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.
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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.  Watermelon Martini at Aloft's Wxyz Bar Back at the hotel, we sit at the sunken Wxyz bar. Clever name, right? Just wait, The Aloft has more cleverness in store. The bar’s surface is embedded with confetti-shaped lights that change from orange to pink to green and back. The large-breasted bartender struggles to cut a whole watermelon with a dull knife and we watch all three heaving melons a little uncomfortably. We almost call it a night, but it is early and it’s our first night in town. I suggest we jump in a cab and go to The Jazz Estate (2423 N. Murray Ave). I call first to see if the bar is open since The Estate has shuttered and been resuscitated more times than a CPR practice dummy. The Estate is open and we’re on our way. A call to Yellow Cab yields a car within five minutes. This no-car thing is going to work. And it does, thanks in part to the speed of Yellow Cab. Two Harleys are parked in front of the propped-open bar door. Two guys with long beards are playing a Van Morrison tune as we walk in. We take our $4 (yes, $4) vodka-and-grapefruits to one of the four cocktail tables in front of the band. The Cactus Brothers play Marshall Tucker, Lynyrd Skynrd, Waylon Jennings and David Allen Coe. The banter between the brothers and the bartender seems part of their act and I realize all three are musician-pals who play together in other iterations of the band.  Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner The Estate, despite its troubles, remains The Estate. Much younger bartenders, a wider range of music, and not a familiar face, yet the place is still so much the same. My eyes linger on the photo of Frank and Ava by the waitress station and then to the Frank Sinatra mug shot. Those photos have hung there, still crooked, since I first walked in there in 1991. Once we drink the bar out of grapefruit juice, it is time to go. Or should we have one last drink?  Mader's German Restaurant Milwaukee is both my former home and my adopted hometown. Every return visit feels like a homecoming. But this visit to Milwaukee will be a little bit tourist trip. I want to see and do the things I always meant to see and do. One, I have never eaten at Karl Ratzsch’s or Mader’s, the two remaining stalwarts of the German restaurant triumvirate that once reigned in this town. (The third triumvir, John Ernst, where I dined many times, closed in 2001.) Since Mader’s (1041 N. 3rd St) is only two blocks from the hotel, tonight’s choice is easy. At Mader’s, the Germanness is everywhere you look: the wall plaques, the steins, the ostentatious glass-encased suit of armor and the inexplicable enormous upholstered chair in the foyer. The dining room chairs look medieval, hard and short, made of dark wood with wine-glass shapes cut out of the back.  Mader's Beer Sampler Gene orders a beer sampler, six juice-size glasses with beers arranged from light to dark. I drink a Chardonnay La Crema. Gene selects a wiener schnitzel and sauerbraten platter for his main course. I order the only fish dish on the menu, grilled salmon with wasabi cream sauce. As the only fish dish, I worry it will be perfunctory and boring. So wrong! I also order a side of spatzle, fried gnocchi-like German dumplings. I talk Gene into sharing a Schaum Torte, the classic strawberry-and-meringue mountain of a dessert. We stop in the German Beer Hall (1009 N. 3rd St) for a draft. I want Gene to see this bar, but I don’t know if is just too early in the evening or if we are too full to enjoy it. The narrow barroom is nearly empty and we leave half our beers on the bar.  Clever Room Key We check into Milwaukee’s new Aloft Hotel (1230 N. 3rd St), the more casual offspring of the W Hotel luxury chain. Decorated in pink and acrylic, the sassy hotel sits on the fringe of the downtown nightlife on Juneau and Old World 3rd Street. Is the hotel part of a revitalized downtown elbowing into the urban decay that surrounds it on the north? Or is the hotel just sitting in a no-man’s land? Time will tell. Our room is small; but as a New Yorker, I call the room compact. A flat-screen TV on the wall, a built-in desk and a built-in padded bench make the best of the small space. The bed and the nightstands extrude from the opposite wall. The bathroom/dressing area looks as efficient as a Tokyo pod. Divided in three, the far slice is a frosted-glass shower. The middle slice contains the toilet with a sliding door that almost closes. A sink with counter space are part of a walk-thru closet, the final third. The closet itself is sliced and diced into cubbies—a cubby for coffee, one with a built-in magazine rack and a slot to hang a few clothes. We take a long, unwarranted afternoon nap, recovering from nothing but perhaps the stress of New York and work.
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