When Tim Sluga and his partners took over Duke’s On Water and the attached Varsity Pub, 154-158 E. Juneau Ave. on the corner of Water Street last April, they decided the interior needed a bit of a makeover.
“We've done a ton of work, we've cleaned it, we painted, it doesn't smell anymore,” says Sluga, who says Duke's could potentially also get a name change as part of its makeover, though that remains to be seen. “When we took over, the walls were cluttered.”
Sluga, who spent a number of years running The Nomad on Brady Street, removed a shark with a leg in its mouth (Duke’s had a surf theme) and, he adds, “a weird amount of Bobby Portis fat heads.”
What they found behind much of the visual racket were five murals on the exposed cream city brick walls featuring famous Milwaukee breweries. The signs, which salute Blatz, Miller, Pabst (two of those) and Schlitz appear to have been painted to resemble ghost signs.
While the Pabst and Blatz murals are just large versions of logos, the Miller sign depicts the High Life girl in the moon and the Schlitz mural shows a woman atop the famous Schlitz globe motif.
“Once we uncovered them, I was like, ‘these are awesome’,” says Sluga. “I even talked to Andi about it,” he adds, referring to Duke’s former co-owner Andrea Shafton who also is co-owner of the 1874 building.
Sluga says Shafton believes the paintings date to 1988, when the space was occupied by the Big Mouth Frog.
“She couldn't tell me who painted them,” he recalls, though the Girl in the Moon mural has a signature of "B. Fahr." (NOTE: I'm awaiting a response from someone I contacted that I suspect is the original artist.)
As a little background, Butch Schettle opened his Big Mouth Frog bar and grill in the Duke's and Varsity spaces in 1977, replacing Reuter's Tap.
In 1985, Schettle converted the Big Mouth Frog dining room (now occupied by Varsity) into Butch’s Old Casino Steak House.
Five years later, in 1990, Schettle moved the steakhouse to his McGillycuddy's bar building at 1634 N. Water St. and Ken Elliot’s Diner opened in the old Big Mouth Frog space. But after only a couple years in business, the diner closed in June 1992 and the spot reopened as Mel’s Corner Tap (later Mel's on Water) a few months later.
Mel’s became Duke’s and Scooter’s (now Varsity) in 2006.
It's not exactly clear when they were covered up, though they were still visible during the Mel's era.
Regardless, the newly rediscovered tributes to the beers that made Milwaukee famous are not only going to stay, they’re going to get a little attention from respected local muralist Fred Kaems, who was recommended by the owners of Rogues Gallery and Elwood’s, and who Sluga knew painted a Girl in the Moon mural on the side of the Miller High Life Theatre in 2023.
“I reached out to Fred and he's going to come in next week and start with (one of the) PBR ones,” Sluga says. “We want to essentially leave them like they are, but the two things we want him to try to do is clean the smoke damage so the whites pop and the colors pop a little more.
“And then we just want him to highlight some parts. That's going to be up to his vision, but I think some accents here and there will really make them pop more. And the Schitz one is really almost completely lost.”
Kaems says his goal is to do as little as possible to the works.
"My first step is to focus on one of them and start by carefully cleaning the grime off of it without removing paint," Kaems says. "We will assess from there what we needs to happen. We don’t want to repaint them so much as honor them. We definitely want to leave them feeling like a thing that has been there a while so sections being faded as long as it’s still legible.
"We may do so minor touch ups if any sections are completely loosing detail, but I hope that will be minimal. Once I have the first one cleaned up I think there will be a much clearer idea of the scope."
At some point Sluga hopes to uncover part of a wall that has been altered over the years in part to block up a large window, but he’s wondering if there’s another old beer mural hidden somewhere underneath that.
Any bets on what that one could be, if it even exists?
I call Gettleman, or if the paintings date to the early 1990s Ken Elliot’s era, then Leinenkugel’s.
“Gettelman would be wild,” Sluga says, “but I doubt it. That's sold old, right? I kind of feel like if there's anything hiding, it's like an MGD or Lite.”
(This article was updated shortly after posting.)
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
