LGBT Milwaukee’s “gay-borhood” was once the near South Side. Decades before its gentrification, there were bars in that abandoned warehouse district, the Third Ward. It was the home to The River Queen (I met Milton Berle there circa 1975), the Wreck Room, M&M’s and the Factory. I recall entering the Factory for the first time on my 21st birthday. Everyone looked like Paul Lynde in paisley shirts with wide, open collars that practically touched their shoulders. Big gold pendants on gold chains hung around their necks before, long before bling was a thing. The former Factory is now the site of the Broadway Theatre Center so at least the drama goes on. Recent news is the ex-Wreck Room (speaking of which, a friend met Paul Lynde there), now Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design’s coffee shop, will be razed to accommodate a high rise. The building and its site, that odd, symbolically triangular block, should be historic landmarks. But it’s too late. Progress never spares Milwaukee’s past, gay or straight, be it the city’s first church or those gaudy 1890s mansions that lined Grand Avenue...when it was grand.
Over a dozen gay bars dotted the streets of then pre-historic Walker’s Point. The nascent LGBT Community Center was there, too. In the late 1990s, it relocated to Brewers’ Hill. The Center’s strategy envisioned itself a “healthy” LGBT hub. Its move effectively split the once concentrated community.
Mainstay bars like Ball Game, Boot Camp and Triangle eventually closed. Owners passed or moved away. No one picked up the torch, except in the case of the Boot Camp, when an arsonist burned it down. The Triangle turned into a tapas place. Admittedly, it smells better now. And, the Ball Game is now a “gay friendly” tiki bar. (How can a “tiki” bar not be gay friendly?)
Anyway, the Internet has forever altered the art of gay mingling. It offers the means to meet the like-minded without leaving the comfort of one’s couch or closet. And gay kids today, well, they can hang almost anywhere.
Ah, nostalgia. “Change happens,” I’ve been told. I’ve also been admonished for romanticizing LGBT oppression—those days when Milwaukee Police Chief Harold Brier kept pink cards to catalog bar-going gays based on license plate numbers collected by his patrolmen. Besides, AIDS in the ’80s culled the cream of the crop, so mention of the River Queen or Factory leaves most people scratching their heads. Still, I can’t help feeling maudlin when I pass through the gay ’hood and see “For Lease” signs hanging in old haunts like Boom and the Room...and hear the strains of “Last Dance” in my head.
