If it's a summer Thursday night in Milwaukee, there's really only one place to be: Jazz in the Park.
The word has gotten out in a big way, as I found out this past Thursday when I attended Jazz in the Park for the first time this season.
Dave and I got home from work Thursday around 5:30 and were out the door before 6:00. We hit up Metro Market for some food and wine and got down to Cathedral Square Park as quickly as we could. The lucky people who work right downtown can stake out a spot on the lunch hour but for the rest of us, we can only hope there'll still be room.
As we approached the park with our food and blanket in hand, we could hear the jazz booming off the surrounding buildings. I was excited - there's nothing like live, sexy music under the stars with your sweetie or some pals and a glass (or three) of wine.
We saw right away that we weren't going to have a spot to sit – the park was packed. People were even sitting in the street, across the street, and on the medians in the middle of the street. This was a definite change from last year – check out this picture from last year compared to this year's pics.
We were very hungry so we were prepared to sit wherever we had to. We ended up on a sloped patch of dirt in one of the corners of the park and we dug into our sushi and sandwiches and pistachios.
Then I realized that I hadn't brought a corkscrew with me for the wine I'd bought. Silly, silly girl. I was obviously in the right place – people had open bottles of wine everywhere. I watched as a man about 20 feet away struggled to open his bottle, and once he finally got it open, I trotted up to him and asked to use his corkscrew. I made fun of him for not being very good at opening wine and then, sure enough, I couldn't open mine, either. It was the shoddy corkscrew he had. Dave had to come over and use his muscles to get it open. 
But they were very nice, gracious people!
After we ate, we decided to do a lap around the park to seek out a few people we knew. I ran into an old coworker, and then we chatted with my dad and a colleague of his for awhile, and then we met up with the lovely Lauren for a bit. We saw Charlie, too! It's funny once you know people how often you run into them. 
Lauren made a very good point as we were talking about how fun Jazz in the Park is: this is a free event that is HUGELY popular in Milwaukee. The County Parks are having all kinds of financial troubles. She suggested that if everyone at Jazz in the Park contributed just $1 or $2 each time they came, the city could make a little money off of it! We're not sure how exactly this could be done, but we said we'd be willing to go around with a bucket.
Anyway, I had a great time at Jazz in the Park and I hope to get back a lot this summer – it's definitely the place to see and be seen each week!
Leave it to karma that you'd make fun of someone for not knowing how to open a bottle of wine easily, and then YOU have a tough time of it too!
Posted by: Amanda | June 20, 2006 at 09:35 AM
My girlfriend (?) and I went to the MSO playing in one of the parks on Saturday. It was a reasonable turnout, I thought, and pretty cool for something that's free. Reminded me of living in San Francisco, where there's lots of free stuff to do all the time. It's good to see us getting some of that sorta thing.
If you go to the parks' website (countyparks.com) and click on the Summer's Best link in the middle of the page (it's the purple and green thing), you can see a whole calendar of stuff, including Jazz in the Park.
Posted by: Andre | June 20, 2006 at 09:42 AM
Yeah, it was only my second time @ Jazz that night. It's always a perk to have friends who work downtown and can get off early to snag a good spot!
And stop stalking me Erin! It's really very unbecoming for an engaged woman to be doing that! :) ha ha j/k
Posted by: Charlie Nash | June 20, 2006 at 11:45 AM
I'm looking forward to hitting up Jazz in the Park one of these weeks. I tend to go to River Rhythms more often because there's more places to sit. Jazz was really fun a few years ago but now it gets too packed!
Posted by: Derek | June 20, 2006 at 03:45 PM
Jazz in the Park rocks ... I was there too! Can't believe I didn't spot you in that crazy crowd - HA!
Posted by: Audra | June 20, 2006 at 07:15 PM
I haven't been to Jazz in the Park in years. We surburbanites tend to get frightened away by the crowd and parking thing. But then again, we did Riversplash with absolutely no problem. Hmm....perhaps we'll give it a try one of these Thursdays. After all, it's what I love about Milwaukee!
Posted by: Karen | June 21, 2006 at 01:41 PM