On Wisconsin, this spring and its sportswear and signs were for you.
– Kozy Korner stalwart Ryan and crew were weighing whether to make a Final Four road trip to Indianapolis the other Monday, co-workers said. Maybe that could yield even more Badger jersey-based memorabilia to put on the walls at Kozy. They noted that the late starting time for the NCAA title game featuring Wisconsin might make the local turnout a bit unpredictable, and in most places it was big, however not all. As it was, the place was full by 5 p.m., even earlier than the usual rule of thumb, just over two hours, for getting a seat for such an important game. It wasn’t until late Tuesday evening that some of the workers found time to let their hair down and trek over to Dick’s for a nightcap. Even around that time, the marquee in North Hudson still made reference to “believe” and “On Wisconsin.” By midweek, the message was changed to “At least we aren’t Gopher fans.”
– Many servers at Buffalo Wild Wings were wearing, prematurely it turns out, the No. 1 on their red Badger jerseys during the title game. Since March Madness occurs in the spring, one earlier was sporting what appeared to be pink, orange and blue toned lilies in her hair.
– On Easter eve, one of the open mic singers at Dick’s Bar and Grill wore a get-up that consisted of a colorful long-sleeve plaid shirt with vest and a tie sporting small diamond shapes. Befitting spring, there were dozens of similarly looking shirts on cardboard cutouts hanging from the ceiling. The other outfit of note from Dick’s on the holiday weekend was what appeared to be Playboy Bunny-type lingerie teamed with Easter Bunny-styled fluffy finery.
– On that Sunday night, it was referenced in a tribute song request that one of the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd had been killed in a car crash. Many of us no doubt had thought something else would be the downfall of these hard partiers. A middle-aged man who was singing karaoke at Riverside’s, before it was Pier 500, had told me he’d been a roadie for them for a number of years, and that a good number of their members had livers that had started to fail, as the booze usually flowed freely backstage. In a fitting way as far as tribute, the band Smokin’ Whiskey that played Willow River Saloon on Burkhardt earlier in the weekend has perhaps more Skynyrd songs than those from any other artist on their set list.
– A petite young woman tried her shot at the boxing-power-punch game at the Smilin’ Moose, but she only hit the bag with a glancing blow. The game flashes a range of scores from one to 999, and she only scored — you guessed it — a one right on the head. When I teased her about her score, her response was unprintable; lets just say it was a one again, in the form of a thrusted single digit. A short time later on a sports TV talk show, even though it’s the offseason, a pro football player who goes by the nickname Gronk showed his caveman prowess by registering an 826.
– Just the other evening, Dick’s used a big cloth backdrop next to the bar rail in their middle room when they held a photo shoot, once again, of some of their bottled liquor brands that would be part of a promotion. No word if their were any supermodels as part of the shoot, as that might have created a bottleneck nearer the back room.
– A Hudson U-12 hockey team has won the state tournament, and the Agave Kitchen had used their marquee to each day give every individual player on the squad their 15 minutes — or maybe as the case might be, their 15 hours — of fame with a daily listing of their name and position. Makes you think this practice is much more practical than if the youth team was a football squad, with upwards of 40 people on a roster.
– A 28-year-old woman with a red Wisconsin Badger shirt revealed her true and varied sports colors recently at Dick’s. She is a Vikings fan, too, even though most others in the family are die-hard Packer Backers, as they moved here from California, with its own plethora of sports teams, to Minnesota when she was 13, and then to Hudson several years later, explaining all those differentials.
– In search of a comeback, golfer Tiger Woods has been seen on local sports bar TV saying that despite recent sub-par performances (sorry about the pun; take that either way you feel), he is ready to again be one of the Big Cats on the tour. However, I think when Tiger says that, he actually is “Lion,” or at least putting on the dog. Or could it be an April Fool’s Day prank.