The
holidays in downtown Manitowoc sparkle shimmer and shine. It's officially ever
gleamed season. This all started in 2015. A man gave birth to an idea and that
man is over here. His name is Steve Sier. Steve Sier is a hometown boy who put
these retro Christmas trees back in the spotlight. This year I got seven trees
over at maritime. Sometimes I might have up to a dozen. At the historic
shooty building there is a high shine collector showcase. Every branch tells
a story about the city and the vintage aluminum blow. There's probably more
trees in this space than any other. I set up a four foot, a six foot and a
seven foot pink that are right behind me. The story always was there was only one
pink tree made for every 10,000 trees. Resurrecting these shiny gems became a
quest for Steve. In this the aluminum tree capital of the world. I would go
from store to store kind of and just cold call them. Just talk to them about the
aluminum trees and what they thought about maybe doing a show where we put
the trees in the windows. Nice holiday. Cathy Carl owns a store in the city's
historic district and is described as the heart and hustle of downtown. He came
into my store and I thought he was crazy. He's been here three times today already.
I knew nothing about them except that they were silver and made a manatua.
I said well dude if you want to do all the work I don't really care. We were looking for a holiday
event so we tried it. In 2015 Steve's mid-century dreamscape became reality with the show
Evergleeves on eight. It got started because I collected a lot of trees over a number of years.
How many trees? Well I've got over 200 trees. Steve was the guardian of the globe making sure
everything twinkled. This is pretty personal for me. Every night I would get in the car
and drive through downtown to make sure all the trees were behaving themselves. They were all lit.
The show looked good. They didn't have any problems. That's the nice tree with the color wheel on it.
Words spread and other collectors wanted to share the nostalgia. All of a sudden the community
embraced it, embraced the whole idea. At the library an enchanted Evergleean forest
displaying some of the rarest of the rare. That's one gals collection of 50 trees.
That is an exceptional collection. Vintage treasures radiating a metallic glow.
And then we also have the 14 footer there that nobody knew even existed.
My god that is that that's amazing. 14 feet.
Today the non-profit Manitowoc Aluminum Kitchmuss Incorporated runs the show with tours paying
tribute to the trees and local companies that created the sparkle. That was very different than
anything anybody had ever seen for Christmas in 1958. That was like a space-aged metal. That
was something new and exciting. We start in November and we don't take down until January.
We have over 150 trees. We have 40 locations. You either love these trees or you hate these trees.
Love them or load them. Aluminum Specialty made its mark on pop culture
when they began manufacturing these trees in the late 50s and other local companies followed.
They had the market. They were bigger. They were the big dog.
It's prettiness in a box and they sold for cheaper than five bucks up to maybe 25 bucks.
The meteoric rise of the Evergleean era was a fleeting fad. Within a decade the cool factor
began to feel cold. I'm fascinated by the history of it. Now more than 65 years later
history is repeating itself. Everything old is cool again. They have become really popular.
You know they made a few million trees so there's enough of them out there to create a
collector base. The iconic space age silhouettes are back and collectors can't get enough.
Well I did just get one this year. I think I have maybe 25 maybe but don't tell my husband.
There's a lot of money chasing trees now. Rare colored Evergleean trees are the crown jewels
commanding fierce competition and higher prices. You had the gold and the green and the pink.
The pink being the most rare was the last one which was kind of outside of the box.
It was a tree called a blue frost. That is a clean spectacular tree. The aluminum is still
nice and shiny. A tree in that condition is not always easy to find. I think the last one that was
on eBay sold for over ten thousand dollars. We have some pretty valuable trees in these windows.
For more than a decade these iridescent trees have sparkled downtown.
Look at how beautiful that is Steve. All the beautiful lights. They're coming to see the trees
but they're also experiencing downtown Manitowoc. Turning a simple hometown tribute into a
collective celebration that is uniquely Manitowoc. If it wasn't my hometown I wouldn't have done it.
Made all the difference in the world.