Bastille Days

Milwaukee is supposedly the City of Festivals. I don't know if they came up with that themselves, or if people legitimately believe that Milwaukee holds it down with outdoor entertainment, but I have come to expect a lot. After witnessing the size of Summerfest, I was starting to believe that this place really was good at festivals.

Then I went to Bastille Days...

The only French thing at Bastille Days.

Bastille Days is supposedly "North America's largest outdoor French themed festival", which has led me, Dan, and Maya to the conclusion that there are no other French themed festivals in North America. Bastille Days was pretty big, but it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. No wait, je sais ce qui lui manquait. ANYTHING FRENCH.

These people are listening to American music, drinking MGD, eating chicken fingers, and pretending to like France. 

If there wasn't a replica of the Eiffel Tower, then it could have easily changed themes: Milwaukee Artists Festival, Milwaukee Music Festival, Milwaukee Food Festival. They aren't the catchiest titles, but they are significantly more accurate. The length of the festival was pretty large, and there were two or three stages, but the tents had a random collection of food (pulled pork sandwiches are from Provence, right?) and merchandise (France is all about the African tribal art) and other vendors (it's very French to pay to take pictures on oversized sofas or determine your couple compatibility through handwriting tests). The live music was fun, and people were dancing in the crowd, but I don't really consider Elvis a French icon. I could be wrong though. Probably.

This was pretty legit - the whole picture was made with sidewalk chalk.

I seriously cannot imagine this festival being less coordinated to its theme. The people of France (and Canada - oh hey Quebec!) should be outraged that this counts as a French festival. Maya, Dan, and I spent about twenty minutes walking up and down the length of the event wondering whether anyone in Milwaukee had ever actually visited France before we decided to ditch Bastille Days and find our own entertainment. It was great people watching though - Maya and I realized that we really ought to invest in animal print jumpsuits. They are hottttt right now.

Cafe Benelux

We wandered around a bit and eventually happened upon the Third Ward which is still the only area of Milwaukee that I really know. We went to dinner at Cafe Benelux where I had a delicious Asiago Chicken sandwich with pesto aioli (if there was a pesto god, I would worship it).

Stairs leading to open rooftop seating at Cafe Benelux.

Cafe Benelux serves their beer in beer-specific glasses, so naturally Dan ordered the coolest one:

He had some trouble figuring out how to drink it at first, but he figured it out eventually.

After dinner, we went across the street to Wicked Hop to watch the Brewers game, and we had a very exciting celebrity sighting! Jessica Szohr (Vanessa from Gossip Girl) was sitting at the table next to us. Unfortunately, I was facing the wrong direction for staring at her, but she was definitely stunning in real life. She was surrounded by guys, so she didn't get a chance to give Dan her number, but such is life. Next time, definitely.

Later in the night, we ran into Melissa and her triplet sisters on Water Street. It was really fun to meet her sisters, and there is no doubt that they could switch off at work and no one would know. We went to a really cool bar called Trinity that looked like it belonged in London, and I finally got to dance (now they know they're my real friends). So Bastille Days itself wasn't a hit, but I'm really glad that we went.

On an unrelated note, my girl Rebecca needs to work on her video concepts. I think I prefer Friday.