"Summerfest: From Missles to Music"

Today is the start of one of Milwaukee's largest annual attractions, Summerfest.

Summerfest, also known as "The World's Largest Music Festival," (and confirmed to be so by the Guinness World Records) is a MAJOR music event held downtown every year at the 75-acre Henry Maier Festival Park along the lakefront. It runs for 11 days, and attracts nearly one million people from all over the United States. This is the festival's 40th year.

The event features local and nationally-known music talent from a variety of different music genres (all the way from James Brown, and the Jackson 5, to Bon Jovi, and John Mellencamp) on 13 stages, including the 24,000-seat Marcus Amphitheatre. It also provides the opportunity to sample a wide variety of unique food from many of Milwaukee's restaurants. Some of Summerfest's other attractions also include comedy acts (in the past: Jay Leno, Bob Hope, etc), shopping booths, fireworks (including the impressive and much-anticipated opening night "Big Bang" by Bartolotta Fireworks), karaoke, and children's activities.

It's a BIG deal, especially here in culturally-diverse Milwaukee!

And I bet you didn't know... prior to 1970, the famous Maier Festival Park was actually an old abandoned airport dating back to the early 1930's. During the Cold War, it served as a Nike anti-aircraft missile defense base for Milwaukee and Chicago. If Soviet bombers and fighter jets had invaded the U.S. through Canada, Milwaukee's Maitland Airport Nike defense batteries would have been some of the first missles fired. Pretty interesting stuff!

From nuclear missles to big-name music stars. How's that for a dramatic change!

This year's Summerfest (official website) -- which runs until Sunday, July 8, 2007 -- features the Goo Goo Dolls, REO Speedwagon, Big & Rich, John Mayer, Weird Al, Bon Jovi, and Toby Keith -- just to name a few. And just like the past 39 years... it's gonna be BIG!

-Jon
posted by Jon at 5:15 PM  I   I  0 comments