Slick Willy's – 2301 12th Ave., South Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Open Every Day from 6AM to 2AM

The sign on front says 6AM until closing—6AM? Nothing but bakeries open that early! Easy hours to remember. I don't necessarily like to think that someone would be up all night and then resume drinking at 6AM, but I've done that. But as this is a bar (I guess what one would fondly refer to as a “dive bar”) naturally people drink here, but it seems like eating is the real serious business. I used to like, occasionally, stopping at bars that serve breakfast—sometimes that's their main feature, while at other ones it seems like it's something they added because they could—and that can be charming, too. But here there's this all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet—that got my attention. For $6.99, I didn't expect much, but whoa! Alt.Thanksgiving! Oh, also the name of the bar got my attention, as it's spelled “Slick Willy's” on the awning and “Slick Willies” on the Pabst sign and “Slick Willy” on the hand-painted sign. That's three possibilities without even setting foot inside, and I didn't notice—as I sat at the bar and was dwarfed by the serious, hard-working grill and deep-fryer—but there could have been more, on the wall, menus, placemats, matchbooks, and pens. No pens certainly, and no one does matchbooks anymore—though it would not have surprised me if people were smoking here—it would have felt time-warp appropriate. Anyway, I'm going with the non-dick-joke option, unless there isn't anyone named Willy, actually—then they're all dick jokes. But I like the idea that no one knows for sure—I miss the world where people didn't know if it was Keith Richard or Keith Richards, and he wasn't exactly clearing it up.

I realized it was Sunday at about 10AM and most people had eaten and were moving on to drinking (or maybe well into it) and the place was fairly intimate, but I didn't have to elbow anyone at the breakfast buffet where I loaded up one paper plate with three kinds of sausage, bacon, some cheesy potatoes, some hash-browns, and then some fruit. Also, there was some kind of cold liver sausage—that's hardcore. Lot's of baked stuff, too, which I ignored since I can't eat it, but I noticed little cupcakes and doughnut holes—just a ton of sweet things. Also, when I ordered, they said I could get pancakes, I think, or French toast, or an omlette, so I ordered an omlette with ham and onions and cheese, and that came soon, and it was huge. So one trip to the buffet table was more than I could eat, and by the time I was pushing my potatoes and pork around on the plate like I was trying to find meaning in it, I was feeling a tad uncomfortable. Partly this could have been because everyone else there seemed to know each other. Also, I was the only one there who rode up on a bike (that wasn't a Harley), and the only one not drinking, and the only one not wearing some form of Packers gear, and the only one writing in a red, fuzzy notebook with the world “LOVE” on the cover in costume diamonds. I kind of figure if you sit somewhere and write in an obvious diary, people are less threatened than if you're jotting in a black ledger like you're a 1950s taxman from hell. Very few people even recognize a ballpoint pen anymore—sometimes they see it tell me I have to vape outside. The journal really freaks them out. So by the time I left I noticed, perhaps imagined, an iciness, as if I was tattooed with a faded Vikings jersey—so I didn't get around to eating seconds (ha), or looking for the unmarked restroom, or asking to uncover the pool table so I could practice my massé shots, or inquiring if their famous Friday Fish Fry had gluten-free options. Did I wonder if they talked about me after I left? I sure hope so, though I doubt anyone gave two shits. Down the street was a traffic jam as a people streamed out of a massive church to a parking lot that took up a whole city block. The people here were misfits, and a misfit among misfits is like the scrawny dog who sits in the corner, always keeping one eye out for the forgotten scrap of gristle.