LISTEN TO WUWM’S “LAKE EFFECT” JUNE 17 AT NOON TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THIS STORY.
Why are you doing this? What do you want with a gay bar, June? Why are you getting mixed up with the gay people? Isn’t it hard enough to be a woman in this business?”
“You’re going to get yourself in trouble, you watch.”
When June Brehm decided to open This Is It in August 1968 just off of Cathedral Square, she knew she was ahead of her time. As a service industry veteran, she’d seen the spaces her gay co-workers had to settle for. Milwaukee had nearly three dozen gay bars by 1968, but they were windowless, anonymous, obscure, unmarked bust-outs that offered very little ambience and even less in quality.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
While the Black Nite Brawl of 1961 had activated community consciousness of Milwaukee’s LGBT people, the idea of community action was still years away. Not until the Stonewall Uprising of June 1969 did Madison and Milwaukee youth begin to pursue liberation: from exclusion, from discrimination, from oppression in everyday life.
RELATED READS: THE BLACK NITE BRAWL: MILWAUKEE’S PLACE IN LGBTQ HISTORY
Everyone thought June was crazy. Her friends. Her family. Her business partner. Her bankers. Even her gay friends and longtime service industry co-workers. And they all tried to talk her out of it. “I didn’t even understand these questions,” Brehm said in May 2008. “And frankly, they really pissed me off. Who was anyone to tell me what to do? I told them, ‘I’m doing this because it needs to be done.’ Let them come for me.”
owner of This Is It; photo courtesy of LGBTQ History Project
Nobody ever came for June. They wouldn’t dare. She was determined – if not defiant – about finding a place for her gay friends that was as good, if not better, than any other bar in town. Even if she had to open it herself.
And so she did – and for the next 56½ years, This Is It served up June’s brand of unapologetic inclusion seven days a week, 365 days a year. The bar became Downtown’s Little Engine That Could, triumphing over everything that tried to take it down: the AIDS crisis, gentrification, a generational shift in clientele, a global pandemic, inflation, a chaotic street project that rendered the entire block inaccessible for over a year.
“I’m doing this because it needs to be done. Let them come for me.”
Even after June (2010) and her son Joe (2016) – who were both straight and cisgender – passed away, the bar just kept going and going and going, thanks to the relentless devotion of new owner George Schneider. In 2018, Cathedral Square was chosen for Wisconsin’s first rainbow crosswalks in support of June’s 50-year vision.
When nationally prominent, Milwaukee-famous drag star Trixie Mattel bought into the business in 2021, she (and the bar) enjoyed international media attention. In recent years, This Is It became the longest-running gay bar in Wisconsin, one of the 10 oldest in the nation, and a Midwest tourist attraction.
Until Sunday, March 9, when the bar abruptly closed via a social media announcement, after a very well-attended Saturday night Lady Gaga party. In a town of a thousand taverns, the closing of a bar – even one with this much heritage – may not seem important. But it was – it really was.
One month after the bar’s closing, we spoke to a collection of This Is It devotees, including longtime customers, employees and fans, for their reflections on what this space meant to them, then and now. (Schneider, the bar’s principal owner at the time of its closing, and Mattel, its star minority owner, declined to participate in this article.)
HERE’S A SOBERING FACT: Half of the gay bars in the United States have closed since 2008. Thousands of queer spaces – especially those catering to lesbians, communities of color and seniors – have disappeared as the “mainstreaming” of LGBTQ culture continues. That made This Is It a survivor until its closure in March.
“It’s extremely rare to find a bar – anywhere in the world – that has been continuously operating since before the Stonewall Rebellion” of 1969, says Greggor Mattson, author of the 2023 book Who Needs Gay Bars?
“These legacy spaces often function as museums of history,” he says. “These are intergenerational spaces where young people can meet their elders. When we lose these places, we lose connection with our elders and their histories.”
Despite the deep loss in Milwaukee, there’s good news at the national level. Since 2021, Mattson’s team has seen the pace of closings slow, while the number of openings has increased. Still, he cautions customers to show up for their favorite spaces.
“People need to check in on their bars,” he says. “If they really love these bars as much as they say they do when they close down, they should be checking in on the staff and the owners constantly.”
While many in the community were upset about the abrupt way This Is It closed – no warning, no fundraiser, no use of the star power of its minority owner, Trixie Mattel – that’s not uncommon. “This is often how it goes,” he says. “These places run on fumes, and you can only do that for so long. Nobody is getting rich running a gay bar. Very, very few of these bars are money-making operations. I called them ‘not-quite-for-profits’ because their owners could make more money doing almost anything else. … But they keep the doors open for the community, and the community owes it to show up for them.”
With This Is It’s departure, Madison’s Cardinal Bar (opened in 1975) and Green Bay’s Napalese Lounge (1982) are now Wisconsin’s oldest gay bars. In Milwaukee, POP, Walker’s Pint, DIX, Kruz, Harbor Room, Woody’s and La Cage remain.
Since This Is It closed, there have been fundraisers for former staff, hosts and performers, including a GoFundMe that raised $24,000. The Milwaukee LGBT Community Center offered assistance to affected employees. The building has been nominated for historic status.
“Thank you to everyone who had our backs,” says bar manager Darnell Watson. “It was surprising, it was uplifting, and it felt great. We are forever grateful to you all.”
The Story Tellers
Aaleh Hughes
This Is It show host and Milwaukee LGBT Community Center youth program coordinator
Karen Valentine
Milwaukee diva, columnist, entertainer, philanthropist and former This Is It employee
Gaby Chaparro
Longtime This Is It bartender and show coordinator
“Fabulous” Larry Patterson
Local legend of nightlife, fashion and culture
Darnell Watson
Former customer, show host and general manager (2021-25) of This Is It
First Impressions
Karen Valentine: I first stepped into the bar in autumn 1979. I remember it being dark, cloistered, like a speakeasy, with faded old-school refinement: faux Tiffany lighting, black banquettes, red velvet walls, men in ties and jackets, a million-dollar jukebox playing the American Songbook. It was like being in your grandfather’s rec room – or a gentlemen’s club. I only saw June once.
She was doling out fresh shrimp – three per customer! – at a holiday party. I had such a crush on Joe. He should have been a radio or TV announcer with that booming baritone voice. I’d visit him on Sundays and play the songs of yesteryear. He was always a gentleman and always made us feel like we were guests in his home.
Dianna Jones: It was a goosebumps kind of moment. A little chilling, actually. The space immediately felt so familiar. It was so small and so quaint and so comfortable. And yet, it felt so meaningful. I knew I belonged there from the first visit. I wish every young person could feel what I felt that day.
Larry Patterson: It had to be 1981 or 1982. It was very much an older man’s club. But I didn’t feel out of place at all. Joe was so welcoming, just so nice. And June! Oh my God, I loved her. She would come to the Boston Store twice a month to buy Opium perfume. I was the only person with whom she would work. When they came out with Opium for Men, she’d buy that for her son and her friends. All those little bottles of Opium. I’ll never forget her. She was hilarious.
Gaby Chaparro: As soon as I walked into the bar [in 2008], This Is It felt like a safe place. Paulie was my bartender that first night, and he was very, very welcoming. I became a regular, and then an employee, and it started to feel like a second home for me.
I can’t tell you how many friendships started here. My relationship with my husband started here. And I would have been working here 10 years in July. And it all started with a warm welcome.
Aaleh Hughes: This Is It was the first place I performed after I moved to Milwaukee [in 2019]. We had one gay bar in Rockford, and it was nothing like this. To me, This Is It represents positive change. When I first started there, I was a little rough around the edges.
George and Darnell helped me grow personally and professionally. I learned how to run a show. I learned how to make things happen for myself. These experiences helped me get my job at the LGBT Community Center, so I’m so incredibly grateful for This Is It.
The Inclusive Vibe
Valentine: For many years, This Is It was known as the “Wrinkle Room,” catering to older gentlemen and senior citizens. Some of those folks were still June’s friends from the ’60s. I enjoyed watching it become a more multigenerational space, because there aren’t many places where our community blends like that.
Hughes: You could always count on seeing the same faces at This Is It. We’d all text each other and wind up there. No matter when you walked into the bar, you’d see your favorite people. And you’d come out for your people, so that you could support each other, spread love and create good energy. It was a family reunion. It was a home.
Patterson: I saw a cross section of Milwaukee in there: Black, white, Latino, everyone. And that’s because Joe was one of the few bar owners who wasn’t racist. He treated his Black customers just like he treated everyone else. He didn’t ask us for multiple forms of ID.
He didn’t demand we buy something before we even sat down. You were treated like a valued customer. Always. I loved watching the slideshows, because you never knew when you’d see yourself in them. That was cool. You really felt like you were part of something. People would text me and say they saw me.
Darnell Watson: For eight years, I experienced true and honest community at This Is It. That can only happen when the staff and the customers care for each other in the same sense.
Evolution and Growth
Valentine: The bar evolved because it had to – and if it didn’t, it would have died much sooner. A new owner [Schneider], with a new vision, for a new century and a new generation was a must. Everything has its time in the sun. But COVID really broke the Milwaukee routine of “stopping for one” after work – and once it was broken, it has been extremely hard for bars and customers to get that routine back.
Watson: It was important for us not to be frozen in time. We always kept our eyes and ears open for what people wanted and needed from us. One of the biggest shifts was the 18-plus night, which really awakened a younger audience to This Is It.
Hughes: I was the show host for 18-plus Wednesdays for years. When I moved to Saturday nights, I saw so many of those same people were still supporting the bar. I felt like my babies were all grown up!
Chaparro: We just kept adapting to survive. When the pandemic happened, we moved shows online so performers could still make money. We took every possible precaution to keep our customers and employees safe and keep our doors open for business. During scary times, people need somewhere safe to go and feel less alone. We were there for each other.
Patterson: Things really shifted towards the end. It became a much, much younger crowd, and when it expanded [in 2018], it just didn’t feel the same to me. It wasn’t entirely a gay crowd anymore, either. It was just such a different vibe. It was so wild to see this place, which had been so well-known for so long as an older gay gentlemen’s space, just become younger and younger and younger. That being said, it was still extremely inclusive: you saw lesbians, trans people, everyone.
Shocking News
Watson: I found out about 30 minutes before we let the world know. George said, “I have to close the bar today.” I wasn’t confused; he and I had been working tirelessly just to keep the lights on. But it still hurt. I worked hard all that weekend, and I didn’t expect to wake up Sunday morning and lose it all. Looking back, it did feel like something was happening and I just hadn’t been told yet. He’d been dropping little hints all weekend. I just never expected this.
Hughes: I didn’t believe it at first. My first reaction was, what’s going on? We were all just there last night. There was no warning. We knew they might be cutting back on shows, but we never expected this. It’s pretty devastating. There are no 18-plus nights for LGBTQ youth anymore, anywhere in Milwaukee.
Valentine: Losing [the bar] was like losing an elderly relative. There’s a guilt that sets in. Should I have spent more time with them? Did I take them for granted? Did I appreciate them enough? I’ll stop by tomorrow, next weekend, next month. Guess what? We’ve run out of tomorrows.
Patterson: I had a full range of emotions: first shock, then sadness, then anger. It was here today, gone tomorrow. Why didn’t they find a buyer? Why didn’t they do a fundraiser? I feel like the community has lost a limb, and now we’re all walking around with one arm. Sure, there’s other gay bars. But losing any gay bar, especially this one, especially right now in America? It sucks. There’s no other way to say it.
What Milwaukee Has Lost
Jones: You might say, “Big deal, gay bars close down all the time.” But this one? This one is different. This one is huge. This one is monumental. We lost a serious piece of history. Please understand the magnitude of this moment: Milwaukee had its own Stonewall bar and let it slip through its fingers.
To me, that’s just abhorrent. If we had known, we as a community could have come together to keep this place open. But now, all we have is a whole lot of maybes and a whole lot of heartbreak. Shame on us. Really, shame on us.
Chaparro: No matter how the outside world changed, This Is It never stopped providing genuine, high-quality experiences for our entire community. And it’s important to me that history remembers it that way. I am proud to be part of that history.
Watson: Milwaukee lost its last truly safe space. We made sure people felt seen, heard and taken care of. It was my job to look out for people. Fifteen minutes after the closing announcement went out, people began to accumulate outside the bar. These were mostly queer young people who’d lost the only place they’ve ever had. I’ll never forget what it felt like to see that turnout. It told me that everything we did here mattered.
Patterson: When Milwaukee lost This Is It, a whole lot of people lost their home. People of color lost a space that truly accepted and empowered them.
Hughes: This Is It was the lit spot. It was a place you just wanted to be. It felt warm, welcoming and filled with laughter. It was a place you could see all types of drag, from first-time performers to “RuPaul’s Drag Race” superstars. When the celebrity queens came to town, everyone had access to them.
We had amazing parties: Pride, Alley Fest, Bastille Days, New Year’s Eve. There was never a dull moment. If you never got to live This Is It, you really missed an experience.
Valentine: My advice to tomorrow’s children: absolutely nothing lasts forever. Enjoy the present as the true gift it is. None of it should be taken for granted.
About These Photos
Once upon a time, taking photos inside a gay bar was strictly forbidden. Customers feared they’d be blackmailed; owners feared they’d be reported to the authorities.
June Brehm, on the other hand, didn’t give a damn. Starting in the 1970s, she began taking photos of customers, events and holidays that grew into a massive collection. In the digital age, the tradition continued – and the photos were digitized and shared in a slideshow loop on bar TVs that ran nightly.
In summer 2024, George Schneider donated June’s entire collection to the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project. When the bar closed, he also donated the digital photos and social media galleries. The This Is It Collection offers a rare and remarkable glimpse into the life cycle of this space, chronicling the lives and loves of its customers across five decades.
View the entire collection at facebook.com/wislgbtqhistory.
