A Brief Review of Select Wisconsin Taverns – Ted Prokash
November 4, 2024
Sidekicks, De Pere
A terrible place. Space too big for the crowd of regulars that come in to stink it up. An entire darkened wing kept as a sad monument to busy supper hours past. A cemetery for mixed gastral memories. The bar. A vibe that reads: last stop before your next drunk driving. Gambling machines. Too many TVs all showing the same game…and it’s the wrong fucking game. Y2Kountry as background to choice conversations. A used car dealer admits to his colleagues he has a son-in-law that’s…alright I guess…he’s a liberal. Heartfelt grunts of sympathy. Two rounds of Miller Lites later it’s…I know this sounds terrible, but some of these people need to be taken out and shot. The collective social conscience. We are a keenly interested people, civically speaking. You walk in one Wednesday night and can’t see across the bar for the smoke. It gets like this on perch fry nights, the bartender shrugs. No dear, you have a fire in your grease traps. I can taste it in my eyes. You stay for 4 beers and leave smelling like you worked a shift shoveling ashes at Auschwitz. It’s been your regular Wednesday night spot ever since. They used to have Fantasy Factory on tap. Now you’re drinking Leinenkugel’s Oktoberfest.
Red Room, Sturgeon Bay
Where it’s at, as it were. The kind of place people who don’t understand drinking would call “sad.” The place your recovering alcoholic uncle Randy “can’t go into.” Beer posters with big-haired women in swimsuits sprawled across muscle cars; beer posters showing Bob Uecker when he still dressed like the retirement village swinger. The bar sticky with pickled egg juice. Every surface covered in grimy soot from the grill that looks like it’s used to char children stolen from enemy tribes. Watch it steam. You kind of want a burger. Coming in here wearing a clean shirt seems performative. Take a shot for every felony on your record. A free beer for every family member that still speaks to you. Down the bar, you recognize old Joe, who you worked with for years at the county incinerator. He’s retired now, the lucky bum! You dimly recall seeing his wife’s picture in the obituaries a few months back…and one of the guys from work said they had to take Joe’s leg above the knee because of the diabetes – which Joe always pronounced “die-a-beatice.” Ha ha, silly old Joe, he don’t need that leg to sit on a barstool and suck piss anyhow! In the end you decide to act like you don’t recognize old Joe, and he does you the service in kind. There’s a great Thai place right next door, by the way, but they close at six pm. Probably they just don’t want any trouble.
River’s Edge Supper Club, Marinette
Right across the border from Michigan, so you can pick up your special medicines before getting tanked on Old Fashioneds and cramming your gullet with bread and red meat. The food is good and reasonably priced…but that’s not what we’re here for, is it? You walk in the door, and you’re immediately transported back to a time when respectable men wore suits and women kept their crying to themselves. Think of the “fancy” place your folks took you to on special occasions as a little kid. The décor remains the same. Think of dizzying patterns in grubby carpeting. Think of paneled ceilings, rich hardwood and dim lighting. Think of Lugubriousness. You are greeted by the owner and bartender, Fran – if you can call a hostile side-glare a greeting. Fran looks like the character in a Scorsese film who owns the restaurant where all the mobsters hang out and gets to be rude to all the goombahs but never gets fucked with. Your wife asks if he can make her a drink with rum and fruit juice that isn’t on the menu. He shrugs indifferently and says with distaste, if that’s what you want. At the end of the bar there’s a big picture window looking out on the river. There’s usually a woodchuck or possum in the yard hurrying about in addled fashion to entertain you in your time of gluttony. If you do this up right, you’ll probably puke on the car ride home. Highly recommended.
Who’s on Third, Milwaukee
A nice place to be an afternoon drunk. The bartenders all healthy gals from rural towns in the Green Bay area putting themselves through college. You are a careful old lecher…you talk in fatherly tones…so you like the big city? It’s not too bad…a coy little wink. The afternoon is all a thin buzzing; recovery from the night before and preparation for the night to come. You are a voyeur here. You drink Maker’s Mark straight, though you know it’s overpriced. You assume the skinny guy with patchy facial hair hanging around the waitress dock is the staff’s cocaine dealer. There is so much going on or about to go on. There are shuttles every fifteen minutes to take you to the Brewers game or Summerfest or the Grohmann Museum of Socialist Art. A gang of recent graduates of Northwestern University in town for ‘Wisco-Scotty’s’ bachelor party. They are Cubs fans. They are clean cut. They call out loudly for shots and faggy mixed drinks. You don’t offer to move to a different stool so they can all sit together. You have principles. One of them orders a round of boilermakers. You want one too? he asks begrudgingly, acknowledging your entrenchment in the middle of their bro-love orgy. I’d love one, you say. You pound it down. You’re making friends in the middle of the day! This is the friendly Midwest, after all. You walk by the Grohmann on your way back to your daughter’s apartment. The bronze statues of workers on the roof, yeomen in the sky, posted like homoerotic sentries to the city you love like your own. You cross the Milwaukee River on your route, there in case you need a quick puke before carrying on. Kindly lean over the rail, sir, and let it all go…there, there…try to miss the tour boats. Because we don’t just puke in the street around here. We are not fashionable folk, but neither are we limp cucks to modern folly. And dignity is where you find it.