YOU DON'T GET NICE THINGS WHEN YOU'RE FROM MILWAUKEE.

A lot of things can change in fifty years, or a century.

People forget that Milwaukee was poised to be a global super-city at the turn of the 20th century. Milwaukee City Hall was the tallest secular building in the world, and the city had growth and population density that rivaled New York, London and Paris.

It didn’t pan out – seems like it never does for Milwaukee. People forgot about the city that “Feeds and Supplies the World.” Factories closed. Racial discrimination reared its ugly head. The rust belt decay took hold. Affluent folks fled to the suburbs and took their wealth with them, and Milwaukee became a scapegoat for the rest of the state to look down upon.

From time to time, Cold Spring Shops has referred to that industrial collapse.

Fifty years ago, the Bucks won a championship, just before Milwaukee Hamilton's class of 1971 graduated.  Buck rooting interest among the people you see in this photograph varied from a little to a lot, both then, and now.

Some still live in the city, some in the suburbs, a few out of state.  None of us celebrated that first Buck championship by diving into the Milwaukee River, although it was a warm evening that April 30.  "Those kids diving off the bridge into the Milwaukee River – they would have come out with chemical burns if they had tried that in 1971."  Apparently the fishing near the North Avenue bridge has come back too.

A few other errors of that earlier era have been corrected.

I saw 100,000 deliriously giddy people packed into a “Deer District” that sits on top of a scar.

When I moved to Milwaukee nine years ago, that’s what it was – a scar, both metaphorical and physical.

This scar was a reminder of a time when some privileged someones decided to rip out one of the Midwest’s most vibrant African American neighborhoods so they could build a freeway, so that some white folks could get to their homes in the suburbs five minutes more quickly.

And then decades later, when they tore down that ill-conceived Park East Freeway, 24 acres of blighted gravel pit just sat there like a knife through Milwaukee’s heart. When I moved to Milwaukee, I figured that ugly scar would be with us forever.

Misconceived urban expressways as "urban renewal" weren't just a Milwaukee thing; and I'm still skeptical about hoping for sports and entertainment facilities to keep a city vibrant. That Milwaukee loft and office space is cheaper than its counterpart in Chicago, and that more frequent Amtrak service to and from Chicago as well as enhanced telecommunications might make the value proposition for Milwaukee as a place for urban professionals of all ancestries to live and work more favorable.

Now, it would be ridiculous and reductionist to say this NBA title marks a turning point for the city of Milwaukee.

This city still grapples with a legacy of racial discrimination that won’t just go away. It’s still the scapegoat of a state legislature that sees Milwaukee as its perennial punching bag. And a humming decade of businesses reinvesting in Milwaukee has suddenly been slammed into neutral amid the uncertainty of the pandemic.

But last night, Milwaukee finally got to have something nice. And it may not be a panacea, but it reminded us why we keep showing up, and why we keep doing the work.

In Downtown Milwaukee, I saw a vibrant city firing on all cylinders and living up to its full potential. I saw white guys who wear MAGA hats hugging Black guys who wear Black Lives Matter shirts. I saw just a little bit of pride creeping out from under that Midwest veneer of humility.

No, we’re not LA or New York or Miami. We never will be. We don’t want to be.

We’re authentic and awkward and doofy and full of passion. We’re Milwaukee.

Not the northernmost suburb of Chicago, either, even though there's some intriguing baseball involving the Brewers and the White Sox coming up.