OK, here are a couple of shots from my recent trip to Milwaukee. Highlights include a meal at the Comet Cafe (their motto: "slow food"
http://thecometcafe.com/COMETabout.html ), where they bring you a plate of free bacon w/every pitcher of beer, and winner of the local weekly paper's annual award, "Best Hangover Breakfast"), and an hour spent at Kochanski's Concertina Beer Hall
http://www.beer-hall.com/ where the owner regaled us with a story of shooting it out with robbers who met the business-end of his Glock .45. After listening to this, I was almost ready to try-out his "shot-ski," which sounds like an Eastern European victim of the aforementioned robbery, but isn't.
"Well, then, what is it?" What do you think it is? You can find the answer on the website, if you discover what it is, post it in the thread along with your reason, "why I want to become a victim of the "shot-ski," and we'll all enjoy a good laugh.
We arrived about 15 minutes too-late to enjoy a rockabilly band that day, but Andy (the owner) assured us if we wanted to come-back another time, that they have live music multiple times a week. The band members were milling around after their set, and I had a hard time deciding if I had stumbled-into a filming of "Reservoir Dogs II," or "Walk the Line." Black was the color of choice and between the string ties and the thin black ties worn by the band members, you wouldn't have enough material to cover Courtney Cox's buttocks.
The building had a patina of use and wear consistent with a neglected working-class watering hole within walking distance of the Rust Belt factories at shift change. A wood floor that resembled the gym you played dodgeball in when you were 10, except not so kept-up, a ceiling with plaster cracks precariously-sagging open to reveal dark spaces between the smoke-yellowed plaster and the second floor, and wood-framed windows bearing the deterioration of both frames and casings, and sealed against the brutal Lake Michigan winds by huge sheets of lexan screwed to their insides, and a traditional wood bar covering about half of the one side of the bar wall, and still-standing, despite the best intentions and efforts of 3 or 4 generations of neighborhood drinkers trying to collapse it, an elbow at a time...
Yeah, it had ambience. Andy is in the beginning stages of constructing a beer garden on the side of the original building, and hopefully it will be ready in-time for Oktoberfest. The calendar in Milwaukee seems to be "beer-centric," which is OK by me.
So, the pics are 1] a creation by a lifelong motorcyclist, who said, "my ride is never finished," and who offered the first tune-up free to new customers, as he was a bike shop owner, and 2] something which looks eerily-similar to something else, I just can't put my finger on what that is (look at the heart and not the fairing).
We all have our ideas of what makes a bike that meets our individual needs. I'm glad to see what those bikes are, even if I didn't care to own it.