When it comes to bars, I’m a traveler; seldom do I take a good bar and plant roots down, returning later to water.
The reason for this is because I’m always searching for something better than what I’ve found. That doesn’t mean that I’m unhappy with the bars I find, but I’m optimistic that if I just turn one more corner, or walk one more block, I’ll find an even better bar than the one I left, or a place better than all the rest.
This habitual bar quest puts me in a lot of excellent establishments (obviously, this is Milwaukee), but it seldom puts me into the seat from which I’ve left. Enter Y-Not II Tavern (706 E. Lyon St.).
The Y-Nots of Milwaukee (the original, which closed years back, II and III) seem to be hearty staples of the brew crowd here. Y-Not II was one of the bars I went to when I first visited here, one of the first bars I came to when I first moved here, and one of (and I say this with great reverence) the bars to which I continue to go back.
So what makes this bar so great, so great that I go back? I’ll tell you…but first my gripes about one small aspect of it, that’s actually one large aspect of it.
In the sign industry they say that a sign is the friendly handshake to the customer on the street. If that’s the case, then Y-Not II’s sign is about as friendly as Westboro Baptists. I’ll go as far as to say that it is the most uninviting sign in all of Milwaukee bar-dom, and I have seen some poor ones. Even the name is hard to swallow. I get it, but it’s paltry cleverness (it pales in comparison to, say, The Beaver Cleaver…I’ll just let that one sink in for a moment).
But reading this means you took an English class somewhere along your journey of life, which means you had an English teacher who would say, “Never judge a book by its cover,” to which I kindly reply: Bullshit. Judge books by covers. And then take that and apply it to everything. There is a whole lot of crap in the world, and if you don’t sift through it some way, then you’ll be knee deep forever.
Thankfully (and this is where some amendments come in to my earlier rule of hate/judge everything ever) I was pulled into Y-Not II against my own accord.
And against (or despite) everything on the outside, it is truly a great bar.
Every time I’ve been in they’ve had great bartenders, always friendly and always, always prompt to serve. Drinks are obscenely cheap (check out their liter beer deals when you go). Last time I was there I got two liters and two Malibu Cokes for less than $11. Also: Free popcorn. Free anything is great, but free popcorn at a bar is like free prostitutes on the strip (and there are some shocking similarities there, which I’ll let you find).
The whole place is nice and dirty and worn; springs are popping out of their booths, cabinets are bruised and gouged, decorations from past holidays still hang and collect dust, many of the chairs are mismatched and look like they’ve been pulled off a line of garage sales (there’s even an old computer chair, just hangin’ out at one of the tables).
So, with all this greatness the bar has to offer, surely no one could dislike it? Wrong. My girlfriend dislikes it. Actually, she doesn’t just dislike it, she hates the place, hates the entire place (not just the sign or name, like me). I’ve got other friends that hate it too, and I think, “What the hell? This place is awesome.” And then there are those that love it, those that have made it into the staple that it is. So what gives? How can a bar have an immutable line drawn, with patrons standing on one side or the other?
The dirty little secret of most bars and why we go has nothing to do with the bar, or the deals (or even the free popcorn/prostitutes). There are a lot of places that offer a lot of the same thing.
No, we return because of what they were like the first time we were there. We’re constantly searching nostalgia. And this isn’t a bad thing. It just means that Y-Not II was perfect the first time, in so much as the people I went with and the drinks I had. And I’ll keep going back, trying to re-forge those memories.
Sadly, I’ll never re-create them. But down the line I’ll realize that in my zeal of re-creation, I’ve in fact created something anew…and then spend some time trying to re-create that.
