The day after St Patrick’s Day may be a little foggy to some, but I remember March 18, 1989 vividly. Every year on that date, I think about that Saturday morning in Milwaukee when Max Adonnis was shot and killed at Giovanni’s, the restaurant where I worked.
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Flipville was a crowded dusty memorabilia store in a crooked little building on Farwell Avenue in Milwaukee. The proprietor wasn’t very talkative (at least with us) and his inventory was a little worse for the wear. Visiting Flipville was like an absorbing afternoon in Grandpa’s attic.  Calderone Club Why is a calorie-counting girl like me fascinated with pizza? For one, the pizza pie potentially contains all four food groups. Plus, I spent a few years slinging pizza on silver cake platters at tiny Italian restaurant called Villa Rosa. I became a connoisseur. Villa used to have a pizza called the Rianata. The Rianata’s crust was basted with olive oil, had no mozzarella, just parmesan, tomato slices and anchovies. I don’t typically like anchovies, but on the Rianata, the hairy guys just worked. I would order a parbaked Rianata after work and finish it off in my oven at home on one of Villa’s pizza screens. The entrance to the The Safe House (779 N. Front St.) is crowded with people who will not know the password. We circle the block to give the folks a chance to perform the antics that will be required of them to get in. (The password: swordfish) Ten minutes later, we’re back and the lobby is empty. I punch the time clock that opens the secret panel to a narrow dark hallway. I get disoriented momentarily and I walk into a mirror straight ahead of me. So much for being a Safe House veteran. A man sitting alone at the bar moves left so Gene and I can sit together. Which of these is the trick barstool, I ask him. He replies huh? We shrug. The man asks the bartender for a plastic cup for his “dirty habit.” The bartender gives him mixed signals by giving him a cup and simultaneously discouraging him from chewing tobacco, citing Milwaukee’s recent smoking ban. After the ban, The Safe House informally banned all tobacco products, said the bartender. The man could chew, but it grosses out the customers. The man disregards the bartender’s suggestion and puts a plug in his cheek. The man’s barstool starts sinking down lower and lower until he looks like a midget sitting at the bar. He got the trick barstool after all–along with a dose of passive-aggressive retaliation. Lynne and Mark arrive and we move to a table. We watch the lobby on the closed-circuit television. We watch people hula-hoop, dance and perform other harmless embarrassments to gain entrance to the spy-theme bar. We notice the number of children coming in. The Safe House is not meant to be Chuck E. Cheese. The atmosphere and gimmicks encourage the kids to run around the crowded bar. I worry The Safe House may be ruined. So we’re dorks who collect The Safe House glassware. I order a Code Beer and Gene orders a Spy’s Demise, Milwaukee’s most famous cocktail. The Spy’s Demise glass has had a makeover, no longer the standard pint glass, but sleeker, more like a Coca-cola glass. Mark gives us a twenty-year-old Code Beer mug, pewter-like but probably tin, since it is a bit rusted. We will add it, rusted as it is, to our collection.  "Work has been kinda slow since cartoons went to color. Boop-boop-be-doop" Hungry for a greasy breakfast, we take the concierge’s recommendation and taxi to the Michigan Diner (220 E Michigan St). The menu is ordinary: eggs; eggs and toast; eggs, toast and a side of bacon, sausage, hash browns or American fries. What’s the difference between American fries and hash browns? Is there any difference between American fries and home fries? I order French Toast with two eggs, a menu combo that lends itself to more breakfast-food pondering. The Michigan Diner gets points for authenticity–an un-ironic, grungy diner. A giant ceramic Elvis poses in the right front window and an oversize Marilyn Monroe vamps in the left window. A plastic Betty Boop baits customers from the countertop. A “Stop Diabetes” pamphlet is stacked on the counter next to a green metal bucket of Dum-dum lollipops. Three on-duty cops relax over coffee in the center of the room. After breakfast, we walk from the downtown end of the Riverwalk to the north end near our hotel. Completing a lazy morning, I relax and digest in a giant wicker cave of a chair in the Aloft hotel’s courtyard, an open-air, sparsely-furnished patio. Check out some photos of Milwaukee’s Riverwalk. |
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