It’s kind of like this. Chicago is the Mother Ship of the Midwest, surrounded and fed by her satellites of St. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Des Moines, Minneapolis…

Chicago’s big. She’s smart, powerful, beautiful–and on the global map. As a transplanted Angelina (L.A. native, not Babe o’ Brad) with a bi-coastal bent, I came to check her out in 1986 and have lived here ever since—so what does that say? But lately, more and more frequently, my eye’s been wandering North, to the Alpha Centauri of satellite cities*:

 Milwaukee! Who’da thunk it? Ask me about this place a decade ago and all I’d be able to blurt out was something about bowling, beer, brats, Brewers or Bucks.

Then Calatrava came to town and built a cathedral to art, the Quadracci Pavilion, an extension to the Saarinen-designed Milwaukee Art Museum. (If you haven’t seen it in person, you can’t miss it in commercials.)  Even if you never go inside to experience the fabu exhibits at the museum (currently, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918 – 1945 and Sensory Overload, which tracks the development of Kinetic and Op art), the setting, the exterior—the garage!—of this masterpiece are guaranteed to make every fiber in your creative being go ga-ga.

You could only stop there, but I always make it a two-fer: with the historic Third Ward of the city, only blocks away. There you’ll find cool one-off cafés, restaurants and bars;  design-y shops (my favorite is shOO), live theatres, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, the awesome Milwaukee Public Market, featuring direct-to-you gourmet, specialty and organic foods from throughout Wisconsin, plus extraordinary people-watching—all in a setting not so unlike a nascent TriBeCa.