OMC: Do you get back much? Do you go back to visit?

AS: I try. It's hard, but you know, Midwest has good flights. They have decent flights, so I try to get back. But we tend to, since my brother lives in Boston, we all try to migrate south. But I do get back, probably two times a year. I was there Mother's Day, last year, and I was there during August sometime as well. So, I get there during the summer. It's nice, you know. It's nice to get back home.

OMC: It sounds like you keep up with politics there a little bit. Do you watch what's going on?

AS: Yeah, every day. I have JS Online in my favorites. So is OnMilwaukee.com, of course, and the Business Journal. So I keep an eye on things that way. The one thing I'm always most interested in is all of the Park East development, really. It just like, so amazing. ... So much is going on.

OMC: What do you think of the city when you come back?

AS: It's remarkable. That's the thing, I'm always blown away because of the physical changes. I remember I had a friend who was...

OMC: How long have you been gone now?

AS: I've been gone, I haven't lived in Milwaukee ... I lived in Milwaukee for one month, two months in 2003. It was temporary. I came back from Connecticut just to get my stuff, and tie up loose ends back in the city.

OMC: So about five years.

AS: Yeah, and admittedly, it would be almost 10 years now.

OMC: But presumably when you were in Madison, you were going back pretty often.

AS: Yeah, I was going back. I mean, officially, since I left, it's been ... 2003. You know, but when you go back, you see, it's one of those things. I don't know if you can tell if you're in the city or out of the city, but when I go back, I see physical change. Like going down Commerce Street, and those areas around North Avenue, and the Marsupial Bridge and all that stuff, and by the Park East, I know they did a lot. And then you think about what's going to happen to The Pabst, and all that stuff around The North End . When I come back, it's like well, there's another building. They just built the Kern Center, wow.

And then when I head down the way -- even more freaky -- because I never spent that much time there to begin with. But, when I was younger, we just never made it down there, is the Third Ward. A lot of those things like MIAD and all of those things like that. It's amazing.

OMC: That looks completely different. It looks nothing like it did five years ago.

AS: It's a new city, and it's so cool because it makes sense. I mean you have a river, a beautiful ... you have three rivers, running through the city. It's a beautiful city, geographically, it's beautiful. It has so much potential, and you see the physical alterations and it's blown up, it really has. And you think about those luxury condo towers, like Prospect and Kilbourn, or University and Kilbourn? My folks were telling me about how quick those units sold out and they had to add floors. I mean, who would of thought in Milwaukee you'd get a $1 million condo to sell.

OMC: Two of them, right next to each other!

AS: Yeah, I know, right?

OMC: It's incredible.

AS: And even now, like today, I read, because there's always one that my folks walk down to, because they always walk down in that area. They're building, but then they just announced today there's a new one going to build a new one. More or less right across the street. Who would've thought that this stuff would've happened? You wouldn't think about it, and that's the thing.

OMC: It doesn't seem to be slowing down. Every year people say, "When is this going to stop?" And it doesn't seem to show any sign of stopping.

AS: Which is interesting, because you know you look at Milwaukee's such a funky city, and you have this intense, Downtown boom, but it's not really spreading yet.

OMC: It's spreading as far as Walker's Point, but it's not really. I live on the West Side, near Tosa, and that looks the same as it always does. No difference there. You can't tell anything from there.

AS: I think you really do need a little Downtown revitalization before a city gets its footing back. The nice thing to see, what I'm always most impressed with, is the economic condition with like, the Milwaukee 7, the Greater Milwaukee Community, all of that stuff. The problem with Milwaukee is that you felt like it didn't have a presented economic front, or whatever.

OMC: It's really amazing to see then the explosion that's going and it's something that happened here, too. We were in New York in the '70s and the city was just dead. It was worse than that. There was no money. My grade school was renting space to a yeshiva. Now places in old Dumbo warehouses have gone from empty to $500,000 to $1.2 million in just a couple years.

AS: It's scary.

OMC: I don't know how people live here any more.

AS: I don't know.

OMC: Luckily, you can still afford to live in Milwaukee.

AS: Still affordable. Everything's still okay, you know? It's nice. Even today, there's this guy who's been complaining about this vacant lot under the Broadway Junction. He's like, "This place is like a dump. There's homeless people living there." So I went up to check on the property taxes for this, and it was assessed four years ago for $33,000.

OMC: For the land, because obviously there's nothing on it.

AS: Just for the land. There's nothing, just a fence. That's it. It privately owned. A fence, basically. This year, the tentative estimate was a quarter of a million dollars. For a vacant piece of property that's covered in filth, underneath Broadway Junction, which isn't exactly the nicest area. Look at Brooklyn, now. It's unaffordable.

OMC: So, how do people do it?

AS: I don't know, you're talking to the wrong guy! I'm not doing it. I have a lot of credit card debt.

OMC: You sound like everyone I know here.

AS: Yeah, exactly, we're all in the same boat.

OMC: That's a good reason to come back for a while. Pay off the credit card debt.

AS: Completely, yeah!