"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com – brought to you by Stoli Vodka, Altos Tequila, Fireball, OR-G, Jim Beam, Plymouth Gin and 2 Gingers – is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun articles on bars and clubs – including guides, the latest trends, bar reviews, the results of our Best of Bars poll and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
As with any good Milwaukeean, I left work and headed to a bar Thursday night – only it was a bit later since I just finished up covering the Milwaukee Bucks’ victory over the Sacramento Kings – and headed to My Office.
Immediately upon opening the doors at 763 N. Milwaukee St. I walked right into …
Were pigs flying in 1985?
Literally one step into the bar and I knew instantly what conversation was taking place on a weeknight in mid-February.
Football. Chicago Bears. Green Bay Packers.
Of course.
Jay Cutler!? He’s the best extra quarterback the Packers have ever had!
What made this fun was there was a Bears fan sitting at the bar, and his bartender was (perhaps obviously) a Packers fan.
The conversation was hilarious, NSFW, and thoroughly entertaining. The rest of my group met up with me and we celebrated the birthday of a friend. One of the Bears fans (I assume) bought our table a round of shots, and when the bartender came over to see what we wanted, he opened with:
What’s the difference between Marty McFly and a Bears fan? At some point, Marty McFly stopped going back to 1985.
Buuurrrnn!
It was good for a laugh, though. I’ll use it again.
My Office was also able to supply the perfectly reasonable birthday combination of Jameson and a Snickers bar in lieu of a proper cake, but whatever – our birthday girl seemed amused.
You invariably run across a sports conversation in most any bar, at most any point, but to walk into Bears, pigs and Marty McFly on a random Thursday night felt just … right.
Jim Owczarski is an award-winning sports journalist and comes to Milwaukee by way of the Chicago Sun-Times Media Network.
A three-year Wisconsin resident who has considered Milwaukee a second home for the better part of seven years, he brings to the market experience covering nearly all major and college sports.
To this point in his career, he has been awarded six national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for investigative reporting, feature writing, breaking news and projects. He is also a four-time nominee for the prestigious Peter J. Lisagor Awards for Exemplary Journalism, presented by the Chicago Headline Club, and is a two-time winner for Best Sports Story. He has also won numerous other Illinois Press Association, Illinois Associated Press and Northern Illinois Newspaper Association awards.
Jim's career started in earnest as a North Central College (Naperville, Ill.) senior in 2002 when he received a Richter Fellowship to cover the Chicago White Sox in spring training. He was hired by the Naperville Sun in 2003 and moved on to the Aurora Beacon News in 2007 before joining OnMilwaukee.com.
In that time, he has covered the events, news and personalities that make up the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, NCAA football, baseball and men's and women's basketball as well as boxing, mixed martial arts and various U.S. Olympic teams.
Golf aficionados who venture into Illinois have also read Jim in GOLF Chicago Magazine as well as the Chicago District Golfer and Illinois Golfer magazines.
