Photo by Henry Ksadura
It’s trolley time. No, not the billion dollar one (I can’t wait for that) but the little red and green mock one. It runs throughout the summer for that Old Milwaukee feel, taking a loop around the Third Ward, East Town and West Town, and the lower lakefront. It’s perfect for a gay tour of the city.
Our starting point is the Third Ward. We climb on a block north of the Broadway Theatre Center. Once the site of the famed (or infamous) disco, The Factory, it’s still all about drama. From there we’re off to Old World Third Street, an epicurean row of world-famous cheese, spice and sausage shops. Then we ride along Water Street to the Grohmann Museum. We’ll hike a block or so to the city’s repository of more than 1,000 artworks dedicated to labor (mercifully, the work kind). The museum boasts floors of grimy miners, sweaty blacksmiths, cobblers and corkmakers. The rooftop garden is surrounded by an array of super-sized, muscly bronze guys with shovels and other magnificent tools. We can’t dally because our next stop is Cathedral Square. Named after the Cathedral of Saint John, this throbbing epicenter of Milwaukee Catholicism is a major gay attraction. Let’s alight and take a closer look. A traditional church on the outside, Archbishop Rembert Weakland renovated its interior and organ (one of two pricey organs of his reign) to the tune of more than $10 million. Now imagine a smoke-filled room, then Archbishop Timothy Dolan paces and puffs a cigar. He contrives the cemetery fund to hide church assets from the lawsuits of sex abuse victims. It sounds like a Steven King novel or an “Untouchables” episode. Indeed, it’s just that scary and criminal. Let’s sneak into the vestry and try on some vestments in luscious brocade and moiré silks. I’ve heard it’s haunted by the ghost of Liberace.
Don’t forget to snap a selfie under the great bronze Weakland Center plaque suitably topping the rear of the building. Before we depart the square, let’s run over to This is It, Milwaukee’s oldest gay bar, for a quick drink. You’ll probably need it.
Now we get back on board and we’re off to the Milwaukee Art Museum. It opened a new special exhibit, “Modern Rebels,” just a week ago. It features 70 stunning works by the who’s who of modern art from Vincent van Gogh to Jackson Pollock. Arshile Gorky’s The Liver is the Cock’s Comb ponders our slavery to passion with his explosive glandular lines and shapes. And don’t forget to genuflect before Mark Rothko’s testament to the tortured soul. There’s lots of LGBT artists in the mix, too. Andy Warhol reminds us of our corporate enslavement to uniformity, a Mao Tse-Tung in-cheek allusion with rows of Campbell’s soup cans.
We’ll glide back to the Third Ward and end our tour at the Public Market. Built on the ruins of the fabled River Queen, another ancient gay bar, it’s still full of exotic fruits and nuts. Let’s have another drink.
