… and then head for the neighborhoods.

Nearly 40 percent of Milwaukeeans are African-American, and a museum exploring black history and the legacy of slavery, called America’s Black Holocaust Museum, is hoping to reopen in 2019. Some of the older neighborhoods around the city have transformed in recent decades, like Bay View, which is now a hub for art and good eating. Younger people are spurring change, said Jennifer and Michael Wolf, who were having lunch there on Monday. “The generational shift in Milwaukee has been huge,” said Ms. Wolf, adding that the city has lately become cleaner, more focused on the arts and friendlier to bicyclists.

Still, Milwaukee remains one of the most segregated cities in the country. Arthur Talley, 60, a factory worker who was running errands downtown, said race relations had hardly improved since he was a child growing up there. “We’re still marginalized,” he said. “People see two or three African-Americans coming down the street, and they cross the street to avoid us.”

Embrace the old and the new. Sometimes at once.

Milwaukee doesn’t like to throw things away. On the old Pabst factory campus, there are now loft apartments. Domestic sales at Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson have slipped, but the city’s motorcycling culture is thriving at the Iron Horse Hotel, a warehouse-turned-luxurious-hotel with a special station for washing your Harley.

And there is still a certain fondness here for anything set in Milwaukee. Along the riverfront is a statue of the “Happy Days” television character played by Henry Winkler, known as the Bronze Fonz.

Here are some handy phrases to say (and not say).

Words to strike from your vocabulary upon arrival: “Rust Belt,” a term that Milwaukeeans are likely to think is dated and vaguely insulting; “heartland,” a word that is rarely used by someone who is actually from the so-called heartland; and “Midwestern Nice.” (The proper term is “Minnesota Nice,” and it doesn’t mean nice, exactly — it’s sort of the Midwestern equivalent of “bless your heart.”)

The friendliness is real.

The ethos of Wisconsin is a little different than what some visitors may be used to at home. Wisconsinites tend to smile a little more at strangers, make small talk in elevators and chat about the weather to fill silences. Milwaukeeans are especially ebullient during the (brief) summers, when the city is humming with festivals at churches and along the lakefront.

Marty Ordinans, a lifelong Milwaukeean who works at a technical college, said he hoped convention visitors would share the experience of his son’s girlfriend, a native Californian who recently ventured to Wisconsin for a visit. “She had a nice time,” he said. “And she kept saying she was struck by how friendly people were.”