Madison

I recently spent a long weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. This is a part of a larger effort I’m making this year to see more of the Midwest.

In the years I lived along the east coast, I had opportunities to drive through and play tourist in a wide variety of cities and towns. Pretty much everything in the stretch from Boston to Charleston. There’s certainly some gaps that need filling in– I’ve been assured that seeing the Biltmore in Asheville is an essential component of western North Carolinian culture– but I do believe that I’ve been exposed to a pretty representative spread of east coast cultures.

The only other important context is that I have already visited Milwaukee and Minneapolis/St. Paul. I intend to revisit the former, and already have plans to revisit the latter soon.

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Getting to Madison is the weird part.

The complete lack of a rail connection is jarring. Buffalo’s Amtrak station was once the cover photo for an article about the nation’s 10 worst operational stations. It still had a station, though.

It’s also anachronistic. There were trains running specifically between Chicago and Madison for a century. The rails are still there. The state capitol was built using taxes levied on railroad companies. There were… not just efforts, or plans, but awarded grants to rebuild the rail connection. Which the state government nixed. Between that, and all the headlines I read about the universities’ budgets being slashed, I have to assume that the Republican Party just wants to kill the city entirely.

I have to give it to the people of Madison though, the rails are far from dead. I don’t often see abandoned infrastructure embraced by the living community so well. The tracks now form pedestrian and bike paths in and out of downtown. I saw men fishing from the rail bridges. Neighborhoods and blocks, like Machinery Row, have moved on but not forgotten.

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There was little choice but intercity buses for getting to Madison. Van Galder seems to be a bit of a local thing, so I guess I should count myself lucky for the authentic experience. Personally though, I am no longer in the life phase where I (and my back) are appreciative of multi-hour bus rides.

The bus dumps you out at the UW campus, but it’s a (by my standards) short walk between there and the real ‘downtown’. I have to recommend staying in the vicinity of the State Capitol, that is where you will find literally all amenities and restaurants. The college town is definitely cool, but the businesses there palpably skew young.

That’s all I’ve got to say about the campus.

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Central to the vicinity of the State Capitol is, of course, the State Capitol. It’s built like a plus sign; the governor’s/attorney general’s offices are in the east wing on the ground floor; the first floor houses the supreme court (east wing), a hearing room (north), the senate (south), and the assembly (west). There are free tours every hour, and besides that, you’re free to come and go any time.

The State Capitol is situated on a hill between Lakes Mendota and Monona, at the center of a green square. The roads surrounding it are practically pedestrian-only; there’s a shocking lack of vehicle traffic running through. In effect then, the pedestrian square grows to the first row of surrounding businesses, then down State Street (towards the college town) which is dense with cute little shops.

People pour out of… somewhere… to fill this square with picnickers, graduates taking celebratory photos, tourists, outdoorsy folks of all sorts, and young families working some energy out of their little tykes. It’s honestly an idyllic community.

Surrounding this public space are some decently tall developments; mostly banks, hotels, museums, and ‘who-knows-what’s situated over first floor restaurants. The skyline’s height then plummets. A 10 minute walk will find you in the thick of either suburban sprawl or, as noted above, the very young-feeling college town. I really don’t understand where all the people came from! Madison feels very ‘small town’.

It’s worthwhile to note that we caught a weekend with the farmers’ market, so perhaps it’s not always this populous. It still would be the sort of society that urban planners dream of.

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There seems to be a pretty good bus system within the city. I didn’t use it, I read online that they don’t take cash at all stops, and decided that the system was too complicated to figure out to be worthwhile for ~2 rides.

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There is an thriving craft beer and liquor industry. Great Dane Pub, Working Draft (technically only had it canned), Young Blood, and State Line Distillery all are prominent offerings. Wisconsin of course generally has a great scene, and specifically is famous for New Glarus. We wondered into Lucille one night and had the opportunity to sample more Wisconsinite offerings; their ‘brewery of the month’ was Third Space in Milwaukee.

The coffee industry was less impressive. There are the typical urban offerings: Starbucks, Collectivo, etc. Wonderstate was good, although it feels less like a local spot and more like the above, bog-standard, urban offerings. Michelangelo’s was an eclectic venue, but simply did not serve good coffee.

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Just north of downtown is a neighborhood that I would label as ‘pretty awesome’. Great pedestrian infrastructure, great access to the aforementioned craft beer and liquor industry, and the graffiti/pamphlets suggest their politics align with my own.

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The fun lessons I came away from the city was: badgers and eagles.

The city puts badgers everywhere. Like sitting on Lady Wisconsin’s head. Apparently the lead miners who settled here seemed like badgers to settlers moving further west, since they lived underground in the shallow mines they dug.

But Old Abe steals the show. A war hero, joining the Wisconsin militia into the Civil War. He survived the battlefields, came home, and was locked in the basement of the State Capitol. Which eventually suffered a paint fire. He died of smoke inhalation. They put a statuesque replica of Old Abe watching over the Chamber, but surely he should be up there on the statue. Actually just bring Lady Wisconsin’s down, put up a giant eagle in her place.