The Skyglider chairs at Henry Maier Festival Park watch over Milwaukee's many festivals
Milwaukee isn’t just a city with a lot of festivals. It is the City of Festivals, an official trademark that Visit Milwaukee registered in 2024.
Festivals fill the 90-acre Henry Maier Festival Park along Milwaukee’s lakefront nearly every weekend in the summer, drawing millions for a variety of cultural experiences.
While those experiences change with each festival, one thing unites them all: the Skyglider chair that carries visitors and their precariously dangling flip-flops from one end of the park to the other.
The technicolor tubs trigger a slew of memories of gliding above the masses, views of the Milwaukee skyline and Lake Michigan stretched out ahead, a jacket slung over shoulders to stave off the all-too-real cooler-by-the-lake effect.
The grounds are most closely associated with Summerfest, of course, which began leasing the strip of land in 1970. Other festivals joined the lakefront fun in the ’80s. Among them today are fetes celebrating the city’s diverse makeup, including German Fest, Irish Fest, Polish Fest, Festa Italiana, Mexican Fiesta, Black Arts Fest MKE and PrideFest. Festival fever has caught on outside the park, too, with dozens of neighborhood festivals from Juneteenth Day to Brady Street Festival filling up Milwaukee’s summer calendar.
The Skyglider chair stands watch over them all. A Wisconsin Historical Society photo shows the “Tramway” on the lakefront grounds in 1971, and it’s been a staple there ever since — a colorful year-round representation of the City of Festivals.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Skyglider chairs watch over Milwaukee's many festivals
