Milwaukee's a great town. We love it so much, we've made it our daily business to write about all it has to offer.
But, like any big city, Milwaukee sometimes takes a wrong turn, stumbles a bit or makes a less than stellar decision. From flubbed sports deals to bad municipal decisions and personal errors that have city-wide repercussions, Milwaukee – like all of us – isn't perfect.
Here, in no specific order, are some Brew City moments that have made us all say, "fail."
- Burning down Pizza Man
- Kilbourn's canal to the Mississippi River
- The All-Star Game tie
- Removing the skating rink at Mayfair
- Brewers losing Paul Molitor to free agency
- 9 p.m. liquor buying cutoff
- Sheriff Clarke getting on board with the idea of guns in classrooms
- A Chinese mall at Northridge
- Failure of Pabst City idea
- Beating Frank Jude
- Rebranding part of Walker's Point as the Fifth Ward
- Merging the Journal and Sentinel
- The idea of tearing down the Hoan Bridge
- Letting Phillip Morris buy Miller
- Allowing the Braves to leave (though, on the upside, we got the Brewers!)
- Building the Bradley Center to specifications of a hockey team that never materialized
- Tearing down Park East Freeway without a plan
- Mark Chmura attending a post-prom party
- Changing the name of PM Bedroom Gallery to Penny Mustard
- Not building Miller Park Downtown
- The deaths in police custody of Derek Williams and Ernest Lacy
- Allowing Oriental Drugs to close
- Trying to rehab rather than replace the U.S. Cellular Arena
- Angry Bango Bucks logo
- Not building Harley-Davidson Museum at Schlitz Park
- Polluting of Milwaukee River
- Allowing ourselves to be the second most segregated city in the U.S.
- Outdoor patio ban (now thankfully rescinded)
- Shoddy restoration of City Hall
- The whale wall
- Closing the Pioneer Village at Milwaukee Public Museum
- Getting rid of the Brewers' ball and glove logo
- Firing Sue Black
- Firing Frank Busalacchi
- Tearing down the old Coast Guard Station at the lakefront
- New Admirals logo
- Brewers signing Jeffrey Hammonds
- One-way streets Downtown
- Coffee Trader closing
- Scrapping the high-speed rail
- Ald. Bob Donovan
- Tearing down Sydney Hih without a plan
- Concealed carry
- BoDeans sans Sammy
- Roundabouts in a city where most drivers have no idea how to use them
- Mayor Barrett not taking security along to State Fair
- Replacing Bernie's chalet with a condo at Miller Park
- Painting Cream City brick buildings
- The loss of Schwartz Bookshops
- Demolishing the Republican Hotel for a parking lot
- John Norquist/Marilyn Figueroa scandal
- Police chief Art Jones
- Razing the Chicago & Northwestern train depot at the lakefront
- Public Museum money scandal
- Bronze Fonz's turquoise pants
- Allowing Barry Alvarez to coach the Badgers in the Rose Bowl (not Milwaukee, sure, but too big to ignore)
- Asian carp invasion
- Putting the Brewers logo on the Admirals uniforms
- Blowing up the Love Rock
- Pre-1997 tattoo ban
- Trading Ray Allen
- MKE (the magazine)
- The Avalon Theater debacle
- The Milwaukee flag
- The Talgo fiasco
- The squabbling Violent Femmes
- The LED eyesore on the Clock Tower Building
- Cover band overload at summer festivals
- Roving teen looters
- Elton at Harley's 100th anniversary
- Riots over Reitman and Mueller's Cabbage Patch Kids drop
- WTMJ losing Mike Gousha
- The Grand Avenue mess
- Kooky Cooky House klosing at Capitol Court
- That giant parking structure on Downer
- The shrinking newsroom at the daily paper
- Losing the Circus Parade ... again
- Marcus squatting on Downtown theater
- No more Asian Moon Festival
- Michael McGee threatening to roll burning tires onto the freeway
- Letting the train bar ride the rails out of town
- Cops letting Dahmer go
- Bucks drafting, but not signing, Julius "Dr. J" Erving in 1972
- Eliminating funding for the public information officer position with the MPD
- "Genuine Milwaukee" slogan
- Journal Sentinel vendetta against MPD Chief Ed Flynn
- Bayshore Town Center's outdoor mall in February
- Ending Riversplash
- Southridge trying to remove bus stops
- The Don and Bo Show
- Mike McGee Jr. extortion plot
- Dolphins in the South Side natatorium
- The Bridge Wars between Juneautown and Kilbourntown
- Demolition of the old Third Ward
- Police raid and subsequent closing of Yano's all ages club
- Affair between Chief Ed Flynn and journalist Jessica McBride
- The deterioration of the old Soldiers Home
- Brewers passing on Barry Larkin, Barry Bonds, Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro to draft B.J. Surhoff No. 1 overall in the 1985 MLB Amateur Draft
- Verge Music Festival
- MacArthur Square