It’s been quite the year for The Mothership. The Bay View tiki bar/corner dive lost three months of business (and the massive cache of rare spirits in its basement) to last August’s floods.
With support from the community, it reopened in November and soon snagged a national honor by being named a James Beard Award semifinalist for Outstanding Bar, the only one in our tavern-loving state to crack that category.
Then, last week, the water rose on The Mothership again, shutting it down again. Luckily for us, the damage wasn’t as bad this time, and the bar is reopening Sunday for its seventh anniversary party. “All we wanted was a normal year and we’re not gonna get a normal year so let’s party,” the bar said (in all caps) in its post announcing the party.
Architects, interior designers, renovators and landscapers: Submit your best work for consideration!
The Beard honor is a beyond-Milwaukee recognition of what we already know: This tavern fueled by rum, Campari, Hamm’s and love is a treasure. Mothership owner Ricky Ramirez is community-minded in a taking-care-of-your-neighbors way that can come only from spending his entire life in a place like Bay View. (He has.)
And he has a singular, authentic vision of what the actual drinking space should be: friendly but firm about its convictions (“We Don’t Have Everything!”), highbrow and delightfully, smuttily lowbrow. Here’s hoping The Mothership stays dry going forward.
