Kewaskum Friends of the Parks is a group that was recently formed to help raise funds to improve the Village of Kewaskum's parks. They are holding an event to raise awareness for plans to build a new beer garden in Kewaskum's Kiwanis Park on Saturday, May 18th from 2-8p. The event is fittingly called, "Pints & Polka," and will feature live Polka Fusion, an accordion player, food and of course, beer.
This week Bekki Scheel and Anna Cain join me to talk about Friends of the Parks, Pints & Polka, and how you can get involved.
But again It was fun. It was charming. It was a, it was a nice way to see people come together and not, you know, have the pressures of the world on them for a moment.
Hey, speaking of getting outside today, we're going to talk about parks, Anna Cain and Bekki Scheel of the newly formed Kewaskum Friends of the Parks join me to talk about their upcoming Pints and Polka celebration to raise funds for a new beer garden in Kiwanis Park in Kewaskum. Pints and Polka takes place on Saturday, May 18th, and it's going to be an awesome time with that. Here are 15 minutes on Pints and Polka from Kewaskum Friends of the Parks with Bekki Scheel and Anna Cain, right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
Alright, so what inspired the founding of Kewaskum Friends of Parks group and what is the mission of the group?
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I travel 20, 30 minutes to take my kids to these amazing parks. We need to do something here. so once we saw the new rendering for Kiwanis Park, it kind of inspired us to, Get this group together to get it done.
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So, what kind of challenges do Kewaskum parks have? Or, or maybe what are you seeing at some other parks that you'd like to see in Kewaskum?
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A beer garden that also functions as a community space and is able to be rented out for some of those indoor and outdoor occasions is a big push. And also I think the Friends of Parks has a lot of other visions that are not just solely focused on Kiwanis. You know, the way that we worded it, Friends of Parks means all Kewaskum parks.
And I think that there's a lot of other really cool spaces that are in Kewaskum that at some point we can turn focus to some of those areas as well. And, and really seek some, some cool improvements for some of those areas.
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But there's also Reigel Park, which is new and, you know, has some things that need to be improved. But there's also some other groups that work, in that area with the KYSO and some other pieces. We have, Riverside, River Hill, River Hill Park. And then a few other smaller parks. So, let's talk about your upcoming event.
So you've got an event coming up in May to raise funds for, specifically for the beer garden. Is that right? And it's called Pints and Polka. So, kind of ties that all together, right? Yeah, it does. So tell us about the event. What can people expect?
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So we are going to be hosting it on May 18th at Kiwanis Park, which is going to be the home of the future beer garden. What a better venue for, for making the announcement. And I think the big mission of the day is number one, to introduce ourselves as a group. And a committee and to get the word out there that we want to be raising money and funds for all parks improvements in the future, but then secondly, to bring awareness to the beer garden and have people see the the Abilities of what this can become and see the vision of what we're, we're kind of expecting with it, and kind of kick that off and just get some excitement going about some of the really cool changes in the parks that have already also been, been, happening.
So, it sounds like the Department of Public Works has been making a lot of, of things move up at Kiwanis to kind of start this process and I think kicking that off and showing the community. And I think it's going to be pretty cool to have people see some of the new improvements that have already started to, to take shape.
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Killing it. There's signs everywhere and
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And I said, if, if there's not going to be changes that happen to this park in the next 12 months, you're going to have a lot of. Of people that are saying what's happening, a lot of questions being fielded, and if you have the plans, you need to move on this. So, I think that our, our, group was really timely in pushing for a lot of these improvements, which it, it came together nicely.
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Is that kind of what fusion is? Yeah, okay.
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, but we have some really great recognizable community names. That are coming in to bring us some great food.
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And the, what does it take to put something like this together? I mean, you guys, I assume, you know, have Lives outside of planning this and there's a lot of stuff to put together. So what, what, what's kind of going on behind the scenes to make this all happen?
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I think that something like this is super attractive before summer starts and people get really busy. So we're kind of geared it up towards a May date and have had a really good team effort trying to pull all the pieces together by making contacts with different food vendors and beverage vendors. And then planning some fun, you know, 50 50 raffles and other, like, small events to take place.
And then securing the, the music, I think that the polka and the beer garden go seamlessly hand in hand.
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Once we get kind of the final plans at the beer garden, we'll, we're going to take that head on and hope to see some donations come in.
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We have our, floor plan already and we are working on the 3D renderings that hopefully will be finished by the time we have Pints and Polka to show everybody and Have a big sign for the future home of the beer garden.
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Like, these are things that we're raising money towards and that's hopefully to help keep the costs to the general public through taxpayer dollars and so on, you know, at a much more reasonable cost. So our mission is certainly to raise funds to help supplement all of that. And we can certainly give our input and work with some of these people to try to, you know, come up with some creative ideas.
But, you know, that all goes through the village and, and they'll help us kind of make the final decisions and how much money we have to spend and all that kind of stuff too.
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If the community wants to get involved with Friends of Parks, if maybe somebody wants to join the board or, just follow along with what you're doing, do you guys have a, website, social media, where, where can people follow that and where can they message if they want to get in touch?
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We don't have an active website as of yet, but all of this is very much in the early stages. So, yeah, check us out on Facebook and on Instagram for Kewaskum Friends of Parks.
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I just want to say thank you both for coming in and thanks to everybody that's involved with Friends of Parks for doing what they do. So thank you so much.
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Great to have them in the studio and great to see all of you. That entire group organizing and making things happen for the community. Very cool. If you would know of an organization, person, business, or something else that this show should shine a spotlight upon, hop on your phone or computer and email me fifteenwithfuzz@gmail.com.
That is 15 spelled out with fuzz at gmail. com, or you can go to fuzz. cc slash guest and fill out the form, or you could even text me 262-299-FUZZ. That's 2 6 2 2 9 9 3 8 9 9. New episodes of the show come out on Tuesdays, but you can listen whenever you want on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or at fifteenwithfuzz.com. Thank you for listening. And I will talk to you again next week. Right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
