Road trip from your couch with John McGivern’s Main Streets

Emmy Fink and John McGivern. // photo courtesy John McGivern’s Main Streets

When planning a trip to Wisconsin and Minnesota in 2019, my wife, Tanya, discovered a show while doing research online. It was called Around the Corner with John McGiven, and featured the Wisconsin actor best known for his role in The Princess Diaries, exploring Wisconsin communities from large to small.

Thanks to the fact that every episode was streaming on YouTube, we rapidly became addicted and binged the whole series while prepping for our trip.

The program unfortunately ended due to the Covid pandemic, and we were beyond gutted, having grown to love the utterly enthusiastic McGivern’s positive vibes and seemingly boundless joyful exploration of whatever town or city he was in, be it Eau Claire or Sheboygan, over the course of its nine seasons.

Happily, McGivern returned with a new show, John McGivern’s Main Streets, launched in 2022.

The premise expanded the scope of the original show, seeing the host explore towns throughout the upper Midwest, no longer reined in by Wisconsin borders. In the show’s second season, they brought in co-host Emmy Fink, whose own upbeat attitude complemented McGivern’s own, and further allowed the show to cover more material.

Sadly, it was announced that Main Street’s recently concluded fifth season would be its last show airing on Wisconsin PBS. Happily, it will continue on as an online program, says co-host Fink when we speak with her by phone.

“And it does make me sad because the way people are really taking in content now is such–it’s just changing, and it’s shorter format,” notes Fink. “It’s with their cellphone, and it’s quick, and it’s just a quick shot, and I think it’s missing the whole human emotion and connection and all of that stuff.”

Despite having to pivot and change gears a little bit since they won’t be on PBS any longer, Fink says the goal as the team moves into what they’re calling Main Street shorts is to still tell the stories the show offered, just in a shorter format.

“To kinda go against the grain of what’s being done now with influencers and to still make it an interesting story and a little nugget you can take with you,” the co-host explains. “You’re like, ‘Oh, man, when I visit I wanna go do that,’ or, ‘I wanna go say hi to Patty who works at the bakery, who’s worked there for 37 years, and she drives 43 minutes to get here.’ That’s what stays with you.”

And that’s really what the appeal of Main Streets and its predecessor encompassed: not just the restaurants or breweries or cute shops and what they have to offer, but the stories of the people who run them and how they came to be. Fink points to a story in the series’ final episode, where they visited Port Washington, Wisconsin.

Because her co-host, McGivern, gets motion sickness, Fink went on a charter salmon fishing boat, and with that one early-morning expedition, got an incredibly moving story from Sharon Scheel, the owner of Nicky Boy Charters, a woman-owned fishing charter business.

“Her late husband’s father started the business,” says Fink. “She was a hairdresser. Her husband passed away very suddenly and at the beginning of spring. So her husband’s business had all of these reservations for salmon fishing charters throughout the entire summer.”

Scheel told Fink, “I had a choice of either keep this going and keep my husband’s dream alive and allow these captains to have a job all summer, or I just close up shop. Literally call all these people and say, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve put your money down, and we’re not gonna be able to take you out on the boat next weekend.’”

That was several years ago, continues Fink, and Nicky Boy Charters is bigger and better than ever.

“When you get to truly tell a story, and it’s a good story, it’s a positive story of overcoming a horrible, unplanned death, and where she’s come from, those are just the days you’re like, ‘Man, work is wonderful,’” enthuses Fink.

Emmy Fink and John McGivern. // photo courtesy John McGivern’s Main Streets

Over the years, Fink has interviewed about 75,000 residents in Wisconsin and the Midwest.

“I just think, like, how many people have that kind of an opportunity to meet so many different wonderful people?” Fink says. “I’m very blessed, and so is John, and we both know it, and we’re grateful for the experience to be able to do it, and that people watch.”

Another aspect of the appeal of Main Streets lies in the fact that viewers like you get to see these shows through the eyes of McGivern and Fink, who are also frequently experiencing the communities being visited for the first time. Their surprise at a pirate boat in Eagle River, Wisconsin, or meeting with Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen in Rockford, Illinois, is real because both McGivern and Fink are utterly in the moment, even with the months of prep work involved before a season would be filmed.

“Some people go to the same place every day, and they do the same thing, and with what we get to do, we are going to a new place every day,” Fink reflects. “We’re meeting someone new.”

What makes it so fun for the Main Streets team is that everyone is excited that they’re coming to whatever community they visit, even if they have no background of who McGivern and Fink are or what the show is, and when they leave, they’re friends.

“You’re somewhat connected in a way, through this show that just is special,” says Fink. “It’s not acting. It’s not acting for John or for me. When the cameras go off, everybody’s giving hugs, and it’s, ‘So great to meet you.’”

Emmy Fink and John McGivern. // photo courtesy John McGivern’s Main Streets

That said, despite having visited 60 communities over the course of her four seasons on Main Streets, and even more when hosting a similar program, Discover Wisconsin, before that, Fink gets the same “I want to go there” response to the program most viewers do when they watch the show.

“I’ll be there, and I’ll experience the show there, but it’s not ’til I watch the show back that I’m like, ‘Why haven’t I taken my husband and our kids here?’” says Fink of her own experiences watching Main Streets. “Or, ‘The next time we have a free Sunday, we are going to try, this place out.’ I can even be there in person, and then sometimes it’s not until you see it as a viewer that it clicks as, ‘I wanna plan a trip to go there.’”

Which, really, is the reason you’re reading this article from a Kansas City publication about a show based in Wisconsin.

The summer travel season kicks off with Memorial Day weekend, and while gas prices continue to rise, watching a program like John McGivern’s Main Streets shows that there are places just up the road, like Ames, Iowa, which have a lot to offer.

Whether you’re sitting on your couch, looking up the menu to figure out what coffee you’re going to get while digging through the record bins at Kokomo, Indiana’s Black Wax Cafe or actively booking rooms at Bottleworks hotel in Indianapolis, Main Streets opens up a world just down the road.

And, even if you can’t make that trip this summer, the show itself has something to offer.

“Somebody, a few weeks ago, that I met, she said, ‘I just have to tell you that my grandma watches your show, and she loves you and John, and she’s homebound now,’” Fink says, audibly choking up as she recalls the story. “’You allow her an opportunity to leave her living room every Thursday night at 7:00, and it is the greatest gift you could give her because not only does she think you and John are her friends, but she will never get to experience any of these places. But for that half hour, she does.’”

“How powerful is that?” Fink posits. “As much as we want people to watch the show and then go do those things for themselves because we truly just think those are the highlights of every community, for some, it is just that: it is just what we show them, and that’s all they will be able to experience. But yet, for them, that’s also really meaningful.”

You can find John McGivern’s Main Streets on YouTube and at their website.