The Milwaukee Public Market will unveil a free outdoor ice skating rink tomorrow, but they’re being upfront about the fact it’s not very big.

At 770 square feet, The Dinky Rink is advertising itself as “the area’s smallest public ice skating rink.” 

The rink can accommodate just eight people at a time. To be one of them, you’ll need to make a reservation and bring your own skates. Situated on the north side of the building, the rink will feature covered seating and outdoor heating.

The rink is scheduled to open Friday with a ceremonial first skate from the Milwaukee Admirals’ mascot Roscoe, who will be available afterward to take pictures with fans inside the market. 

The rink will be open during market operating hours, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. 

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

After some delays, a hotly anticipated food hall in the former Grand Avenue Mall will open this week.

3rd Street Market Hall will open this Friday, and will be open Tuesdays-Sundays. Vendors will include Dairyland (custard and burgers), Greenhouse (soups, salads and sandwiches), Makes Waves (smoothies, juices and bowls), Mid-Way Bakery, Amano Pan (baked goods), Hot Dish Pantry (pierogi and comfort foods), Strega (pasta) and Middle East Side (flat breads and Middle Eastern cuisine).

Other planned vendors for the space, some of which will open later, will serve sushi, pizza, hot dogs and arepas.

The space will also sell Brew City Brand clothing and will have a bar, a gaming lounge, a selfie museum, and Topgolf Swing Suites. Games will include shuffleboard and billiard soccer.

More information about the food hall is available at 3rdstmarkethall.com.

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

88Nine is proud to join the Milwaukee Bucks and Klement’s Sausage in presenting Milwaukee Mondays for all Monday home games during the rest of the 2021-22 Bucks season.

During the remaining four Monday home games this season, including this Monday, Dec. 6 against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team will offer Klement’s Sausages specials, live music and performances from local artists. The Bucks will don jerseys featuring Milwaukee on the front for each of these games.

Every Milwaukee Monday will also feature a T-shirt designed by different local artists for purchase. They’ll be available in the Bucks Pro Shop at Fiserv Forum and online at Shop.Bucks.com. To see the T-shirts and profiles of each designer, visit bucks.com/originals.

Limited tickets are still available for the four remaining Milwaukee Mondays at Fiserv Forum on Dec. 6 vs. Cleveland, Jan. 3 vs. Detroit, Feb. 14 vs. Portland and Feb. 28 vs. Charlotte.

Tickets can be purchased at www.bucks.com/tickets.

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

One of Milwaukee’s most beloved local shopping traditions is back this weekend. The maker market Hover Craft will return to the Historic Pritzlaff Building for its 12th year on Sunday, Dec. 5, with more than 100 artists, painters, designers and crafters set to sell their goods.

This year’s vendors are a typically eclectic bunch, and will be selling wares ranging from jewelry, goat soaps, wind catchers, maps, mittens, bath soaks, candles, sweets, bird houses, Christmas ornaments and candles. If you want a sneak peak, Hover Craft has been teasing some of this year’s goods for the last few weeks on its Facebook page.

Because of COVID-19, the event will look a little different this year. Guest are asked to wear masks while shopping. Organizers have also introduced a timed-ticket entry system, which will limit attendance.

The fair runs from noon to 6 p.m.; currently tickets are still available for the 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. entry times.

You can revisit Salam Fatayer’s Community Story about the 2019 Hover Craft, where she purchased her very own personalized “booty portrait,” on our website.

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

Radio Milwaukee revealed the name and menu for its new “sound café” at a community reception on Wednesday. The new space for creativity, collaboration and community will be called Deadwax and will feature an eclectic, ever-changing food and beverage program.

“Deadwax is a term for the space on a record after the last track and before the label,” Radio Milwaukee Executive Director Kevin Sucher said. “It’s the space in between, which is exactly what we want this space to be for our community.”

“We’re calling Deadwax a ‘sound café’ because the vibrations of music and community connection will be the soundtrack for the experience,” Sucher said. “Fueled by good food and beverages, this space will help solidify Radio Milwaukee’s mission to create a more inclusive and engaged Milwaukee.”

Deadwax is expected to open in 2022 after a $770,000 renovation and expansion of the station’s studio and office building, 220 E. Pittsburgh Ave. The project includes a 333-square-foot cafe expansion; complete remodeling of the cafe and addition of a kitchen area; creation of covered outdoor seating; and installation of three garage doors along the sidewalk. Deadwax will be located in space previously occupied by a coffee shop.

Noted Milwaukee chef and restaurateur Chad Meier crafted the food and beverage program of Deadwax with this same spirit of discovery.

Deadwax’s menu will change frequently with staple categories of food and beverage, including coffee, beer, wine and spirits, that will be updated and riffed on with seasonal ingredients from local vendors. Deadwax will also host pop-ups with other Milwaukee chefs.

“Radio Milwaukee amplifies the good things happening in Milwaukee, from music to nonprofits to entrepreneurs,” Meier said. “I want Deadwax to do the same thing for Milwaukee’s food and beverage communities.”

“Ingredients we source from local vendors are going to be called out prominently on the menu,” he said. “Items in our grab-and-go Marketplace that we source externally are going to have their business names featured in signage.”

Staples on the ever-changing menu include scotch eggs, breakfast wraps and toast for breakfast; “lunch boxes,” soups and sandwiches for lunch; and samosas, “things on sticks,” and empanadas and pub-style pizzas from other Milwaukee businesses for dinner. The Marketplace will feature to-go salads, musubi, beverages and dry goods sourced locally and from around the world.

Deadwax will partner with Interval on the coffee selection for the sound café. Interval owner and local coffee roaster Ryan Hoban plans to feature not only the coffee from his East Side location but also collaborate with roasters throughout his network.

Sucher noted that the Radio Milwaukee’s broadcast frequency, WYMS-FM 88.9, began its history playing vinyl. “We view the name Deadwax as an homage to our history,” he said. “It perfectly encapsulates the environment we want to create – a place where you can stay for as long as you want; a place where you will consistently discover something or someone new; a place fueled by good music, community, food and drink.”

You can see renderings of the cafe below.

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

Giannis Antetokounmpo isn’t exactly starved for recognition right now, but you still absolutely love to see it: The Milwaukee Bucks MVP will appear on the cover of GQ as part of the publication’s annual “Men of the Year” issue. The issue celebrates people who have made “a profound impact on our culture,” according to the magazine.

He’ll appear as athlete of the year, alongside musician of the year Lil Nas X and “superhero of the year” Tom Holland.

The magazine’s story on Giannis will publish tomorrow. You can check out the cover below.

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

One of Milwaukee’s most beloved food trucks is closing. Foxfire Food Truck announced today that it’s closing after five years. “We’re selling the truck,” the operators wrote on Facebook, calling the news bittersweet but saying “we have goals outside of the food service industry in our horizon.”

The good news? The truck will be open a little longer. Its final day will be Sunday, Nov. 28, when it promises to serve until 7 p.m. “or we run out of food.”

A mainstay of Zocalo Food Truck Park, Foxfire serves a variety of craft sandwiches, including a spicy chicken sandwich that was arguably the best in the entire city — absurdly crispy, perfectly seasoned and twice the portion it needed to be for its price point.

That sandwich is a thing of beauty, and it will be very, very missed.

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

Milwaukee comic book fans have a chance to get some of their holiday shopping done early this weekend. Milwaukee Comic Con returns to the Wisconsin State Fair Grounds (640 S. 84th St., West Allis) this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

In addition to more than 200 vendors, this installment of Milwaukee Comic Con will feature special guests Deadgar Winter, the Kenosha horror host of “Deadgar’s Dark Coffin Classics,” and animator and voice actor Jeff Balke. There will also be cosplay contests and a Magic the Gathering Commander Tournament that begins at 11 a.m.

Admission is $8, and guests 12 and under get in for free. Everybody who attends will receive a free comic book.

Organizers are asking that all non-vaccinated attendees wear masks.

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

It’s not every weekend Milwaukeeans get to share the same room with the actor behind Mario’s nemesis Bowser. Scott Burns, who voiced Bowser in dozens of games, will be one of several video game voice actors attending this weekend’s Midwest Gaming Classic at Milwaukee’s Wisconsin Center, along with Tim Kitzrow, who recorded some of the most quotable lines in video game history as the announcer in “NBA Jam” (“BOOOOOOM-SHAKA-LAKA!” “HE’S ON FIRE!“) 

The Midwest Gaming Classic has grown considerably since co-founders Dan Loosen and Gary Heil held the first installment in the basement of the Boy Scouts of America offices on South 84th Street back in 2001, with less than a hundred attendees. In recent years the event, which features hundreds of arcade games, pinball machines, home game consoles, board games, tabletop RPGs and card games, has drawn as many as 15,000 people. The classic has been held at the Wisconsin Center since 2018, where it’ll return this weekend after taking last year off due to the pandemic. Organizers say the event has an annual economic impact of more than $2 million.

All games are set to free play, so attendees can play any of them as much as they’d like. Other attractions at this weekend’s event include a wrestling show, video-game-themed bands, a cosplay tournament, speed run competitions, esports coaching, and discussions about the history of Pac-Man and the Menomonee Falls-based Garcade!

The Midwest Gaming Classic runs Friday from 6 p.m. to midnight, Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. All guests 12 and older must provide either proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test result from within the past 72 hours. For all guests 16 and older, a matching photo ID will be required.

Support from members makes stories like the one you just read possible! Your gift today keeps Radio Milwaukee independent, allowing us to keep sharing the music and stories you enjoy.

The Puerto Rican Family Festival is back for the eighth year this Sunday, August 1, 2021, at Wilson Park from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Filled with culture, great music and, of course, the best food in the world (I am biased) the festival has everything to bring you a fun family-friendly experience. This year’s festival will play host to a children’s area, car show, dominoes tournament and job fair.

If you’ve been to a Puerto Rican festival then you know the music, dancing and food take center stage; below you can find some of the things you can enjoy while visiting Wilson Park this Sunday.

Here are a few things to enjoy:

• Tostones Eating Contest – Tostones are plantains fried to a crip and typically served as a side dish that may accompany a plate of Arroz Con Gandules and Pernil (Yellow Rice and Pigeons peas with Roast Pork).
• Dominoes Tournament – Growing up in a Puerto Rican household, I understand first hand how serious a Domino game gets, so make sure you stop by, learn and have a laugh.
• Car Show – In every culture cars plays an important role. This show will not be short of decked out Jeeps, loud bike and funky lowriders, so Make sure you get your camera ready for a cool photo op.
• Music & Dance – This year’s lineup is filled with talent. Gego Y Nony, Poporo Y Sus Pleneros, Salsa Power, Zona De Fuego, Cultura Viva, Salsabrosita and so many more. Below is a musical playlist that I put together to give you an idea of various sounds that will fill the air come this Sunday. Enjoy!