I’m a firm believer that we’re repeatedly presented with a simple choice in life, every day: “Go big or go home.” And as door-to-door salesmen, Jehovah’s witnesses and curious Alderpeople can attest, you’ll seldom find me at my home.

So I’ve got to respect the 25-year-old Antigo man whose going big at the Mifflin Street Block Party last weekend landed him in Madison Police spokesman Joel Despain’s stack of incident reports – to a point, and not nearly as much as I respect Joel for going out of his way to tell the story simply for the sake of being able to write what he did. Joel’s a busy guy, but he clearly subscribes the the mantra this blog takes its name from.

The story is as such: Antigo was among the hoards of revelers that packed Mifflin for the annual beer blast and got themselves good and overserved. Except, unlike the vast, vast majority of partiers, Antigo wasn’t out to just have a good time. He wanted to start something.

He was “obnoxious” and “rude,” and went out of his way to start a fight. Keeping with the “Kumbaya-Over-a-Kegger” atmosphere of the celebration, the attendees of the house party Antigo was at didn’t let themselves get provoked, but did show him the door in no uncertain terms.

Hellbent on finding a fight and now with a sizeable chip on his shoulder, Antigo set off down West Wash, only to bump into a group of three guys that were happy to oblige him.

The next thing he knew, Antigo was waking up at the hospital, still drunk, still surly, and now with a respectable goose egg to boot. But he wasn’t about to let respect for medical professionals or common decency stop his rampage. And here, I’ll let Joel Despain’s masterful storytelling take over.

From incident report 2010-116431:

“When he regained consciousness, he became very combative, to the extent that three hospital security staff members were needed to restrain him. An officer tried to ask the man: What happened? How were you injured? How did your tooth get chipped?

“The victim responded by swearing at the officer, indicating his injuries occurred when he had sexual contact with the officer’s mother.”

You’ve got to admit, the guy has spunk. I say we award this man a medal for “going big,” and then make him “go home” by banishing him from the city forever. And while we’re at it, Joel Despain gets a ribbon for greatest paraphrasing in the history of police incident reports, ever.

A $172 ticket… for stringing a hammock between a couple of trees?

I think there are very few guys my age, particularly in the city of Madison, that haven’t toyed with the notion of becoming a cop at some point in their lives. Let’s face it — it looks pretty glamorous on TV, you carry a loaded firearm and you get trained on the proper techniques to disobey traffic laws.

But for me, and I’m sure many others, one of the aspects of the job that scares me away from it is the powerful influence police have over the lives of the city’s citizenry. For instance, I’m prone to having what some would term “bad hair days,” and what I like to call “days I’d like to bite the head off anyone who gives me a damn excuse.” But for a police officer with a case of the Mondays, the degree to which they’re able to take out their frustrations on innocent bystanders is magnified tenfold.

Case in point, one Branton Kunz. He’s a 25-year-old resident of State Street in Madison, working as a supervisor at a respected downtown hotel, and according to the Madison Police Department, he committed a heinous crime Saturday night. He tried to relax in public.

Specifically, Branton is accused of stringing a hammock between two trees outside his apartment on State Street. He explains that he got the hammock while he was in South America recently, but doesn’t have anywhere to hang it in his apartment, and after a long day of, first, work and, later, the Mifflin Street block party, he was aching to get it out.  

Within a half hour, Jane Law rolled up in her squad.

“An officer came out and she asked me if I had a permit,” Branton explains. ”I said, ‘No, I wasn’t aware that I needed a permit to lay in a hammock.’”

Now, before I continue the story, I must banish the notion of editorial neutrality from any reader’s mind. It’s true — I’m quite partial to hammocks myself, and have been known to string them up in odd but satisfying places. Perhaps more importantly, Branton is a friend of mine. I can personally vouch for the fact that Branton has a clean record, a very laid back demeanor (a hammock, man) and, while he has a wry sense of humor, he’s completely lacking any sort of “attitude problem” prone to rubbing law enforcement the wrong way. 

When these events transpired, I was in fact upstairs in his apartment napping after a day of absorbing sun and beer at the Mifflin Street Block Party. But until he came upstairs with a $172 citation in tow, I was not involved.

The ticket he was issued was for an alleged violation of city ordinance 10.25(1), a prohibition on placing “articles” on the sidewalk or terrace. What qualifies? “Any cask, box, crate, wood, stone, plank, boards, goods…, wares, merchandise, ashes, bottles, cans or other substances or materials.”

“The ordinance seems to clearly be talking about storefronts and them kind of colonizing the area in front of their business,” observes Branton, who admittedly is “no big-city lawyer.”

Neither is police Sgt. Rachael Peterson, who’s worked the State Street beat for 15 years and wrote Branton his ticket Saturday night. She clearly put some thought into the matter at the time.

“There are several other citations that could have been issued,” she told me this afternoon, ”such as hanging things in public trees. Basically everything that (Branton) was doing was not okay.”

Peterson says she even warned Branton he could be cited for disorderly conduct, due to the attention she accuses him of drawing to himself.

“I think a reasonable person would assume that would be unusual and not okay to be tying up a rope to city trees on State Street,” Peterson said. “Call me crazy, but I guess to me that a reasonable person would think that’s a little odd, which is why several people were stopping and taking pictures of him.”

So what would a “reasonable person” in a position of authority do in response to an alleged violation of an obscure city ordinance by an affable working man on an unofficial city holiday? What would a “reasonable person” dole out as a penalty for getting comfortable and having a few laughs? 

“(At that point) I expected I would get a warning because I wasn’t causing any harm,” Branton says. ”I was cooperating.”

Peterson even admitted to me that Branton was exemplary in his willingness to cooperate with the police “investigation.” He answered all her questions, didn’t lip off, provided identification when asked and was more than willing to take the offending hammock back upstairs to his apartment. So is there just a “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to alleged sidewalk obstructions?

Nope. There was just an officer burned out after a long day corralling drunks at the Mifflin Street Block Party, and someone that inexplicably became the focal point of her frustration long enough to catch hell for it.

“We do (issue warnings),” Peterson told me, ”but unfortunately due to the nature of Mifflin, people receive warnings all day long, and so I think people were done getting warnings for the day. It’s at every officer’s discretion (that warnings are issued), but there’s no statement that says we have to give somebody a warning.”

Peterson even admitted to me that in cases involving the homeless, who often find themselves in violation of city ordinance 10.25(1), police are wont to issue several warnings before writing a ticket. So, like any “reasonable person,” Branton plans to fight his ticket in court — and not just for the sake of his checkbook or his record, but for hammockers the world over who are tired of being kept down, literally and figuratively.

“Of all places, this is Madison,” he says. ”You would expect to see something like that on State Street.”

That’s it, I’m putting my foot down. I’ve had it with the teen-vampire craze, particularly the Twilight novels and movies. I propose an immediate Madison police policy of threatening any eyeliner-sporting pale-skinned guy with a wooden stake to the heart.

Think my reaction’s a little extreme? I bet you the jogger in this Madison police report would agree with me:

You read it here first — either some member of the lunatic fringe is convinced he’s a character in one of these crappy vampire stories that are suddenly everywhere, or the daywalkers are really among us. Either way, sound public policy dictates that we hunt down anyone who looks suspiciously emo, whose skin is just a bit too pale or whose clothing is too strategically disheveled, and we stake ‘em.

As for this poor jogger’s mystery assailant, I’ve rounded up the usual suspects and put together this lineup. Male? White? Twenty-something? Slender? Spiky brown hair? Gray T-shirt? Propensity to hiss? I think we have our suspect.

Stake 'em. All of 'em.

It’s no secret I have a penchant for things that are big and flashy. I like my football games high-scoring, my bonfires barn-sized and my final showdowns epic… and possibly filled with lasers.

So prior to the big Edgewater redevelopment city council debate, you bet your sweet bippy I did what I could to fan the flames of hype that swirled up around the story. How often is it, after all, that a zoning issue gets that kind of attention and stirs up that kind of opinion, for and against, among the general populace? I had friends I have never known to take an interest in politics let me know their feelings about this project.

But in terms of what I expected from the “Super Bowl of City Council Debates” and the 11-hour marathon session the council delivered, I was quite frankly taken aback. While one would be hard-pressed to label the council’s deliberations “insubstantial” or the public discourse anything but “robust,” it doesn’t take a doctor to tell you the process itself was “unhealthy” on a very basic, physical level for those involved.

So when Alder Michael Schumacher told me today he was leaning toward moving for a reconsideration of the vote, my first question for him was, “How many death threats have you gotten already?”

Schumacher and two other Alders were absent from the big meeting on a motion that failed by two votes. It’s very likely that with a full house present it would have gone through. So even though it’s Schumacher’s privilege to move reconsideration, the notion of taking the issue up again raises mixed emotions in me.

While I feel very strongly that Hammes Company’s proposal is a piece of architecture worthy of a vibrant and growing city, part of me never wants to hear the word “Edgewater” again. I know I’m not the only one getting burned out on the issue and the constant struggle around it, and that’s not just the (pretty minor) hangover talking.

But the thought of this project getting bullied out of existence just doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe it’s reached a point where that’s inevitable, and if so, that’s too bad. As Madison’s landmarks ordinances are written the awful cliche holds true. The Edgewater redevelopment would be “out of character with the neighborhood,” though one could argue the existing hotel is already “out of character with the neighborhood.”

The thing is, all of my favorite buildings in Madison — the capitol, the Monona Terrace, the Red Gym, US Bank, the Overture Center, Machinery Row, the court house — all of them are grossly out of character with the surrounding buildings. If I wanted architecture that “went along” with the rest of the neighborhood, I’d live in the suburbs, and I assure you it will be a cold day in hell if that ever happens.

And I’m still waiting for someone to tell me how a brand new hotel plaza and tower would detract in any way from the other historic architecture in the Mansion Hill neighborhood. This isn’t Colonial Williamsburg, for God’s sake. Variety is the spice of life. If you want an example of what happens when a place goes too long without any fresh development, take a drive through Beloit, or Superior, or Rockford (IL), or Bloomington-Normal (IL), or Waterloo (IA), or any of the other midwestern cities that would step all over themselves to get one developer interested in building any project at all, let alone one of this caliber.

I understand that here in Madison, we have a history of fighting the man. I enjoy fighting the man myself. Hammes company is a corporation, corporations are driven by a desire to make money and the desire to make money is very often the root of all that’s evil. But I don’t see anyone lining up a grassroots effort to raise millions of dollars and build an architectural landmark that makes my city a more colorful place to live.

Using a corporation to our benefit as a city — and I do think that’s what we should strive to do, as they strive to use us to their benefit all the time, and in a perfect world, it’s mutually beneficial — is contingent on having rules in place that strike a balance. The Landmarks Commission, in rejecting the proposal, was following the rules set before them. And when it came time for the full city council to consider overturning their ruling, one of the swing votes that derailed Edgewater as it stands belonged to Alder Satya Rhodes-Conway, whom I admire and respect greatly but completely disagree with in this case.

She says a constituent advised her that if she couldn’t articulate why the Landmarks Commission should be overturned, she should vote against overturning. I see that as a backwards way to approach the subject. I think if a developer approaches the city with millions of dollars to sink into buoying the local economy and improving the aesthetic quality of life, the city should have to be able to articulate an actual harm that would befall the city if the project goes forward in order to stop it.

Leveling a historic neighborhood to build a strip mall does harm to a city. Improving a squat, lifeless, aging building within a historic neighborhood does not. And if the city’s process is not able to arrive at that conclusion, than I maintain that it needs to be reexamined and possibly fixed for the sake of the vibrancy of the city.

In the meantime, I’ll be content to talk about something non-Edgewater-related for the next handful of weeks.

***UPDATED… The city council is postponing their meeting tonight due to the weather, so we will postpone the watch party as well… See latest post for more info***

To rehash — Starting at 6:30, the Edgewater Debate Watch Party will get underway at Amy’s Cafe. Everyone is welcome, and stimulating discussion is encouraged. The bar staff should be expecting us and will have the game… rrr, the meeting on TV, and maybe even some bar specials for us. The snow might slow down some of the people from the outlying regions, but the event will occur as long as the meeting itself happens. If the city council meeting is cancelled, so is the watch party, which makes sense I guess.

I hope to see a good crowd of interested citizenry, and in addition, I expect a few bloggers, pundits, politicians, former alders and media types, so it could be insightful as well as entertaining. Dane101 will certainly be well-represented. Bloggers are encouraged to come armed (with laptops), and provide amusement for members of the city council, as they are providing amusement for us. I do not have the technological capacity to set up a webcam, but if you do, Alder Mark Clear would appreciate it.

I’ll print off a couple sets of Jill Sixpack’s Madison Common Council Bingo cards for interested players, and I’ve also compiled a final list of rules for the Edgewater Debate Drinking Game. I had some help from readers and a certain Cap Times city reporter, but here’s how the game is played:

See you at Amy’s!