|
|
Travel, History & Culture in America's Dairyland |
| HOME | Where's The Fish Fry? |  |
|||||||||||||
|
Walleye
in Paradise — Brothers 3 Disney World has an area called Main Street USA. The street features simulated architecture representing colonial America, the Old West, and the French Quarter, among other places. It’s all very clean and sanitized. It’s all very fake. You will not experience, for example, anything close to the sites, sounds and smells of the very real French Quarter in New Orleans. As classicwisconsin wrote in classicwisconsin’s book, Classic Wisconsin Weekends, available through classicwisconsin.com, Amazon.com, or a bookstore near you, our very own Madison, Wis., the onetime Mad Town, has become Disney World. Case in point, the popular Cheeseburger in Paradise, where waiting lines snake their way through a mall parking lot in anticipation of, well, fake shit. Fake tiki bar, fake palm trees, fake lounge chairs, fake scuba gear, fake road signs, fake bartenders. The place has been packed to its fake rafters since opening last winter. The menu is big and gaudy, the drink menu bigger and gaudier -- glossy page after glossy page of silly concoctions. During his creative heyday 25 years ago, singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffet, the mastermind behind the Cheeseburger chain, would have taken one look at this place and pissed on the bar. That was long before the artist Jimmy Buffet became the marketing machine JimmyBuffetCorp. Oh, yeah, it’s located next to a fake Irish Pub…across from a fake Asian restaurant, a fake Italian restaurant, a fake Mexican restaurant, and a fake wilderness-themed restaurant. The nearby McDonald’s is the closest thing to a true original. How fucked up is that? classicwisconsin had no sooner asked itself, where the hell am I? Disney World? Wisconsin Dells? when it put on its musty fishing hat -- the kind Jimmy Buffet might have worn before licensing every goddamned thing he ever touched and selling it in neon colors -- and fled to working class near-east side, not far from the Oscar Meyer plant. Brothers 3 is nestled into a ditch below Highway 30. A former gas station, the old canopy still hovers above the parking lot where gas pumps once clinked. Inside: Video gaming machines in the waiting area; giant Packer helmet on the wall; bar, assorted tables and booths arranged hodgepodge in the old garage area; trophy fish nailed to walls; and a few cheap posters that match nothing yet fit perfectly. A couple things are obvious: 1) This was a gas station, they just mopped up the oil, some of it, and built a big horseshoe bar and added some mismatched tables. 2) This is an authentic Wisconsin neighborhood tavern, the kinda joint where kids frolic while mom and dad and their friends sip brandy Old Fashioneds, play Sheepshead and talk smart about draft picks. Brothers 3 is the kind of place that is vanishing from the landscape, especially in Madison. Seat yourself. The waitress will call you honey, she’ll take your order by memory, ask if you want cheese and onions with your hash browns, and mop off the table while juggling trays loaded with beer bottles, cocktail tubs and ashtrays. classicwisconsin visited Brothers 3 the same week that the Madison City Council passed an absolute smoking ban for bars and restaurants starting in 2005. Just 14 months earlier a compromise had been made with small businesses to enact a partial smoking ban. Guess the City Council didn’t really mean that. Places like Brothers 3, ma and pa joints, not the chains, will have an uphill battle should clientele stay home or travel across city limits because of the total ban. And businesses that will be lost as a result, well, tough, according to the city. After a magnificent pan-fried walleye dinner (ordered from the dog-eared, photocopied menu), classicwisconsin sparked a big-ass Excalibur and let the cigar smoke mingle with the cigarette haze hanging overhead. Then Patsy Cline joined us via the jukebox, and classiciwsconsin and the good people of Brothers 3 came together to toast the death of old Madison and everything that was real. Sweet dreams of you |
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
Home | The Book | Fish Frys | Features | Links Copyright 2002-2009, Michael Bie (Classic Wisconsin) |
|
Contact classicwisconsin |
Site by Shadow 5 Productions |