In August of 1968, June Brehm opened This Is It!, located just off Cathedral Square. At the time, Milwaukee had almost three dozen gay bars, but Brehm wanted to create a space for her LGBTQ friends that was of better quality and with a sense of unapologetic inclusion.
Brehm ran This Is It! for just over 56 years, followed by her son Joe and later owner George Schneider. It became the longest-running gay bar in Wisconsin and was one of the 10 oldest in the nation. This Is It! abruptly closed on March 9, and the LGBTQ community is still mourning the loss of this legacy space.
For this month’s Milwaukee Magazine, writer Michail Takach explores the history, legacy and sense of community that This Is It! fostered over the decades.
There has been so much folklore around Brehmn's intentions to open a bar according to Takach — stories include her being a mafia mole who got the bar in a breakup, to being a lesbian with a girlfriend, to This Is It! never was intended to be a gay bar. There's also a legend that the bar was actually a speakeasy with origins dating back to prohibition.
“None of these stories are true. The real story of This Is It! is far more fascinating. Here you have an ally, a mother, a wife — a straight woman who wanted to help out her friends and create a place where they could go and be safe and be welcome and not have any trouble and that's the legacy she launched,” Takach says, regarding June Behm’s legacy.
He says it’s all too easy to take local bars for granted as spaces for building community and gay bars in particular, as safe spaces for LGBTQ folks.
“People need to check up on their bars — they need to know how the bars are doing, how the owners are doing, how the staff are doing,” he says. “If you love these places as much as you say you do when they're closing, take some time to support them while they're alive.”
But the memory of This Is It! will live on, and Takach says its story might not be over yet.
“I think that there is more to come on the historic designation field and that's about all I can say about that for now,” he says. “But just know that there are efforts underway to make sure that this place is remembered, commemorated and preserved for future generations to know that it was there and that it was important."
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