Madison, WI?
 

Hey cheese heads! I'm headed to Madison tomorrow for the week. We are relocating over the summer, the wife is headed back to school to become a Librarian and we have family property up near Stevens Point that needs a guiding hand. Looking for any good local color we should check out, dinner suggestions etc. Also going to be trying to find a place to live. Neighborhoods we should avoid, where the surprise bargains are, anywhere that a guy could rent shop space if needed. Where does Cars and Coffee meet? Full disclosure the only Mazda in my garage currently is a 2.5 Mazda3.

I know it's a bit short notice but I think the ole RX-7 Club can still pull through for me.

Cars and coffee is in Lake Mills, like a 20 min drive from madison.

I heard there was attempts at doing a cars and coffee in madison, but they never had many people show. The Lake Mills one is well established and growing, and draws from the milwaukee area too.

From my knowledge, generally the south and east sides of madison are sketchy, and parts of the west side are starting to go downhill too. Definitely stay away from the park street area, allied drive area, and much of the east side, especially up by east washington ave it seems. I'd say either live downtown, or else choose middleton, mcfarland, verona, etc, basically anything out in the suburbs. Thats not to say there isn't pockets of nice neighborhoods all around, especially on the east side. As for bargains, the farther away from madison you get, the cheaper it is. Anything cheap in madison is going to be suspect or in a bad area imo.

I'm sure others can chime in with more/better info.

long time, no see spirit! (ive been laying low for a little bit, while i get ready to unleash chaos in madison this summer)

Madison is alright, and i agree with the description of the spontaneous pock marked undesirable areas, but madison isnt too bad. We have a small set of car scenes here. Some ricey, some legit, plus were not too far from milwaukee, or the rest of the greater madison area (verona, fitchburg, oregon, sun prairie, stoughton...usually the further you go from madison, the cheaper it gets to live if your looking for a place) and there should always be some car fun you can find not too far away