This is something I wrote a year-and-a-half ago and only showed to a few people. Time to set it loose, I guess.

I have never moved so slowly through an airport.

It also feels like I’ve never seen an airport so sparsely populated, but I quickly realize that feeling isn’t accurate. Pittsburgh is probably the least-full airport I’ve been in, but I was free to zip through PIT’s nearly empty concourses at my usual, nonstop, breakneck, airport pace. MKE, on the other hand, has exactly too many people for me to weave around — mostly because so many of them are spread out and moving with absolute disregard for the alacrity-based desires of their fellow travellers (i.e. me, and only me, apparently).

I could slalom through the human asteroid field, but no one else is. I’d look like an asshole.

I give up, slow to what feels like a crawl, and follow the herd. I’m mostly looking at my phone, only glancing up to check signage and keep myself headed toward the Lyft pickup area.

Stepping out of the terminal is like being hit in the face with a warm, wet rag. It’s Friday, the 22nd of September and I’m in Milwaukee, but the transition from air conditioning to outside feels like late spring in my native Georgia. It is very, very unlike my adoptive home of Denver.

Walking to the bus this morning it was cool; just at the point that I could get away with wearing the tshirt and shorts that the internet told me I’d want for Milwaukee. It will be cool and rainy all weekend in Denver. In Milwaukee, every day will be picnic weather.

My driver doesn’t have a lot to say, so I crane my neck around in silence, trying to drink in as much of the character of the city as I can get from the interstate.

My impression is of a city from the third quarter of the last century. I mean nothing pejorative by this; it’s just what I see. I’m speeding past a low skyline that looks like the intros to television shows from the late 1970s which I can only fuzzily remember. Is this where Archie Bunker lived? Barney Miller was set here, maybe? Good Times was down the lake in Chicago; it was a more vertical city even then.

The landscape is dominated by single family homes. All at least two story; all narrow and long; all with steeply pitched roofs to slough off the snow which isn’t here yet this year, a week from October.

Distributed throughout the sprawling neighborhoods, at random so far as my stranger’s perspective can discern, are larger brick buildings. Five or eight or thirteen stories high, with footprints ranging from a few houses to a city block. Many have stonework which is visible, though not in detail, even from the interstate. They don’t make them like this anymore, but these seem mostly in good repair. I see only one with boarded windows. It is one of the largest, and I hope that it isn’t being left to rot so that it can be “justifiably” demolished by a developer — a favored ploy in the frenzied real estate markets of Atlanta and Denver.

Moments later I’m dropped off in front of my Airbnb. It’s a five story block of flats wedged into a neighborhood like the ones I’ve just driven past. It’s clearly new construction, and it’s clearly standing where two houses used to be. I feel a little guilty and worried about the boarded-up, slumbering brick giant from moments before.

But Milwaukee’s historic architecture is someone else’s concern. My concern at the moment is more human and immediate: I’m an hour early for check-in, it’s almost 2PM, and I haven’t eaten yet today. My standard operating procedure when visiting a new city is to scope it out via Google maps beforehand. I have followed that procedure in preparation for this visit, and I have planned for this eventuality.

I shoulder my bag, make an about face, and head north on Oakland Avenue. Two blocks up at Irving, I hang a right and go one block toward Lake Michigan. This puts me on the corner at Farwell Avenue, in front of Comet Cafe. Based on their menu and website, it’s my kind of place.

I walk inside and am greeted by a sign inviting me to sit anywhere I like, so long as it’s at a clean table. Can do – and will – but it’s early afternoon, things aren’t crowded, and there’s no one coming in behind me so I look around for a second before taking a seat.

The space is almost entirely divided by a wall. There’s counter space and bar style seating on both sides of the wall, making the general plan of the cafe a U shape. There’s booth seating along both outer walls.

I’m standing on the right-hand side of the U, which appears to be the breakfast side of the house. Behind the bar in front of me are coffee grinders, coffee-making implements, and a pastry case. There’s no one working or seated at this bar, and only two or three tables on this side of the cafe are occupied.

But over on the left-hand side of the U every table, and all the barstools I can see, are occupied. I know from Comet’s menu that they serve beer and cocktails, so it seems safe to assume that the boozy side of the house is over there.

I take a two-top along the front wall. I’m looking at the end of the breakfast bar. It’s covered in stickers for this place and for other places whose names I don’t recognize; I assume other local joints. One bright yellow sticker proclaims

WE’RE A DRINKING CAFE WITH A SMALL SANDWICH PROBLEM

…which doesn’t really jibe with their menu, but it is a quarter past two and 90% of the clientele are on the drinking side of the house.

Once upon a time my go-to for judging a breakfast place (which this isn’t, strictly) was the benedict. That’s harder to do now that I’m vegetarian. I go with a simple, standard breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and sourdough toast.

My server is a blue-eyed blonde who has given her natural, wholesome, upper-midwestern farmgirl looks a hipster spin. She’s in a Flashdance-leaning grey tee and denim short-shorts, with a smattering of tattoos on her arms and legs. The only tattoo I can clearly discern is peeking out from the right leg of her shorts: the bottom part of a Godzilla tableau of some kind. I can see part of his tail, and ‘ゴジラ’ over a cartoon-style explosion. It looks like good work. In Denver, a lot of ladies who go for the hip “woke up like this” look choose cowboy boots, and it doesn’t work by my lights. My server has chosen shiny red Air Jordans, and it’s pretty rad.

The daily specials board is written in a decent approximation of haiku:

Tasty fried walleye Served with homemade tartar sauce French fries, rye toast, yum

Breakfast arrives, and it’s substantial. There are way more than the promised two eggs on my plate, and a pile of hash browns which verges on the mountainous. This is fantastic.

The hash browns are between crispy and crunchy on the outside, and between soft and creamy on the inside. Doped with a little salt and a lot of Cholula, they are excellent. I realize that I should have ordered the eggs over and put them atop the potatoes, but they’re still pretty good scrambled. The cold brewed coffee is excellent: smooth, but with some smoke. I believe I will miss this place when I leave town.

I finish eating and feel infinitely better. It’s almost three o’clock, which is check-in time, so I walk back to my Airbnb. My instructions are to use the building callbox to get in, but a nice lady who is out walking her dog (and is terrible at operational security) volunteers to let me in as soon as I walk up. Her dog is happy to see me, so I guess that means I’m good people?

This act of kindness puts me in a tiny, momentary quandry. I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen after I use the callbox, with respect to checking in. But I know that a lot of people do Airbnb on the down-low, and I don’t want to (possibly) blow my host’s cover to a busybody. I decide to cheerily say thanks and walk on in.

I don’t know what unit of the building I’m staying in, but I go with the assumption that the number I was supposed to call on the callbox matches the number of the unit I’m looking for. I get to the door, knock, and count to ten. No response. No sounds from inside. I try the handle and it’s unlocked, so I step in and say hello. I’m greeted only by the air conditioner’s fan. The decor matches the pictures on Airbnb, so I call it good and unpack.