The ABC's of Milwaukee

... And other fine obstructions to traffic. Street festivals are the synthesis of two things that make Milwaukee what it is: strong neighborhood identities and festivals for the sake of having fun. Brady Street Festival is going ahead, and drivers will just have to wait.

Milwaukee is cultural and economic partners with the big metropolis to our south, although our relationship can get complicated at times, like close siblings.

The bustling Galloping Ghost Arcade in Chicago is better known, but Milwaukee has its kid brother, the 125-machine Garcade, founded by the hard-working Gar Nelson. Later in the evening, head to the rock-club-themed X-Ray Arcade and bar on the South Side, where you can play classic consoles and arcade machines.

He’s a construction worker who lives with his mom, but he’s also a superhero. Milverine, a Milwaukee guy who looks like Wolverine, walks around Downtown and the near South Side with his shirt off, and he’s strongly embraced his life as a local celebrity. He’s proof that if you believe in yourself, anything is possible.

It’s not all about music festivals in Milwaukee, but it often is. Between the great and small, there is the decidedly medium-sized, including the venerable Jazz in the Park, where you can soak up jazz on summer evenings at Cathedral Square. Chill on the Hill may hold the title of most-recommended small festival in town because of its overall chillness.

Of all the bars in town, and there are many, the quiet, tasteful, retro cocktail lounge At Random, which specializes in ice cream-based drinks, may be the most distinctive. If that’s not your thing, Milwaukee has the highest bar-to-grocery-store ratio in the country, so you’re never far from a horse of a different color.

What do you do when you’re a historian but also a part of history? Cameron, a lynching survivor and self-taught scholar, became an activist and lecturer and founded the American Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee in 1984 at the site of an old boxing gym.

Messing around in the Milwaukee River is so popular that multiple organizations/businesses cater to the sport, including the Urban Ecology Center, a group of nature centers. Overall, the Downtown section of the river is friendly to small craft out on a pleasure cruise.

To balance out big blockbuster festivals like Summerfest, smaller occasions like the wintry craft-focused Mittenfest (cozy!) and the garlicky Garlic Fest -- basically a restaurant festival for Walker’s Point -- keep it more relaxed.

Milwaukee neighborhoods can be like fiefdoms within themselves with strong identities and loyalties, places like Washington Heights, Bronzeville, the upper and lower East Sides, and hip Bay View, which has taken off in the past 15 years.

This annual spring milestone is the unofficial start of the warm season, and some kind employers treat it as a holiday. No matter how chilly it is, the tailgating rivals Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

O the heyday of polka and rolling out the barrel is long past, but you can still catch the special blend of Eastern European folk dance at the Old German Beer Hall Downtown and a few other places. See the Mike Schneider Band for more traditional oom-pah and The Squeezettes for polkified popular music.

Cars, highway directions, and hours-long gridlock are not a defining component of Milwaukee culture. This isn’t SNL’s “The Californians” or even Chicago, making it easy to access whatever daytime and nighttime activities you please. The graceful Hoan Bridge, for example, makes jumping from Downtown to the Bay View neighborhood and vital Kinnickinnic Avenue a breeze.

The week-and-a-half-long summer music festival, the world’s largest, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to massive celebrations at the lakefront. They hit one after the other during the warmer months, such fetes as Irish Fest, Festa Italiana, and Indian Summer.

In a town with a lot of bad weather, there’s always someone eager to discuss it while browsing the cereal aisle. As a result, Milwaukee’s gregariousness can catch recent transplants off-guard.

Mr. Baseball himself is famous as much for his chutzpah and Johnny Carson appearances as his baseball announcing. A native Milwaukeean and former Milwaukee Brave, he’s manned the radio mic for the Brewers since 1971.

The Milwaukee Art Museum keeps getting better and better, having completed the last round of renovations in 2015. The work tended to parts of the structure not updated by the striking Santiago Calatrava addition of 2001, a piece of art in its own right.

Somewhere in town there’s a cask, buried by the late Byron Preiss, that contains a key, part of his esoteric scavenger hunt book The Secret. Anyway, that’s what hobbyists believe. Find it and $1,000 is yours along with a precious stone. Simple, right?

The sweet, grainy scent of beer brewing hearkens back to the Milwaukee of the early 20th Century when children ran through the streets (literally) carrying pails of beer for machine shop employees. Not old enough to drink but certainly old enough to turn a quick buck.

The sprawling Wisconsin State Fair, home to such terrifying carnival rides as the classic Zipper, is an annual tradition tying the city to rural Wisconsin and its dairy industry. At the heart of the celebration is the towering “cream puff” treat and debates over how to best eat one.