an award ceremony in May. But as I said on Facebook, a double bronze would not be seen as sad to me. I will be writing a column looking behind the scenes of these stories and thanking people who helped after the award ceremony. I’ll also be hosting a party at Falcon Bowl (subject of “The Last Frame.”)
I wrote an article for Atlas Obscura. Longtime fan, first time contributor. I wrote an article following local treasure hunters Tom and Molly as they search for a hidden treasure buried somewhere in Milwaukee in the 80s: “Hunting for ‘The Secret’ Treasure Buried in Milwaukee.” This was a great experience from me and I hope it leads to more freelancing with AO. I’ve already gotten a few emails from people on their theories of where the Milwaukee and other Secret treasures in other cities are. I’m telling everyone the same thing– put me on speed dial and if you dig one of those up, let me break the story!
Pull tabs! I also wrote a feature for Milwaukee Magazine on the Wisconsin pastime of playing pull tabs and the interesting story behind the legality of it. You can read the article here: How Are Pull-Tabs Legal in Wisconsin? | Milwaukee Magazine
I also got a chance to stop by the WUWM studios to discuss the article with Joy Powers on Lake Effect. You can hear that segment here: The history and legality behind Pull-Tabs in Wisconsin tavern culture | WUWM 89.7 FM – Milwaukee’s NPR
Please clap. Thank you.
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My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, VA Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
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