Word: madison
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...still not comfortable with historians and Harvard professors declaiming in documentaries about their love of the Olde Towne Team. And the Sox themselves have been so slovenly - helmets covered in pine tar, caps caked in resin, their sweatshirt-loving manager never seen in his uniform top - even Oscar Madison is embarrassed...
Halloween isn't what it used to be on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. Last Sunday, the main gathering point for the university town's annual Halloween bash saw a throng of heavily boozed cross-dressers, walking food products and pop-culture oddities slowly crawling about at almost 1:30 Sunday morning, closing time here. But Molly Kelley, a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pointed at the large unpopulated gaps of littered concrete from a balcony overlooking the seven-block stretch. "Two years ago this place was packed like sardines," she says. "You couldn't move. Either...
Halloween rioting plagued the ritual from 2002 to 2005, replete with tear gas-saturated finales. City officials last year finally decided to fence off State Street and charge admission fees, limiting attendance to 80,000. This year, Madison is tapping into corporate America in the hopes of turning a civic black eye into something its Visitors and Conventions Bureau can boast about...
Neither Fred Frank, president of Frank Productions, nor city officials would comment on just how much the city has paid to tame the event - officials said audit reports would take weeks to finalize. But taxpayers from Madison to Green Bay have been footing much of the costs for the police and cleanup over the past tumultuous years. George Twigg, a public information officer for Madison's mayor, says the city expects to get at least $200,000 in ticket sales, which he says will help ease the financial burden. Tickets cost $5 if purchased early and $7 for those...
Still, some young traditionalists are conflicted. Elise Volkmann, a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says slapping corporate labels on what used to be a free-for-all bothered her. "It didn't seem like it was right because it wasn't in the Madison, State Street, Halloween tradition to have it corporately sponsored," she says. "In the past, Halloween has been about students getting together and having fun, and we don't need Mountain Dew coming and bringing in bands." At the same time, being a State Street resident, Volkmann appreciates the new controls on the event...