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 classicwisconsin spent a lifetime in Eau Claire one night.
Again.Join us for an unforgettable evening on Water Street.
Click HERE
to print your very own The Joynt coaster.
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 When word got around that the City of Eau Claire had completed extensive work on historic Water St., classicwisconsin pointed itself to the Joynt in a hurry. Sacrificed $156.20 and four points off the driver’s license along the way, but that’s a small price to give you, dear subscriber, a full report.
Then the sheriff he came too, he came too
The sheriff he came too, he came too
The sheriff he came too, and he said Sam how are you
And I said well sheriff how are you, damn your eyes
Water St. is fine. They just ripped out the 100-year old pipes and spiffed it up slightly, as far as classicwisconsin could tell, so congrats to Eau Claire for a job well done in leaving the street’s historic character untouched.
Mouse over picture to view color
version.
classicwisconsin was just 16 years old when it first sat in a Water St. dive named Old Home and watched members of the UW-Eau Claire football team, out of their minds on steroids and Old Style, literally rip the bar out of the wall. (The place had a dirt floor anyway and the drinking age was 18 then, so none of us were worse off at Christmas.)
The street remains the kind of strip that bears witness to any number of excesses most nights of the week. Before the UW System reads this and starts bitching and moaning about binge drinking on Water St., it’s important to take a look at historic Eau Claire.
This place has always been wide open. It was the wild West before the Wild West.
Boomtown
Eau Claire was a boomtown waiting to happen, positioned perfectly as the gateway to the northern forests, with the swift Chippewa and Eau Claire rivers serving as natural highways for moving all that lumber. Sawmills started going up in 1845. For fifty years the good times rolled.
The Randall Park Neighborhood near Water St. has magnificent sawdust-era homes by the dozens, an expansive range of erstwhile architectural styles. And alleys. Not dank alleys from bad movies, but former carriage lanes overgrown with shrubbery and offering unique perspectives of the old neighborhoods. The Randall Park area is honeycombed with alleys. Nearby is the sprawling Carson Park, home of the vintage baseball stadium where Henry Aaron made his debut.
Water St. is the kind of place where the pioneer storefronts have been standing long before any of us and will remain long after, bearing silent witness to the playground of humanity within their embrace; the kind of place that can measure the arch of one’s life if you return time and again, or the kind of place that can provide a lifetime of memories in just one night.
I'm gonna write a tear stained letter
Mark it "Personal Private News"
An' I hope you'll keep it to yourself
An' don't go 'round cryin' the blues
Givin' off a bad impression
As to what went really wrong
When what it was was that suddenly
The music was all gone
And this man and this woman got cut off
In the middle of our song
A new face in one of those vintage buildings is Mona Lisa’s restaurant, 436 Water St. The interior has been stripped down to the original brick and wood. The menu is one of the best in Eau Claire: walleye with garlic smashed tators; grilled salmon with pesto; veal parmesan. The entrées run $20 or more; you can see how Mona’s Lisa’s is a step or two above the usual student fare offered along the street.
A work of art: Mona Lisa’s walleye
The walleye fillet was so enormous that it couldn’t be finished in one sitting, a classicwisconsin first. So the walleye was finished at The Joynt. While Mona Lisa’s is a relative newcomer in an old storefront, The Joynt, 322 Water St., is the venerable watering hole, virtually unchanged from, well, who knows when.
A saloon measuring just 22 feet wide and 65 feet long and containing a decor best described as Lumberjack Revival, the place defies easy description. That’s exactly the way owner Bill Nolte wants it. “This place will never be a destination,” he says, drawing a distinction between his bar and the others that frame their own news clips and offer “a ridiculous number of beers on tap.”
From 1974 to 1989, this little venue played host to the best jazz and blues artists performing as they made their way between Chicago and Minneapolis—their portraits hang all over the place. The live music has ended, but Nolte, who believes “music is the great democratizer,” has instilled his philosophy in the jukebox. “If you don’t like what’s playing, take out a dollar and play what you want.”
Beside the music, you’ll find a barber’s chair, a beer can collection exceeding 700 artifacts, thousands of postcards from lonely Joynt fans stranded around the globe, 8 oz. glasses (Point, Grain Belt, Leinie’s, Berghoff, no light beer), wood floors, bright lighting, and a pool table. After 13 years, the resident pooch, Whacky, is no longer with us.
As expected, Water Street and the Joynt were growing increasingly lively as the evening wore on.
Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to a big kettledrum
Voices calling and voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
Its alpha and omegas kingdom come
Taking Nolte’s advice, classicwisconsin played an evening’s worth of Johnny Cash. It was just an hour or so into Friday, Sept. 12. By closing time, house parties were in full gear as classicwisconsin walked down the carriage lanes from Water St.
There’s are a number of bridges -- at least two pedestrian bridges -- located directly over the Chippewa River, which cuts a sharp valley through the downtown, and classicwisconsin stopped to take in the view and catch a breath of fresh air.
I've never seen a night so long,
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry
 The next morning classicwisconsin awoke feeling garlic smashed. It had been a night like most others in Eau Claire, going back 150 years. The news coming across the TV didn’t help. All those songs at the Joynt about life, death, sin, redemption and tear-stained letters were too prophetic, and classicwisconsin was sitting on the edge of the bed in a dumpy Holiday Inn hotel room. Johnny probably would have laughed about that.
Then I headed down the street
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin'
And it echoed thru the canyon
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.
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