AROUND TOWN
FOOD, ART, ENTERTAINMENT
LARRY SHUE wrote his comedic masterpiece, The
Nerd, while working as a Milwaukee actor. He also performed in the Milwaukee Rep's world premiere of his play in 1981, six years before it made its way to Broadway. Our profile of Shue, in January 1984, ran just a year before the playwright's death, in a plane crash at the age of 39.
In July 1984, our fine arts column captured Milwaukee Ballet's “newfound fascination” with a then-trending form of movement called BREAKDANCING.
The Cudahy Tower spot that holds Bacchus has long been associated with fine dining, notably the opulent FLEUR
DE LIS. Reviewed in February 1984, this fancy French restaurant served dishes many Milwaukeeans had never seen before (entrées were a shocking $19.95) and more silverware than we knew what to do with. Fleur's first head chef, Michel Nischan, went on to bigger and better things: winning four James Beard Awards, running a restaurant with actor Paul Newman and founding a national nonprofit that tackles food insecurity. Plagued in its final years by poor reviews, Fleur de Lis crashed and burned in the early 1990s. Another white tablecloth restaurant – this one the beloved Boulevard
Inn – moved into those
Cudahy Tower digs before Bacchus took over in 2004. The latter led our “It List” of hot restaurants that May.
VCRs and the LOCAL
VIDEO STORES to feed them were so omnipresent in the 1980s that they necessitated our exhaustive October 1984 guide to rental shops. Why go to the theater, when you could watch Casablanca and Risky Business in your La-Z-Boy recliner?
Known as the clothing designer that “let children be children,” Milwaukee's FLORENCE
EISEMAN created timeless dresses, pinafores and the like, sold at upscale stores such as Sak's Fifth Avenue. The longest-running children's clothier in the country – profiled in our December 1988 issue – continues to make its classic garments, even outfitting the kids of famous celebs like Beyoncé.
Though it was set in – ugh – Cleveland, the 1989 baseball comedy MAJOR LEAGUE put Milwaukee in the cinematic news. Our March 1989 story on the making of the film dished about everything from star Charlie Sheen getting robbed to how cheap it was to make a movie in MKE – exactly why our city served as stand-in.