🪧 Dan Savage made good trouble in Madison

👋 City Clerk, Goodman Center President Stepping Down

• Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl resigned Monday in the wake of investigations into uncounted ballots in the November election.
• Witzel-Behl, who served in the role since 2006, was placed on administrative leave last month as city officials looked into why nearly 200 absentee ballots in the Nov. 5 election were never accounted for.
• Meanwhile, Letesha Nelson, the president and CEO of the Goodman Community Center, announced in an email Monday that she will step down from leading the nonprofit on May 30. The local nonprofit made headlines earlier this year after a former employee was accused of embezzling more than $640,000 from the organization. Nelson, who has led the Goodman Center since 2021, said she is taking a new position as President of Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin in Green Bay. [City of Madison, 🔒 WSJ, WPR, Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin]

🚌 Metro Service Expanding to Verona

• Epic Systems employees will especially benefit from an expansion of Metro Transit bus service into Verona that was approved last week by the city’s Transportation Commission.
• The plan will extend the current D2 route into Verona, running every half-hour during weekdays and every hour on weekends and at night. It will also bring para-transit service to Verona for the first time. [WKOW]

🏬 East Towne JCPenney Is Falling Apart. Literally.

• No one was hurt when part of the facade of the JCPenney department store at East Towne Mall collapsed on Friday. The section of the building that fell was near the store’s west entrance. [WKOW]

When Dan Savage talked to host Bianca Martin on the City Cast Madison podcast, it was a bit of a homecoming.

Most people know Savage as the country’s longest-running sex advice columnist, who has been writing his “Savage Love” column since 1991 and recording his “Savage Lovecast” since 2007. Add in his several books and his amateur erotic “HUMP! Film Festival,” which returns to the Barrymore Theatre on April 19, and perhaps nobody knows more about what Americans do when the lights go out than Savage.

But you might not know that Savage spent a little time in Madison. Here’s how it formed him as both a writer and an activist.

Getting Savage

Savage moved to Madison from West Berlin in 1990, where he worked at Four Star Video Heaven. On the podcast, Savage said he enjoyed his time in Madison, eating at Himal Chuli and The Plaza, and navigating relationships in the city’s gay club scene.

“I was still learning when I was in Madison, not that I wasn’t good at monogamy, but monogamy wasn’t good for me,” he said.

Savage befriended Tim Keck, who co-founded The Onion, as chronicled in Christine Wenc’s book “Funny Because It’s True,” and started writing “Savage Love” while he was working at the video store.

When Keck moved to Seattle the next year, Savage went with him and brought “Savage Love” to The Stranger, the influential alt-weekly Keck founded.

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