Last summer, Milwaukee Magazine visited Just Art’s Saloon for our cover story on dive bars. Part of that feature was a “signs you’re in a dive” checklist, and walking through the door, it was immediately evident that Just Art’s would tick almost every box. Proprietor Art Guenther, who died on Aug. 14 at age 80, his was behind the bar, playing dice, offering his unvarnished opinion on the news and cracking jokes with his regulars. Friends will have a chance to say goodbye on Tuesday at a service in Wauwatosa.
Guenther bought his building at 181 S. Second St., a former gay bar called The Flame that suffered a fire, in 1980. He remodeled the building, creating his home on the second floor. In its heyday, business boomed as his employees kept burgers and pizzas rolling in the kitchen attached to the bar and a second bar out back catered to leagues of volleyball players. But 45 years later, the kitchen was closed, the volleyball courts abandoned. Guenther was slowing down. As we wrote last year, “with long, shaggy white hair and a beard, he looks like a castaway, the bar his island.” Guenther said then that he was content with a slower pace as he had time for his favorite thing: talking.
“People didn’t go there for the drinks, because Art was a terrible bartender; they went there for his personality and the conversation,” says Craig Peterson, who first visited Just Art’s about 25 years ago and became a regular. Peterson, who owns a public relations company, Zigman Joseph Associates, was taken with the eclectic clientele – everyone from CEOs to cops to college kids stopped by to hang out with Guenther.
Tell us who you’d pick to be a Betty this year!
“There aren’t many bartenders that give you the Art experience,” Peterson says. Part of that experience was hearing Guenther’s take on politics, pop culture and whatever else was on his mind.
“He had lots of opinions, and he wasn’t afraid to argue with you. Very seldom did he change his opinion, but he was always open to hearing new ones,” Peterson says. He admits that this sometimes rubbed people the wrong way. “They chose not to come back or said nasty things about him, but he just brushed it off cause that’s Art,” Peterson says. “He wasn’t going to change his ways.”
Peterson, who last saw Guenther a few weeks ago, says that if you did get to know him, you would find he “had a big heart. I have a now 23-year-old son with Down syndrome, Hunter. I took him to Just Art’s probably from the time he was 12 on. At the end of the day, we’d stop by Art’s; Hunter had his own seat. He and Art became absolute best buddies. [Art] always joked that he and my son were going to get an RV and head to Burning Man together.”
Peterson visited the bar the night Guenther passed away. “One of the folks there helping clean up pulled me aside. We were standing at the bar and there was a framed picture Art had at the bar right next to the cash register of Art and my son. I never knew it was there.”
Peterson says he has many good memories of Art’s parties – “he celebrated everything.” Regulars would show up at 6 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day to make hundreds of breakfasts, corned beef sandwiches for lunch, and Irish stew for dinner. There were pig roasts, holiday parties and he even had an annual “Art Attack Party” on the anniversary of his heart attack.
When we visited last year, we asked Guenther what he saw for the future of his bar, the last of its kind in a neighborhood that has significantly gentrified since he opened in 1980. “They’ll knock this place down,” Guenther shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m 79 now, I don’t know how many years I have. I’m a dinosaur. I should start a pool – knowing my friends, they’d probably get me killed just to win the pool,” he joked.
Peterson is not sure what will happen to the bar, either. “Art and his industry is a dying breed,” he laments. “I think the days of the dive bars are numbered. If you didn’t get a chance to experience it, I’m sorry for you.”
When we left Just Art’s last summer, we asked Guenther for one more joke for the road. He told us a vulgar one about The Muppets (punchline: “The phone rang, Miss Piggy answered and said, ‘I can’t talk now, I’ve got a frog in my throat.’”)
“Maybe you won’t be able to use that,” Guenther grinned, pointing at our audio recorder. “The animal lovers don’t like me making fun of frogs.”
Art Guenther’s funeral is Tuesday, Sept. 2 at St. Jude the Apostle Catholic Church, 734 Glenview Ave., Wauwatosa. A visitation beginning at 10 a.m. will be followed by Mass at 1 pm.
