Lenny's Tap

[warthog-driver]

OK, for a really important question - is Lenny's Tap still around? Now, that was a bar! It was a place where heartache wasn't a stranger and the sting of cheap booze somehow only eased but never cured life's agony. A heady mixture of sweat, cigarette smoke, body odor, and the stale perfume of the tart in leopard skin spandex whose ass was wrapped around her bar stool and her cherry red lips around the head of a PBR bottle. It was a place Al would have been proud to drink at and probably did. Where dreams died and agony thrived through the gauzy fog of one last unfiltered Camel. For a few dollars a man could find sanctuary in a guileless world of doom and despair framed in flashing neon. Of all the gin joints in Milwaukee this was the oasis, the shimmering chimera of shame in city that gives no quarter...

[🏀]

Holy unnatural carnal knowledge, dude. Wow, probably the best literary work on Scoop, ever. And it was about Lenny's Tap.

Wow.

[muhoosier260]

this is awesome

[71Warrior]

My first post ever. 

Lenny's was on 18th and State and served as home base for AKPsi (Da Zoo) Fraternity. Leonard's on State was owned by Lenny Bernstein and his wife Sarah.  Lenny treated us like family.  6 ouce Miller Tap beers were 10 cents.  He opened every morning at 6:00 AM and close on 2:00 AM on school nights and 3:30 on Saturday evening.  We closed the bar many times and opened on more than a few. If we stayed past closing, he would tell us to get the beers our selves.  This didn't happen very often because at closing time Sarah would tell us to "drink up and hit the road."  Lenny was one of the kindest people I've ever met and he made sure his "boys" were taken care of.  My future wife and her roommate were invited to his house one Easter for dinner.  He'd send out for hot corned beef sandwiches for lunch on Saturdays.  One of the first wedding presents we received was a check from Lenny.  Both he and his wife have passed on and the establishment torn down.  One year at a fraternity reunion a bunch of us drove to the patch of grass that once was Lenny's and drank a beer there in his honor.  Lenny's wasn't just a bar...it was an experience.

[MUWarrior71]

Let's see, there was Toothless Ruthie, Smokie and ......

[71Warrior]

...Fat Ass Charlie...

Cliff was one of the two Indian bartenders.  Can't remember the name of the other.

St Patty's night was one of the craziest nights there.  You couldn't move it was so crowded.  I used to tend bar on St. Patty's night and Lenny would give me an Irish decanter of Old Fitz for helping out.

[mu-rara]

Lenny's was everything the other posts say it was....Great place.

It lost a lot of student business after a shooting in 80? 81?

[warthog-driver]

I think the shooting was in 80 and you are correct, that event was the beginning of the end for Lenny's. A legendary place. Oh, but if those walls could talk...