Dive bars are a big part of Milwaukee culture, a place where locals gather to drink, chat and play games. But there's much more to dive bar culture, as Chris Drosner learned while crafting a feature on the subject for Milwaukee Magazine.
Drosner met up with Lake Effect's Joy Powers at Mamie's, a bar in Milwaukee's Silver City neighborhood, featured in the magazine. Over its more than 40 years in business, Mamie's has become an institution in the neighborhood, serving a diverse clientele in a city that is often segregated.
"This is a bar on 33rd and National, near [the] south side. It's very welcoming, it's very diverse and when I say diverse I mean, people of all walks of life, of all ages, people of different ethnic backgrounds," says Drosner.
The article lays out a variety of different things you'll find in a Milwaukee dive bar. Although not every bar featured in Milwaukee Magazine fulfills all of these criteria, they each have a mix of these amenities that landed them on the list.
"Someone lives upstairs is one of the things, crockpots... A lot of it has to do with choice, or lack of choice; the activities that are happening, bar dice is one of them. There's a seedy jukebox... These throwback things that are being pushed out of newer places that in many cases are replacing legitimate dives," says Drosner.
For its part, Mamie's has some of the Milwaukee dive bar essentials including: bar dice. At the end of the interview, Drosner joined Lake Effect's Joy Powers and Sam Woods in a friendly game of bar dice with bartender Michele Behling leading the way.
