Bubbler Talk

The Pabst Mansion, the Schuster Mansion, the Villa Filomena... Milwaukee is home to a handful of historic mansions - often hidden in plain sight, appearing seemingly out of place. The Kalvelage Schloss Mansion, located near 24th and Kilbourn Avenue, is no different. 

Pikosso, Chicken a la Koss, Rebel with a Koss. If you’re familiar with the iconic billboard for Koss Corporation along I-43 in Milwaukee, you may have seen one of these ads — or even have a favorite design or catchphrase of your own.

Community member Michael Croatt wanted to know more, so he reached out to Bubbler Talk:

An impressive collection of old Bugle American newspapers are spread out on a table at the Milwaukee County Historical Society. I'm here looking at these because a listener reached out to Bubbler Talk, wanting to know: “Why did the Bugle newspaper end and where are its employees now?” 

On this week's Bubbler Talk, we dig into a botanical mystery involving a 'banned' tree, stinky fruit, and the age of the dinosaurs.

Listener Vanessa Radlinger noticed something out of place in Milwaukee's Third Ward: what she presumed to be a mirabelle plum tree -- which she thought was banned in the US.

The mirabelle plum brought back memories for Vanessa who first saw one of the trees while growing up in Germany.

Years ago, if you stood on the corner of Fourth and Mitchell Streets on Milwaukee’s near south side, you would have been greeted by images of dolphins. The purpose of the porpoises was to mark the entrance of one of Milwaukee’s most unique dining experiences.

The Public Natatorium featured Wild Boar Chasseur and Porterhouse Steak on its menu -- and five daily dolphins shows in its pool.

A listener wondered if it was true that there were underground baths in Milwaukee where powerful men once met in secret to do powerful things.

To answer this Bubbler Talk question, Bonnie North met up with OnMilwaukee’s Bobby Tanzilo, who tends to know this stuff, and Eric Nordeen, of the Wells Building, to find out.

"Why doesn't Milwaukee have an NHL team?" That's the question Dave Brown of Wauwatosa submitted to WUWM's Bubbler Talk.

Before we look into 'why,' let’s make the point that Milwaukee has had professional hockey for a long time – the Admirals, who play in pro hockey’s highest minor league, are the latest in a long line of pro hockey teams who have played here.

Winter is officially here, even though we have yet to see a big snowfall. But that'll probably come soon enough. And then you'll hear the sound of plows making their way down snow-covered streets.

The snow removal process -- especially the salt that's used -- fascinates one of our Bubbler Talk listeners, who asked us to look into it. So we stopped at one of the City of Milwaukee's salt domes in the Department of Public Works yard near 35th and Lincoln. The big structures house the salt supply in wintertime.

You’re probably familiar with the dozens of huge sculptures of human-looking heads, known as Moai, on Easter Island. What you may not know is that there’s a piece of the Polynesian island right here in Wisconsin -- well, sort of.

A 14-foot-tall Moai statue stands proudly in a New Berlin neighborhood.

This week’s Bubbler Talk is rooted deep in Wisconsin history... in the story of escaped slave Joshua Glover. Glover fled Missouri for Wisconsin in 1852 and was imprisoned in Milwaukee under the Fugitive Slave Law.

You can see parts of his story driving on Fond du Lac towards Milwaukee’s downtown. A large mural spans the walls of the I-43 underpass. It depicts abolitionists storming the jail, helping Glover escape to freedom in Canada.

From roughly 1944 until 1954, steam locomotive Number 265 carried load upon load of freight and later folks for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St.Paul & Pacific Railroad. 

However, the locomotive's career bumped up against progress when steam engines were out and diesel was in.

In 1956, the retired locomotive jumped the tracks and the City of Milwaukee replanted it off East Conway Street. And, that's when Number 265 became known as Old Smoky.

Certainly, Wisconsin and Illinois have storied rivalries in the sports arena: the Green Bay Packers vs. the Chicago Bears, the Brewers and the Cubs, the Bucks and the Bulls. But a few of our listeners have been wondering if that competitive spirit runs deeper than the action on the field.

One such listener, Jason Gessner, reached out to Bubbler Talk and asked, “Have Wisconsin and Illinois always had contentious relationship or is that a more modern development?”

It’s listener suggestions that inspire the features that make up our weekly Bubbler Talk segment. But Bubbler Talk itself was the inspiration for a student project that played out earlier this year in the community of Slinger.

The Love Rock holds a special place in many Milwaukeeans' hearts. And for those who have never heard of it, it is a pretty strange story.

“It was one of those Milwaukee curiosities in the '70s and early '80s," explains historian Mark Goff.

For starters, the Love Rock wasn’t really a rock. It was a large, rectangular block of concrete out about a half mile from Lake Michigan's shoreline.  The concrete covered and protected a water works intake pipe. You could get a good view of it from Bradford Beach and from the former Milwaukee Gun Club, which is now a soccer field.

Bubbler Talk receives a lot of submissions asking about the way Milwaukeeans talk: What’s with Milwaukee saying ‘yet’ in place of ‘still’?, Why do people here say ‘New BER-lin,’ instead of ‘New Ber-LIN,’ like the city in Germany?, What’s with the local saying ‘a horse apiece’?