Waitresses picketed after feds shut down club
In the summer of 1968, federal agents shut down a downtown Milwaukee nightclub featuring skimpily clad women. But that wasn’t why the Nauti-Gal was padlocked.
The Nauti-Gal, 611 N. Milwaukee St., made a splash when it opened in early 1967, not for its seafaring theme but for its waitstaff, made up of young women in hip-huggers, miniskirts and pirate costumes, who sang and sometimes danced above the bar.
They were called, of course, NautiGals.
“Our gals are not waitresses any more than airline stewardesses are,” owner John Pearson told the Milwaukee Sentinel in an Oct. 13, 1967, feature on the Nauti-Gal. “They’re trained to pamper the customer and present a geisha-type of an approach to the people who spend their money at the Nauti-Gal.”
For a time, the club seemed to have made an impression.
But it didn’t last. On Aug. 12, 1968, Treasury agents seized the Nauti-Gal for nonpayment of $8,421 in withholding taxes. Pearson told the Sentinel in an Aug. 13 story that the club would reopen in one or two weeks.
A week later, on Aug. 19, some of Pearson’s employees showed up in front of the Federal Building, 517 E. Wisconsin Ave., dressed in their work clothes and toting picket signs with slogans such as “These Shapes Don’t Want to Ship Out.”
Apparently, the protest wasn’t enough. On Sept. 14, 1968, The Journal reported that the IRS was going to auction off the Nauti-Gal’s assets, including “the scanty sailor costumes the waitresses wore.”
The assets were bought by John and Roy Leopold. John Leopold told The Journal in a Sept. 24 story that he and his brother planned to open a new restaurant at 611 N. Milwaukee St. called Steak by the Ounce.
The restaurant became known as Pier 611 and, later, Cattle Barons. The Leopolds then joined forces with Packers kicker Chester Marcol for the shortlived club Chester Marcol’s Point After, one of several nightspots to occupy the space after that.