[Closed] Milwaukee - whats it like?

Very hot in summer and very cold in winter, my cousin lived in Minneapolis which is very similar climate wise

Funky, a decent downtown that people actually go to (unusual in many US cities), lots of uni students/coffee shops (see here for example http://www.thecometcafe.com ), fancy art gallery if I remember (also an advertising museum, I think), redeveloped/rehabbed warehouse districts, nice lakeside parks etc. Chicago quite close by with all of its facilities. Cheese...

Downsides: southside Milwaukee is reasonably rough. Absolutely freaking freezing Baltic brass monkeys cold in winter - wet and cold. Fanatical about sports. You'll be needing a car every day.

I travelled a fair amount around the US and it was definitely one of the places that I could see myself living in. Don't know anything about what the mountain biking scene is like - think it might be pretty flat. But strong hunting lobby in that part of the country means that access to natl/state forests etc is pretty good.

I spent a summer there 16 years ago. It had a mix of heavy industry (Harley davidson etc), agriculture / food industries (Miller brewery + others) and a sizeable service sector.
Being by the lake (the reason I was there), gives it a real [i]seaside[/i] feel to it and there are some very nice suburban areas to the north of downtown. The university adds a more cosmopolitan feel to the place, and it's near enough to Chicago to satisfy those real big city desires.
Overall, I quite liked it, but it's the only place in the us I've stayed for more than a couple of weeks.

Thanks for the replies guys - I've visited the states before but only the tourist bits in Florida. Like the sound of the seaside feeling as I'm on the coast in Wales at the moment and one of my worries was missing the sea.
I like the sound of it being 'small' as I'm not really a big city person and love the sound of the sports.
Glad to hear the general consenus is positive!

I don't know what state sales and income tax (if any?) is like in WI. Health insurance is f'ing expensive if you don't get it through employer. American housing stock is often pathetically insulated imhe.

wisconsin is very flat ,try the wisconsin dells for a weeekend away great place for the family ...nice mexican at the start of the main street in wisconsin dells by the big mcdonalds

dairy farming is big round there too

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n't believe no one has posted this yet.....[/url]

or this:

Milwaukee is hit by one of their own missiles at the start of WW3, then haunted by the locals.

Not a good place to be after sundown.

My Mrs is from near there.

It's not a bad city from a Mid Western US perspective, but it's still the Mid West. That is, very different from what you're used to if you've been in the UK all this time. Or even Europe, to be honest.

Like most US cities* it's very spread out, seems like endless suburban roads and traffic lights with either houses or giant parking lots with big megastores or clusters of small shops here and there. From what I've seen of the Downtown area it's similar but a bit more dense. A few malls and some cool stuff (the kids 'museum', the art gallery). The lakeshore is ok, a bit waterfront-y.

Wisconsin itself reminds me of northern France without the French towns. In that area it's undulating arable land with occasional stands of trees or a spot of marsh - for miles and miles. There are however quite a few places of natural beauty where you can forget all of the above. Horicon Marsh or the lakeshore away from the towns, for example, are wide open spaces crammed with wildlife that reflect the seasons really vividly... in summer they are hot and sultry, buzzing with insects and flowers; in November when we usually go it's bleak with skyfuls of massing geese on their way out; in the winter it's just brill. Wisconsin isn't spectacular scenery by any stretch but the wild bits are beautiful in their own way and if you concentrate you can really imagine Voyageurs paddling their way through meeting Indians 🙂

Up North Wisconsin is much less populated and in places quite Lapland-esque, although pretty wooded in others. Lots of outdoor opportunities though, as the natives are outdoor mad - as long as you want to hunt, fish, 'hike' or snowmobile or something. MTBing is dire as it is in much of the US. Trails are only on public land which can be in short supply locally - there is a very large National Forest but it's a few hours from Milwaukee.

I'd say Wisconsin has a nice way of life, but from what I can tell it's just the one way of life on offer. If you don't like it you are SOL 🙂 It must be better than that in the big city tho I am sure 🙂 Life in America is a strange thing.

BTW as I understand it the rough parts of Milwaukee are really quite rough and deprived, it seems to have a lot of social problems in those areas. I think some of the school districts are the very worst performing in the entire US.

* this is from a European perspective, it all makes a lot more sense to the locals

The 2004 remake of Dawn of Dead is set there. It looks bad after a Zombie Apocolypse.