Bay View on a Saturday

KK — as locals call Kinnickinnic Avenue — is Bay View's spine. Once lined with taverns and hardware stores for rolling mill workers in the 1880s, now it's record shops, taco joints, tattoo parlors, and coffee roasters coexisting with the dive bars that never left.

Rushmor Records has vinyl bins organized with librarian precision. Honeypie Cafe on Russell does biscuits the size of softballs with gravy that suggests someone's grandmother had strong opinions about butter. Murals on building sides — giant octopus, flower-portrait woman, electric blue abstract that looks like Lake Michigan in a dream.

The bluff at Bay View Park is where the payoff lands. Lake Michigan, enormous and indifferent and impossibly blue. Wind sharp enough to water your eyes. Below, old ore docks rusting quietly — monuments to the industry that gave the neighborhood its name.

Fair warning: some of the newer KK spots are trying too hard and charging too much. The ones that have been here since before the neighborhood got hot are the ones worth your time.