The Corona Diaries Vol 11: The focus is sharp in the city

There's a Tumblr called Sleazy Madison which features nothing but newspaper ads. Most of them are for X-rated films at theaters and for strip clubs like this one.

But they also have ads for non-pornographic films through the years and live performers and concerts that are pretty neat. Here's one for Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff from 1949.

I take it that the Orpheum had recently had air conditioning installed. And from 1962 we have an ad for Phyllis Diller coming to town.

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This "Babushcats" photo made me think of my grandmother and several great aunts. I am planning on giving one to my cousin as a retirement gift soon.

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"What's new in Madison?" is a question I hear a lot from friends and family. The first thing that comes to mind now that we no longer have Scott Walker actively trying to screw over Madison and Milwaukee at every turn is that Madison continues to grow.

Our population seems to gain 3,000 people, give or take a couple hundred, every year. While it's not Sun Belt level of population growth, it is growth nonetheless. If things didn't dramatically change last year because of the virus, we're sitting at 261,000-262,000 people. By no means a metropolis but nicely medium-sized.

For all the problems growth brings with it, it's much better than to be hemorrhaging population. I was in St. Louis back in 2017 with some friends and there was much to recommend it. For example, we ate some wonderful barbeque at Pappy's Smokehouse and drank some great beer at Urban Chestnut. Plus there's that arch thingy and the Old Courthouse across the street from it. And it's on the Mighty Mississippi with all that history. St. Louis was the gateway to the West back in the day, after all. But it was really depressing to see all of the vacant buildings with their windows boarded up wherever we went.

We ate at a restaurant south of downtown in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. The street was lined with red brick 4 flats and every other one was boarded up on the 2 blocks we walked. The city has lost about two-thirds of its population since the 1950s so it's no surprise that there are so many empty buildings. A lovely city in many ways but depressing in others.

Madison is the opposite of St. Louis. With a growing population and a fair number of IT/biomedical jobs, there are a lot of apartments going up with studios often going for $1,200+/month. It seems crazy that people are paying in rent roughly the same amount as my monthly mortgage payment. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. The average home value in the city is now north of $300,000. Not in the same league as Seattle or San Francisco, I grant you, but that's a good chunk of change in these parts.

For a taste of all the building going on around town, check out this article.

It focuses on the area to the northeast of the Capitol on E. Washington, a.k.a. – Highway 151, and includes some before and after photos. In addition to the new buildings documented in the article, there's more to come in that corridor. E.g. - new offices in the picture immediately below and more apartments in the following one.

(I cannot but help think this one is going to lead to the demise of many a bird.)

And on the Capitol Square, this was just approved:

The list goes on. And not just downtown, campus, and environs. Apartments with first floor retail are going up everywhere. My neighborhood's new library went into the ground floor of a shiny new building with apartments on top. The grand opening was slated for 12 March of last year, the same day the state was ordered into lockdown so I've never been inside. (Although my mother has, curiously enough.) Instead, I pick up items from a table out by the back entrance.

It's hard to keep up with all of the new buildings even though Madison is fairly small as developers practice their diablerie on every side of town. Every time I bike through neighborhoods where I lived in a student slum while I was in college, it's ever more gentrified. (But we're woefully short on "affordable" housing which is another hot topic these days.)

But that's what living in the city is all about, right? The churn of people and places and ideas with the familiar giving way to the new and the novel.

There's been a little comfort to be had lately as a couple new ghost signs have emerged from the rubble.

While I am on the subject of historic Madison, I found this neat website - https://maps.sco.wisc.edu/panorama/ - which is a panoramic view of the city from the Capital dome in the 1890s. There are some clickable spots that allow you to see that site in the current day. It's sad to think of all the lovely buildings that were torn down for parking ramps.

The bonus photo this time is of a historic marker. It's just off of County I north of Madison on, would you believe it, Easy Street. I have driven into and out of Madison on County I countless times over the past 20+ years and seen the brown signs with "HISTORICAL MARKER" emblazoned on them but never bothered to investigate the marker until this past fall.

I had no idea that the lines "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone" were written by a Cheesehead who grew up just north of Madison.