Here’s our educated guesses on 2019’s local happenings. Let’s look forward! Using a combination of Norwegian voodoo, crystal ballery, DIY spy gear, and a focus group of the area’s most popular tweens, we’ve formulated what we believe to be some of the more likely (and noteworthy) local occurrences of 2019. See what you think.

In one year’s time, if none of these things happen, you have our sincerest apologies ...

1. The now defunct Eau Claire Regional Arts Center – as cavernous and empty as it is beloved and missed – will see new life by the end of 2019. Locals who had bid the center a bittersweet goodbye last August will be happy to see the space live on when it’s converted into apartments. The 40,000-square-foot building’s many offices and rehearsal rooms will prove perfect for small and mid-sized one-room living quarters, while the 1,098-seat State Theatre itself will gain fame as Wisconsin’s largest studio apartment.

2. Aging locals who spend their free time complaining about both “hipsters” and “millennials” (on Facebook) will spend yet another year oblivious to the fact that by “hipsters” and “millennials” they really mean “people younger than me who dress different than I do and enjoy things I haven’t bothered to understand.”

3. Young locals will spend yet another year oblivious to the aging locals who complain about them, their clothes, and what they do for fun.

4. Always eager to add to its roster of undergraduate programs (currently at 50), in mid-2019 UW-Stout will offer a B.S. in Applied Packer Science so bright, young Wisconsinites can figure out what the hell happened.

5. In an effort to capitalize on the trendy “experience economy,”  the Irvine Park Zoo in Chippewa Falls adds midnight tours to its bear cave, including a regular Harry Potter trivia night. The lack of alcohol and abundance of angry bears prove unpopular.

6. Jet packs. This is the year.