Covid Chronicles. Chapter 75: Wisconsin’s Bar Culture and the Spread of Covid

Read chapter 74 here

Saturday, October 17, 2020

The Tavern League of Wisconsin, incorporated as a statewide trade association, has an outsized influence over state politics. It represents exclusively the interests in licensed beverage retailers. Membership exceeds 5,000. In the Age of Covid, its members interests are to return to the good old days of 2019, when capacity limits were a fire department issue. Earlier this year, Governor Evers issued an executive order capping the capacity limits of all bars and restaurant in the state to 50%. A lot of grumbling ensued but no judicial challenge was initiated. Two weeks ago, Evers reduced the limit to 25% in light of the state’s spiking virus numbers. The state’s 7-day average of new cases has shot up 336% since September 1, from 748 to 3,260. This week the Wisconsin Department of Health Services reported 3000+ cases on 4 consecutive days. 

None of these numbers make any difference to Tavern League members and their supporters, even though large gatherings in bars, with few masks and no social distancing, have been documented to be virus superspreaders. 

As I see it, there’s a reason why North Dakota, Montana, and Wisconsin currently rank 1, 2, 3 among states with the highest per capita increase in new Covid cases. These states also rank 1, 2, 3 in the number of bars per 100,000 residents. I can’t speak for North Dakota and Montana, but bars are deeply embedded into Wisconsin culture. When I first moved to Oshkosh, I was amazed by the number of neighborhood bars, many with excellent fish frys. There were far more of them than churches. 

As I became more familiar with the state’s geography, it wasn’t unusual to drive through an unincorporated town, one of those proverbial dots on a map, and see two or three large Old Style signs above a bar’s entrance but not a single church steeple. 

Sidebar: Old Style was the top-selling beer produced by the G. Heileman Company, one of Wisconsin’s many notable independent breweries, in La Crosse. It was a cheap beer, which made it a college favorite, with a pleasantly distinctly taste that, for me, elevated its lowly status. (Some wags referred to it as “Dog Style”.) I preferred the brewery’s premium product, Special Export – think Budweiser vs. Michelob. My go-to beers during most of my time in Oshkosh were Point Special and the original Leinenkugel’s, the latter ruined after the Chippewa Falls brewery was sold to Miller Brewing in 1988. Speaking of ownerships changes, Heileman was sold to Stroh’s in 1996, a purchased financed with junk bonds, and two years later was taken over by Pabst, where Old Style and Special Export continue to be brewed. Do they taste the same as they did in the 1980s? I wouldn’t know. I haven’t drunk glass of either brew since 1986.