Cream City Media

About

Cream City Media is...

... a little complicated. First and foremost the phrase itself comes from one of the popular monikers for my hometown: Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It earned the name "The Cream City" from the brick company of the same name. The bricks they produced were of a lovely yellowish-gold color, reminiscent of fresh cream. The clay from which the bricks are formed is peculiar to the Milwaukee area. The city is littered with historical buildings made of the unique bricks, which are instantly recognizable.

As for Cream City Media, it's my own little cache for projects of every kind. I started the company in 2006 with my brother-from-another-mother, Steve Weigl. We began as a wedding videography firm and branched out quickly to event and theatrical video. We worked our butts off, shooting and editing video for a few years before burning out utterly. Event videography is a very specific kind of stressful that took a real toll on us.

After that, Cream City Media lay dormant for a number of years. I kept the domain because I always loved the name, being especially proud of my Milwaukee roots. Milwaukee itself is a strange city. To look at the numbers and the press, a casual outsider might judge Milwaukee as a segregated, distressed city on the cusp of the wrong kind of notoriety. You wouldn't be wrong, technically, but Milwaukee is so much more.

Milwaukee is the home of the best and most creative people I've ever known. As a community of artists, Milwaukee is fiercely productive and exhibits an indefatigable hustle. It is a city of poets, musicians, creators and artists of every stripe. It boasts a tech sector of surprising depth. You can't spit in any direction downtown without hitting a web firm or tech startup. The cost of living is reasonable in Milwaukee, compared to other cities of comparable size, which gives me hope that perhaps the next big art explosion could emerge here.

It's not without its problems, to be sure. Like many cities, the old guard have been in power for as long as anyone can remember, and have thus monopolized much of the industry and wealth opportunities. We have our famous families with immediately recognizable names who dominate in every venture, from real estate to groceries to hospitality and contracting. It seems we learned a thing or two from our larger neighbor to the South about corruption.

Bearing all that in mind, I love Milwaukee. The heritage gifted to me by Polish immigrants two generations ago informs my world to this day. The Cream City is a place of imagination, hard work ethic, Midwestern honesty and high aspirations. Those traits exemplify what I hope to achieve and the quality of work I aim to exhibit on this site and the sites linked.

Milwaukee deserves nothing less than my absolute best.

photography by Stephen J. Weigl