Posts Tagged ‘Wisconsin’
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November 10, 2020

Swinging with the Beloit Supper Clubbers?

Build it and they will have supper (Courtesy of the Beloit Snappers.)

The relish tray is Quint Studer’s favorite item at a Wisconsin supper club. That makes sense. Studer is an investor and managing partner in the rebirth of the Beloit (Wis.) Snappers minor league baseball team. He has an appetite for all the seasoning that life can offer.

Studer grew up in Brookfield, a near western suburb of Chicago. He was raised on the Go-Go White Sox. The neighborhood hangout was Joe’s (Butkovich) Saloon on 47th Street. Joe’s sponsored Sunday bus trips to Comiskey Park and Studer would tag along with his parents. Everyone on the [...]

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July 24, 2019

What’s Shaking at the Bobblehead Hall of Fame

Photo courtesy of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum

MILWAUKEE–Phil Sklar once had a successful career in corporate finance.

He was assistant finance director for the $500 million Engineered Solutions Segment at Actuant Corporation in Menomonee Falls, Wis. One day he quit his job to become co-founder and CEO of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened February 1 in Milwaukee.

I bet heads spun at that exit interview.

Sklar, 35, and museum co-founder Brad Novak, also 35, have known each other since middle school in Rockford, Ill. Another huge bobblehead collector, [...]

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December 5, 2018

Dreaming of an Evergleam Christmas

My Evergleam.

MILWAUKEE, WI.—Aluminium was a foil for Midcentury America.

A section of the fantastic “Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America” exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum is devoted to the possibilities of aluminium (or aluminum.)

The late Chicago architect Henry P. Glass designed a collapsable aluminum and plastic trailer, a.k.a. the “Accordium Camp Trailer.” The proposed 700-foot camper folded up like an accordion and could be hauled behind a car. The mid-1950s project was commissioned by Alcoa Aluminum’s free-wheeling “Forecast” program.

Alcola promised, “There’s a world of aluminum [...]

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April 27, 2016

Dressing up The Gobbler Theater

JOHNSON CREEK, WIS.—-The band Starship reopened the historically quirky Gobbler Theater Sunday in Johnson Creek, about half way between Madison and Milwaukee, Wis. Vocalist Stephanie Calvert channeled her inner Grace Slick reminding the older crowd to “Feed Your Head”  in the band’s cover of the Jefferson Airplane 1967 hit “White Rabbit.”

Only the late 1960s would be able to birth the Gobbler Motel and Supper Club.

Feed your head, indeed.

The Gobbler complex was created in 1967 by area turkey farmer Clarence Hartwig, who decorated his dining room in pink colors and pink [...]

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