The Schlitz Palm Garden was on Third and Wisconsin and was attached to the Schlitz Hotel. The Palm Garden was an attempt to have the fellowship and community of outdoor beer gardens year round. The Schlitz Brewing Company also wanted to have an indoor drinking establishment that was not a saloon.

The Palm Garden opened in 1896 and closed in 1921 because of Prohibition. In 1922 the Palm Garden reopened as the Garden Theatre and was a movie theater until the 1960s. In 1963 a bank and parking lot were built on the site of the Palm Garden. These were demolished in 1980 to make way for a mall.

At his presentation, Deutsch served Schlitz beer and cookies. The Schlitz beer came in a package that said it was 1960s style and did not indicate that Pabst owns it or that Miller brews it. It is not brewed in Milwaukee. The Schlitz was warm and tasted similar to Budweiser which is to say it tasted like nothing.

 Palm Garden

Seen from hotel window

Friday night, after immersing ourselves in Pabst, we went to Miller Park to see the Milwaukee Brewers play the Colorado Rockies. Miller Brewing paid forty million to have the stadium name and title sponsorship. The fact that the ballpark is named Miller reflects the reality that Miller is the only Milwaukee macro brewery still standing. In the late nineteenth the big three brewers of Milwaukee were, Schlitz, Pabst and Blatz. Miller was not a contender. In 1950 Schlitz was first and Pabst was fourth while Miller was not in the top ten. Today Miller-Coors is the second largest brewer in the country and contract brews Pabst, Schlitz, and Blatz, although not in Milwaukee.

Miller Park has a fan shaped dome which is the only one in the country. From the outside when it is closed the shape is distinctive. Because it was freezing it was closed. The stadium has huge parking lots with many people tailgating. Inside the stadium was nice but not as nice as the new Yankee stadium. It does not really have the feeling of an old ballpark. Like the old Shea Stadium and US Cellular field, there really isn’t any neighborhood around Miller Park.

Miller Park from hotel window

The crowd was okay, not super rowdy but they do seem to like to eat a lot. There was a tremendous amount of getting up and down throughout the whole game. A person sitting in front of me bought a full size batting helmet filled with nachos for twenty dollars. That is a lot of nachos.

In the seats the only beer sold were Miller or Coors products. I had Miller Genuine Draft. As macro, mediocre beers go, it wasn’t bad.  It tasted like something which is an improvement over Bud Light and it was refreshing. It had no hop flavor and was pale yellow, not nice amber or brown like many craft beers.

Both the Brewers and the Rockies are middling teams and the Brewers lost. When a member of the team hits home run they shoot off fireworks.  There were cheerleaders and there was a sausage race which is something you don’t see that often.

The buildings that housed the corporate offices and the visitor’s center still remain. Pabst tours were very popular, partially because the center apparently served unlimited beer. In the courtyard there is a very large statue of Frederick Pabst.

Frederick Pabst, Best Place, Milwaukee

In 2001, Jim Haertel, a genial, local entrepreneur, purchased these buildings and is slowly renovating them. He has named the facility Best Place as a historical nod to the founder of Pabst Beer, Jacob Best Sr. You pay seven dollars at the gift shop, which existed when the brewery was in operation.

You are then brought into a large tavern. The bar serves many of the beers that Pabst owns, such as PBR and Schlitz, but they also serve craft beers. I had a Hopdinger from O’so which is located in Plover, Wisconsin. It was really good and had a great hop flavor. We also got pretzels.

Besides the free beer and pretzels, your seven dollars gets you a viewing of old commercials, which were mostly Schlitz, and a talk by the owner. In his talk, Haertel briefly recounted the history of Pabst and the story of his purchase of these buildings. After his talk, he took us upstairs to see the offices which are not in great shape.

Former Office, Pabst Brewery, Milwaukee

Seeing the massive complex that comprised Pabst Brewery in such disuse and disrepair tells the story of American business in general and the brewing industry in particular in the late twentieth century. Pabst is a virtual brewer; all of its brands are brewed by Miller. The corporate headquarters are in California. Haertel hopes they may relocate to Best Place.

The Pabst Brewery, Milwaukee

Because there wasn’t that much of interest and we were in the Brew City, on Friday my husband and I went sightseeing. We went to the Pabst Mansion which was about a mile walk from our hotel. Of course it was very cold, very windy with a slight freezing rain. The walk was therefore very exhilarating.

The Pabst Mansion was built by Frederick Pabst in 1892. It is a Flemish Renaissance Revival home. When it was built it was surrounded by other mansions although neither of the other two big brewers in Milwaukee lived on that street.  The homes of Valentin Blatz and the Uihleins (Schlitz beer) are no longer standing.

Pabst’s home was very nice and it was clear from the furnishings that he was a wealthy man. However compared to other Gilded Age mansions I have seen, particularly in Newport, Rhode Island, the Pabst mansion is not as grandiose and opulent as those. The beer barons may have been trying to recreate a German style of fine living while the railroad magnates who built homes in Newport were aiming to recreate the style of French aristocracy.

One interesting thing in the house was that the staircases had hop finials and you can buy souvenir replicas in the gift shop. There were also paintings about brewing throughout the house. Several came from the offices of Pabst Brewing which were located at the brewery.

More about the Pabst Brewery and what remains of it tomorrow.

Pabst Mansion

I must have brought the bad weather back with me. Yesterday my plane was delayed an hour and when I landed it was 38 degrees, pouring, and very windy.

I was in Milwaukee to attend the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH). I will be blogging about what I did while I was there over the next few days. Stay tuned.

I read this book because I am always looking at popular non-fiction to see if there are ways to make the book I am working on more marketable. The book was easy to read but it was a little light on substance.

I didn’t really know that much about Newport before I read the book. I have been there once and saw the Touro synagogue (which she doesn’t talk about) and one of the Gilded Age mansions – the Breakers I think.

Her narrative goes from the colonial period to the present. Newport gained its identity during the Gilded Age. Davis’s depiction of twenty-first century Newport does not seem that different from the nineteenth century period. She describes opulent, extravagant parties in both eras. The book is similar to taking a tour of one of the mansions where you get to peek in on the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Prohibition happened because of deep ambivalence in American society over the use and abuse of alcohol. In 1920 the solution to these problems appeared to be the cessation of the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol. Thirteen years later Americans decided they had been wrong and allowed, once again, alcohol to be legally made and sold.

Repeal represented a turning point in American views of social behavior and habits. Since 1933 Prohibition has served as a negative reference point for any attempts to regulate or control problematic or unhealthy behavior. Reformers seeking legalization of other psychoactive substances such as marijuana use the nation’s experience with Prohibition to underscore the lack of wisdom in prohibiting other drugs.

Prohibition and Repeal did not eradicate our nation’s ambivalence about alcohol. As a country we are not alone in this ambivalence. Most modern states have a similarly complicated relationship with alcoholic beverages. Most governments receive some revenue benefits from taxing liquor while they must also deal with the health, safety, and public disorder problems that result from the misuse of alcohol.

From the liquor industry’s stand point the history of Prohibition and Repeal is a mixed blessing. They are always able to refer to Prohibition as the undesired end point of any attempts to increase regulation of the industry. They have been able to resume their role as financial partners in the federal government, an activity that continues to give them respectability. However they are ever vigilant in resisting any further sacrifices in the form of increased taxes. They are obviously aware, both from their own experiences as well as the experiences of the tobacco industry, that they are not invulnerable to another prohibition.

American responses to alcohol use and abuse have come in waves or cycles. From 1933 until the early 1970s American society increasingly saw alcohol consumption as a normal part of middle class social life. The low consumption rates that persisted until baby boomers became old enough to drink may have encouraged this benign view of liquor. The liquor industry as well as the medical field and academics all participated in the individualization and medicalization of alcohol problems.

In the 1970s alcohol consumption levels rose and a more public health approach to alcohol problems emerged. We are still living in this era. Public health advocates along with neo-prohibitionists had several successes including warning labels, the increase in the minimum drinking age, and a tax increase for beer. However they have not really moved forward in their attempts to restrict television advertising and drunk driving rates have not decreased for several years.

What remains to be seen is whether the pendulum will swing more severely one way or the other? Will bad economic times lead to increased or decreased drinking? Globally as the world’s population ages there seems to be a decrease in drinking. Less drinking usually leads to less negative consequences for society which in turn can lead to looser attitudes about drinking. However, at least in America, the baby boomlet could certainly impact consumption levels which might swing the pendulum towards stricter regulations and greater societal concern. The liquor industry is much better organized to withstand a regulatory or prohibitory onslaught than they were when Prohibition started.

Steve Jobs did not invent personal computers. My first computer was a Kaypro. I have never owned a Mac and I don’t like them. I hated the commercial where they implied Mac users were young, hip, and cool while the rest of us were old and stodgy.

Kaypro Computer

I have had a Nano for about six months and it is okay. It is very small but the touch screen is very hard to use so I always “shuffle” my music. This limits its versatility and puts it on par with the $10 mp3 player I previously had.

I found the media coverage, which has been extensive and pervasive, puzzling. Jobs died on Wednesday night, the same night that as many as 20,000 people were in downtown Manhattan marching against the excesses of Wall Street and capitalism. There were also demonstrations in over 160 cities the same night. Except for Keith Olbermann on CurrentTV, the main stream media did not really cover these events but focused on Jobs instead. Was the death of a CEO of a corporation more important than Occupy Wall Street? I don’t think so.

The main contribution of Apple and Steve Jobs to American society has been one of marketing. He created products that people felt they could not do without. Did that change society? Maybe. Did it change society for the better? Maybe not.

Yates portrays April as someone who pregnancy traps. Her first pregnancy propels Frank into a job he hates and eventually they move to the suburbs of Connecticut. They have a second child without comment but a few years later April feels completely suffocated by her life and plans an escape. They will move to Paris and she will work while Frank decides what great thing he will do. April needs to feel there is a point to her life; working in a foreign country appears to fulfill that need. Frank is more ambivalent about this plan but they proceed.

Before they can bring the plan to fruition, April is pregnant again. This third unwanted pregnancy propels the story to a tragic denouement. Throughout the whole story it is clear that April desperately wanted to determine her own life and have autonomy over her decisions.

Although abortion was illegal in all states and only two states allowed therapeutic abortions in the interest of the women’s health, many women received abortions every year. The largest group of women who sought abortions were married and already had children. Thus, Yates’s portrayal of April Wheeler was a very representative one. One fifth of the women Alfred Kinsey interviewed for his study of sexual behavior had had abortions. Middle class women, in general, had access to services including abortion that poor women did not.

When April is pregnant for the third time and wishes, once again, to abort, Frank wages a fierce battle to prevent her from doing so. Eventually he persuades April that she needs psychological help. Although Yates has Frank somewhat cynically use this argument to prevent the abortion, the portrayal of a woman who did not wish to have another child as mentally ill was a very prevalent idea in the 1950’s. Popular psychology decreed that if a woman wanted to both work and be a mother she had to be in conflict. A woman who denied procreation was denying pleasure.

The book is very well written. It has many fans; one is Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men. In2008 a movie version of it with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett opened. No one in the book is very likeable but he is trying to show you the trap that the characters are in. In the movie which must externalize much of the novel’s internal drama,  April does become more sympathetic because Frank is such a dog.