Hey, Miami, Milwaukee can throw a better party for the DNC. Here are 5 reasons why

Chelsey Lewis
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band performs at the Fiserv Forum, Thursday, January 24, 2019.  Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Miami, we're worried about you. That Florida Sun is going to your head.  

You want to host the Democratic National Convention, and you’re trying to take out your competition, Milwaukee, with the kind of half-punched points that got you in trouble in the 2000 presidential election.

One of your donors, Joe Falk, told Politico that Miami can throw a better party for rich people.

“How do you get the donor to dig deeper? Show him a good time,” Falk told Politico. “The donors are here and we know how to treat donors. We have the facilities to make those incredibly wealthy people comfortable. And we know how to throw a good party.” 

Let’s avoid more hanging chads and set the record straight: If there’s one thing Milwaukee knows how to do, it’s have a good time. We’ve been partying since the beer barons rolled kegs down our cobbled streets. Anyone can throw a party when it's all sunshine and rainbows, but we’ve partied through blizzards and decades-long sports-championship droughts.

We’re fueled by the world's best cheese and beer. What kind of a party doesn’t have good cheese and beer?

What’ve you got, Miami? Oranges? Sounds fun — for a kids’ soccer game or Sunday brunch.  

Our brunch involves alcohol that we chase with more alcohol. Do we have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol? Probably. But if you’re going to come at us with this talk of throwing a good party, we’re going to throw back a shot ski and tap another keg. 

Let’s look back on some of our greatest hits. 

Sobelman's serves a Bloody Mary with an entire fried chicken on top.

We put entire fried chickens in our Bloody Marys — and chase them with beer. 

We chase alcohol with more alcohol because you need something to match the meal that comes on top of your Bloody Mary.

At Sobelman’s, the Bloody Beast is topped with our traditional Bloody Mary garnishes — pickles, olives, celery, grape tomatoes, shrimp, Brussels sprouts, pickled mushrooms and onions, cheese wedges and Polish sausage — plus a cheeseburger slider, bacon-wrapped cheese balls and an entire fried chicken. The chicken was battered with New Glarus Spotted Cow beer, by the way. We wash it down with a beer chaser, but maybe you Miami noobs should stick with water.

We can be fancy, too. Look at this beauty.  

The U.S. Bank Fireworks Show light up the sky over the Milwaukee Art Museum on the Lake Michigan July 3.

The Milwaukee Art Museum is a landmark on our lakefront. That’s Lake Michigan — kind of like your ocean, but without the hurricanes, red tides and saltwater. Much fresher and less likely to flood our city out of existence.   

The white-winged Quadracci Pavilion was designed by Santiago Calatrava. You might have seen the building in a little film called “Transformers: Dark  of the Moon.”  

Patrick Dempsey (center, from behind) walks in the Milwaukee Art Museum toward Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Shia LaBeouf (background, left) in a scene from the 2011 movie "Transformers: Dark of the Moon." The art museum "co-starred" as Dempsey's office. "It leaks," he tells LaBeouf in the scene.

The pavilion overlooks our beautiful, freshwater sea and is the host of spectacular gatherings from weddings to the museum's popular MAM After Dark parties. A radio station once hosted a party there that offered unlimited martinis for $30. It went about as well as you’d expect, so we don’t do that anymore. But we can still wine and dine donors next to works by Dale Chihuly and Claude Monet. 

Dick Celebrity, his stage name, the drummer for the Chicago band Rod Tuffcurls and the Bench Press enjoys playing for a crowd in the Windhover Hall area at MAM After Dark.

We host the World’s Largest Music Festival every summer.

Janelle Monae performs at the BMO Harris Pavilion July 6.

Every good party needs good music. Summerfest is 10 days of music along that freshwater gem, Lake Michigan. Nearly one million people pass through the turnstiles to see hundreds of musical acts that in 2018 included the Weeknd, Janelle Monáe, Kesha and Shawn Mendes. The festival’s biggest stage is getting a makeover this year, so it’s sure to be an even better time. 

We drink and tailgate while we’re in line to drink.

In Milwaukee, we can turn anything into a party. Including waiting for another party.  

Brewers fans tailgate outside Miller Park  in April for a game against the Cardinals. The scene in the parking lots outside Miller Park is pretty much the same for every Brewers home game.

I’m sure you’ve heard tell of our tailgating fame — we fire up the grills before Packers games in Green Bay and Brewers games in Milwaukee, no matter the weather or day of the week. If sports are about to happen, we’ve got a brat in one hand and a beer in the other.

But we also bust out our coolers and folding chairs basically anytime there’s a line for something. Here’s a photo from a beer release at Third Space Brewing, when people waited for hours to get a limited-edition beer. What did they do while they waited? Drank beer, of course.

People wait in line at Third Space Brewing Co. on Oct. 27, 2018, for the release of Haunted Barrel, a candy bar porter.

But we’re social drinkers, so these events involve sharing your beer with your line-waiting neighbors. Sharing is caring, Miami.

We have a brand-new arena and the NBA's hottest player right now.

We love Dwyane Wade as much as you do — after all, we nurtured him in his college years at Marquette. But there’s a new kid on the block, and he’s all ours. Steph, can you give us an assist on this one? 

Giannis and the top-of-the-league Milwaukee Bucks play in a new top-of-the-line arena, and it’s across from a new development that includes a brewery, which is ready to host parties with views of that beautiful new arena. 

And we can't forget about Major League Baseball's 2018 National League MVP, Christian Yelich, who we saved from Miami. Do we have two of the best athletes in the country in Milwaukee? Yes, and that's not even counting No. 12 up in Green Bay.

Leave behind the oranges and hurricanes, DNC. Come to Milwaukee, and we’ll roll out the red carpet, the barrel and maybe even the world’s largest cheeseboard