Your Daily Guide

🖼️ Bartillon Men’s Shelter Gets New Public Art: A new mosaic by Madison artist Laurel True now adorns the east side of the men’s shelter on Bartillon Drive. The artwork, called “Unity, Spirit, Community,” features a collection of colorful mosaic panels made of tiles and mirrors meant to evoke a sense of joy and warmth. [City of Madison]

🌱 Will UW-Madison’s Botany Department Wilt After Merger? Some university staffers are worried that botany classes will suffer and employees will be laid off now that the Department of Botany has been merged into a new Department of Biology. The change went into effect July 1, and a staff assessment found concerns about a higher workload and lack of support. [Daily Cardinal]

🚆 Amtrak Milwaukee-to-Madison Line Gets $218M Grant: The proposed Hiawatha West line connecting Milwaukee and Madison has received a $218 million federal grant for final design and construction. Amtrak says it could start providing service by 2030, although the project will also need state funding in the next budget. [Cap Times]

🐉 Fantasy Meets Sci-Fi at Epic’s New Campus: Verona-based Epic Systems had added new buildings to its “intergalactic campus” that are drawn from classic fantasy literature. One building is based on C.S. Lewis’ “Narnia” series while the other is inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's “Lord of the Rings.” (A “Game of Thrones” building might be too grim.) [ 🔒WSJ]

⬆️ Dane County Again Leads in Population Growth: To the surprise of nobody who drives on the Beltline, Dane County added the most people of any county in Wisconsin last year. According to the state Department of Administration, the county added 10,000 people during 2025, and now has an estimated 621,000 residents. [Cap Times]

🚨 Madison Police Offer Active Shooter Response Training: On Nov. 9, Madison police will offer a free Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events session at its training center on Femrite Drive. The class is open to any Madison resident or visitor to the area. [City of Madison]

🏥 Doctor Sees Wisconsin’s Black Infant Mortality Crisis Firsthand: Dr. Claudette Onyelobi says it “breaks her heart” that she will statistically see more Black babies in her Neonatal Intensive Care Unit than those of any other race. Onyelobi is the director of Small Baby Care at American Family Children’s Hospital and UnityPoint Health-Meriter, and said she has dedicated her career to being a “beacon of hope” for families going through an unimaginable crisis.

• 🎧 More to the story: Cap Times health and policy reporter Erin McGroarty interviewed Onyelobi as part of her ongoing series “Deadly Divide,” investigating Wisconsin’s notoriously high rate of Black infant deaths. On the City Cast Madison podcast today, McGroarty talks to host Bianca Martin about her reporting and why the mortality divide between Black and white babies persists. [Cap Times, 🎧City Cast Madison]

Newcomers might be a little confused that UW-Madison students are charged $100 if they want to have a guest in their dorms over Halloween weekend.

But the policy likely has its roots in the rowdy annual Halloween parties that took over downtown Madison for years, sometimes with violent results. While Freakfest vanished with the COVID-19 pandemic, its ghosts continue to haunt Madison to this day. Here’s a look back at the good, the bad, and the ugly of Halloween on State Street.

🎃 Party on State Street

What would become Freakfest started as a small block party on State Street in 1977 when students and others would parade up and down the pedestrian street in their wildest costumes. Seeing that the idea was catching on, UW-Madison student government, then called the Wisconsin Students Association, officially sponsored the event as Halloween on State Street as a fundraiser.

When the drinking age went up in Wisconsin from 18 to 21 in 1986, the student government could no longer sell beer to raise money, and withdrew their involvement. But people kept coming to State Street every Halloween to party in the 1990s, although attendance went up and down from one year to the next. [Badger Herald]

👺 Things Get Wild

It was in the late ‘90s when crowds, including lots of out-of-towners, began swarming Halloween on State Street. While roughly thousands of costumed revelers attended in 1998, an estimated 60,000 people filled the streets by 2001. To put that into context, UW’s total fall enrollment was 51,822 in 2025.

🚨 From Parties to Riots

Things started to get out of hand in 2002, when a crowd of 65,000 included vandals who broke windows, assaulted others, looted stores, and caused property damage to State Street businesses.

Every year until 2005, when 100,000 people stormed State Street, the event ended with Madison police using tear gas to disperse the crowd. City officials agreed that something needed to change.

👻 The Freakfest Era

In 2006, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz declared that the State Street Halloween celebration would be renamed Freakfest and would become an organized, controlled event. Fencing was put up around State Street, entrants were charged admission, and Frank Productions booked bands like Ok Go, Third Eye Blind, and Lil Yachty.

While some bemoaned the tamer, more controlled nature of Freakfest, the event was a big hit by every measure, with big crowds and relatively few arrests. [Cap Times, Fox47, Isthmus]

🪦 End of An Era

Freakfest was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was never resurrected due to a lack of funding and support. But with Halloween being on a Saturday this weekend, if you head down to State Street I’ll bet you’ll see plenty of costumed partiers, ghosts of the old days. [Badger Herald]