Summer’s spunky red geraniums fronting the Shorecrest Hotel are faded. The patio is gloom personified. Inside the grand old building, owner Joe Balistrieri’s booming voice is gone forever. The last time we met, he kissed my cheek and asked why I didn’t stop in more often.
A gentleman to the end, he died recently, still living in a penthouse on the top floor of the historic Tulgren building. In 2004 I wrote a full feature for Milwaukee Magazine, titled “Where Legends Dwell,” a tale loosely based on Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, and lord knows the hotel had its share of colorful inhabitants, including me who lived there for five years before my move to a new condo a few blocks south. Anyway, each year, the B’s would have their staff decorate two Christmas trees for the art deco lobby, and if the spirit moved them, they’d add a huge handcrafted crèche, a family heirloom, for all to enjoy. When I stopped in recently to offer my condolences, Steve (he’s been at the front desk forever) said he wasn’t sure if they’d put up the trees this year. I already miss the smell of cigar smoke.
The first time I met Joe, he was “taste-testing” the then popular, Cosmo cocktail. The site was the elegant bar at the front of the building, which still holds court on the east end of their restaurant, The Savoy. Let it here be writ that Joe personally selected the lovely china, a fact he was proud of. He was a detail man, a man’s man, a lady’s man, and his own man. It was he who demanded fresh flowers and fresh linens on each table, great food and great cocktails, and oh yes, did I mention the Sinatra tunes? He fought like hell to hang on to the last shreds of elegance. The night I tested too many Cosmos, he sent sent me back to Bay View in a cab, with a driver whose instructions were to see me to my back door.
An era has ended. The 1925 building is for sale.
