You may have already enjoyed a beer and watched a game on the giant screen at the Fiserv Forum Entertainment Block beer garden – or even quenched your thirst during the recent MilROCKee festival – but the venue didn’t "officially" open until Friday.
The Bucks take on the Pacers tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the team’s first regular season home game in the new Fiserv Forum.
Bucks and Fiserv Forum President Peter Feigin held a grand opening ceremony at 11:30 this morning with a beer toast to make it all official.
The garden is nestled between the two new buildings constructed as part of the Entertainment Block and faces both Old World 3rd Street’s bar scene to the east and the Fiserv Forum plaza – and its arena – to the west.
While I have you thinking about the arena itself, check out this cool time-lapse of its construction, courtesy of EarthCam ...
The beer garden is flanked by what will be a second Good City Brewing location and Milwaukee’s first Punch Bowl Social.
The biergarten, with its astonishingly large screen – 28 feet! – and elements-defying roof, and other amenities, is a great place to watch a game, party with friends or just kick back and watch the action, as OnMilwaukee pointed out in this post the other day.
The space is warmed by a series of heaters and Feigin says the garden will be open year-round.
"We see this as a place where you’ll watch the Packers games, too," he said, donning a Bucks hoodie and faux antlers.
Slainte! Here are some photos taken at today’s event:
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He can be heard weekly on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories.
