Byline: Doug Moe
LONGTIME CHICAGO journalist Rick Kogan's book on the Billy Goat Tavern -- 'A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse and the American Dream' -- will be out next month.
Rick shared some early pages with me last spring, and I agree with Studs Terkel, who calls the book 'whimsical, wistful and wondrous.'
Reading the manuscript got me wondering if any Madison bar or restaurant, past or present, could be deemed worthy of being immortalized as the subject of a book.
There haven't been a lot of good books about bars, which is surprising, since so many great stories come out of them. One of the best is Ron Fimrite's 'The Square: The Story of a Saloon,' which is an ode to the Washington Square Bar and Grill in San Francisco.
Fimrite's colleague at Sports Illustrated, Dan Jenkins, was always threatening to write a history of P.J. Clarke's in Manhattan. He even had a title: 'Is It Still Snowing Outside, Ari?' It seems one winter night Aristotle and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis stopped in at Clarke's and were mistakenly seated near a table of drunken regulars, one of whom leaned over and asked Onassis for a weather update.
The only surprise with the Billy Goat, located beneath Michigan Avenue close to Tribune Tower in Chicago, is that it took this long for someone to write a book about it.
The Billy Goat has much to recommend it, including a colorful past. Original proprietor William Sianis kept a goat in the bar and once famously tried to bring the beast into a World Series game at Wrigley Field. When the goat was denied entrance, Sianis put a curse on the Cubs, and they haven't been back to the World Series since.
Columnist Mike Royko hung out at the Goat and set dozens of memorable columns in the saloon, including one in which Sam Sianis -- William's nephew and the current owner -- tossed the same drunk out of the bar six times in one night, a feat Royko ranked with Gale Sayers scoring six touchdowns in one Bears game.
The Billy Goat was also the inspiration for the great John Belushi 'cheezeborger, cheezeborger' skit on 'Saturday Night Live.' The bar became so famous that a sitting president, the first George Bush, stopped there for lunch during a Chicago visit. He wanted to have a beer with Royko, who sent regrets from his Tribune office. Filmmaker George Motz included the Goat among eight great U.S. burger joints in his classic documentary, 'Hamburger America.'
It is unlikely any Madison saloon can top that pedigree, but we can at least claim some contenders -- bars that share one notable trait or another with the Billy Goat.
The 602 Club, for instance -- a great bar on University Avenue at Frances that closed in 1994 -- never inspired a 'Saturday Night Live' spoof, but it did appear in a TV episode of a 'Star Trek' spinoff.
In May 2003, an episode of 'Enterprise' on the UPN network called for the show's star, Scott Bakula, to have a beer with guest star Keith Carradine at a place called the 602 Club. It turned out the writer-producer of 'Enterprise,' Rick Berman, studied TV and film at UW-Madison in the 1960s and spent many hours quenching his thirst at the Six.
The 602 Club was the creation of owner Dudley Howe, and its genius was its inclusiveness: Poets (notably the late John Tuschen) mixed comfortably with prosecutors, students, artists, ex-boxers and all manner of urban wildlife over beer there.
I know of no sitting U.S. president who has dined or drunk in a Madison saloon, but a soon-to-be president, Jimmy Carter, once took a break from campaigning on State Street in 1976 to have a bite at the Athens, a Greek restaurant run by the irrepressible Gus Paraskevoulakos.
Something about Gus must have attracted political personalities, for 12 years later, when Gus was operating another State Street bistro called Kosta's, Bill Clinton not only stopped in for a Democratic fundraiser, he sent Gus a note thanking him for opening early for some 'hungry and thirsty Democrats.'
A number of Madison bars could give the Billy Goat a run for its cheezeborger and flamboyant history. I'm thinking about the Plaza, with its secret sauce, and also Dotty's and the Nitty Gritty, where proprietors Jeff Stanley and Marsh Shapiro, respectively, know how to spin a colorful yarn.
It may not have hosted any Roykos, but the old Congress Bar on West Main Street was a second home to a generation of newspapermen (and they were mostly men) like Cedric Parker and wits like Cy Butt before it burned down in 1966. The newspaper building was downtown then. A generation later, Madison Magazine was located above the Fess Hotel bar on East Doty, which became a gathering place for reporters, lawyers and other social marginals.
It dawns on me that while no single Madison saloon may rate a book, there is a whale of a tale to be told in gathering together the best stories from the best bars in this city. I may even have an idea of who should write it.
Heard something Moe should know? Call 252-6446, write P.O. Box 8060, Madison, WI 53708, or e-mail dmoe@madison.com.
