Badger Bars & Tavern Tales: An Illustrated History of Wisconsin Saloons

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Summary: A pub crawl across Wisconsin in times gone by...
Review: Thanks to a abberation in drinking age laws between Minnesota and Wisconsin in the late 70s, I spent a GREAT deal of time in Wisconsin taverns in my late teens, so I consider myself something of an expert on the subject. This book is a fantastic, politically incorrect primer on the taverns of the land of cheese, beer and Packer fans. Come on - if you think of beer, Wisconsin automatically comes to mind, doesn't it? If you're somewhere else in America, say San Diego or Charlotte, and have never spent a frigid January Saturday night getting tipsy in a little hole-in-the-wall in the woods surrounded by earflapped yokels who have that "yah, shure!" accent just like in the movie "Fargo", this book is as close as you're gonna get. The pages bring you back to another time, before globalization and homogenization and satellite communication where "local flavor" (good or bad) actually meant something. It's obvious that this is a labor of love for the authors - they laugh along with you at the bizarre promotional ideas some of these taverns had, yet, deep down, you know they admired their threadbare earnestness. Each tavern a unique, flawed jem (well, OK, some are just plain rocks) with story after story. This is a natural for anyone interested in breweriana, Wisconsin, or a swig of the barley pop over the third Ole and Lena joke of the night - a classic!