Summerfest is here on Wednesday. It doesn’t feel like it. At all. Maybe it’s been the cold weather. Maybe it’s due to me moving to a new house. But it doesn’t feel like Summerfest is here in two days. Rather, it feels like another Monday where I stayed up too late writing blog posts catching up on Sunday television. But what comes with Summerfest is the aspect of mail time. A phrase coined by Kevin ‘KFC’ Clancy about the corporate world mailing it in. There are so many examples, but the corporate world of Milwaukee mail time season begins on Wednesday.

It truly feels like everything shuts down for Summerfest. There’s a reckless living to the festival. You have the chance to go to concerts from this Wednesday until the following Sunday. It’s the largest music festival and one of the longest yet Milwaukee sees it as a time to get drunk any day that’s convenient for them. The amount of hangovers in offices all over Milwaukee double and triple. The amount of people who come to work the next day in last night’s clothes is far too common. The young guns who call in sick because they overdid it at the concert the night before. All of this stuff comes with Summerfest.

Some people are against it. They see it as a place where underagers run amok and get drunk off their parents’ booze that they snuck in. Some can’t deal with the crowds. I get all of that, but I will say this… Take some pride in your fucking city. People come from all over to go to Summerfest. Sure, things get crowded around the area, but it’s all money funneled back into the place we love. Yes, you can’t drive Lincoln Memorial for a couple weeks. Get over it. I know Uber and Lyft still haven’t figured out how to pick people up, and it’s been three years.

Embrace the madness of Summerfest, and embrace that people cherish these upcoming 11 days more than most here in the city.