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Playing dice game on an old wooden table with beer mug
If you’re out and about in Milwaukee’s LGBTQ bar scene and hear a bang followed by a rattling cascade, it could be that someone has slapped a drag queen hard enough to snap her string of pearls. To hear it repeatedly could mean a drag brawl, or more likely, “bar dice.”
A popular Midwest tavern sport in which five dice are shaken and cast from a leather cup, bar dice should be well known to any drinking Wisconsinite, gay or otherwise. Its presence in the city’s LGBTQ establishments is as ubiquitous as one might expect.
One can play at Fluid, for example. I recall meeting a friend there one Labor Day for a quiet drink and conversation. Aside from the two of us, there was just one other gentleman who sat at the opposite end of the bar. Another patron arrived, sat a few stools away from us and with his beverage, asked for the dice. Of the-harder-you-slam-the-cup, the-luckier-you-will-be school of the game, he proceeded to play with himself, repeatedly trying his luck and our patience until I fled to Walker’s Pint across the street for the calming ambiance of a raucous lesbian bar at happy hour.
Meanwhile at Woody’s, you can play to your heart’s content. It’s a sports bar, after all, so the incessant banging blends seamlessly with the smack of air hockey and colliding billiard balls. In fact, given the din, you might find it amiss when no one is playing and pick up the cup yourself to fill the void.
At Kruz Kruzbar, they offer an elegant and dignified solution to allow play yet not startle the clientele: Ask for the dice, and you’ll receive a wooden hexagonal tray, about a foot across, lined in muffling plush green felt (to match the pool table), replete with an integrated miniature LED light standing above the surface like a street lamp. You roll the dice manually. The bartender rolls and puts the tray away.
But at This Is It!, the city’s oldest LGBTQ bar, the game is forbidden entirely. Posted on signage with other bar rules, patrons are told to go elsewhere if they can’t cope.
Then there’s the card game, Sheepshead. Like a good segment of the population, it’s of Germanic origin. The name is a literal, albeit probably incorrect translation of Schafkopf. Its local popularity has naturally permeated LGBTQ culture and remains an almost ritualized pastime for many—especially those who grew up in German households where the game was traditionally played. GAMMA, the state’s oldest recreational, cultural and social organization, hosts monthly Sheepshead evenings. So adamant are its players, the schedule for their monthly rotating games held at members’ homes is set a full year in advance.
PrideFest, the city’s LGBTQ summer festival, once featured a dedicated Sheepshead tent. Although it has fallen off the event’s schedule in recent years, it could very well return. That resurgence could, in part, be inspired by Woody’s newly instituted Sheepshead nights that take place every Thursday and have already attracted an ever growing following.
If you’re keen to play either, take your pick. It’s a horse a piece.
