Thousands of photos taken over the last 50 years at Milwaukee’s oldest gay bar are now in the hands of the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project. And while 50 years may not seem like that long ago, photos of people inside gay bars at that time were incredibly rare. 

That’s according to Michail Takach, chair of the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project.

“For most of the 20th Century, gay bars were technically illegal. They operated kind of underground,” he said. “It’s extraordinarily rare for there to be photos inside gay bars before the 90s because people were so uncomfortable with being seen in a gay space.”

Takach said people feared blackmail or weren’t out in their everyday lives, so to have a collection from that time period is “almost unheard of.”

But the History Project is now processing thousands of photos taken at This Is It! bar, a staple in Milwaukee’s LGBTQ+ community since it was opened in 1968 by June Brehm.

“She was a married woman and a business owner in the Milwaukee suburbs who’d worked in the restaurant industry and had a lot of gay friends,” Takach recalled. “She couldn’t believe what they put up with just to be in a place where they could be themselves.”

When Brehm opened This Is It! she started taking photos of the people at her bar. The images depict everyday life. People posing, laughing and enjoying beers. They span decades — showing changing fashion as regulars age through the years.

Toward the end of June Brehm’s life, her son Joe Brehm took over management of the bar and continued the tradition. Slideshows of the photos from the 90s onward can be seen on monitors in the bar to this day.

This Is It! has since passed out of family ownership and is now owned and operated by George Schneider and Trixie Mattel. Schneider said when he came on board, he found shoe boxes full of old Polaroids and prints from the bar’s earliest days.

While he worked to digitize some of them, he decided the project needed help from the professionals. 

“When I took the business over completely, I felt like I was the custodian of the history,” Schneider said. “It’s very important for me to educate — especially the younger generations that we have coming in — educate them on some of the history of the space itself, the queer community overall.”

So Takach stepped in. He proposed the History Project scan and archive all of the photos, put them on social media for people to see, while preserving them indefinitely. That work is ongoing.

“When you have a place that’s meant so much, and has been a spiritual center for the community as long as This Is It! has been … that’s really quite a powerful narrative to carry forward and quite a powerful legacy to have in our hands,” he said.

Some batches of photos have already been posted to the History Project’s Facebook page, and more will be added in the coming weeks and months. 

For now, Schneider is enjoying all of the activity online, as members of the community identify people in the photos and share memories from the bar. 

“Watching the feedback and the response on social media … the nostalgia, the memories that it evokes, and IDing people that maybe they haven’t thought of or seen in years, I think that’s the most rewarding next step,” he said.

Takach is just glad to see more people wanting to preserve this kind of history.

“So much of LGBT history was destroyed by people who were just ashamed of it and didn’t know what to do with it and didn’t want anyone to know about it,” he said. “And now we’re kind of seeing the reversal of that. And we’re seeing an evolution of this understanding that this content has value.”

Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project on the road this summer

People across the state can explore those photos and troves of other historical exhibits this summer as the History Project takes to the road.

The organization will hit 20 communities in their Summer to be Seen tour, showcasing people, organizations and places key to Wisconsin LGBTQ+ history. They’ll also give people the chance to share their own stories — building the project’s archive. 

“We’re going to them because the new generations are telling us that they don’t want to have to travel to someone else’s town to have pride festivals,” Takach said. “So this year, we’re going places like Rhinelander and Ashland and Ripon and Platteville and Door County, Wausau — places that are not traditionally seen as gay epicenters — to really extend the value, the reach and the impact of our work.”

Those events run through early October, more details can be found on their website.

Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Tony Evers (D-WI) gathered in Madison, Wisconsin, to rally voters for President Joe Biden one day ahead of former President Donald Trump’s visit to the Badger State.

Wisconsin, a swing state, is one of the most coveted for the 2024 election. Democrats are hoping to capitalize on support for abortion rights that has led to victories for Democrats across the country in recent years. The timing of the governors’ meeting may have been purposeful, coming shortly before the second-year anniversary of the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

Speaking about Trump and his impact on the landmark reversal, Whitmer said, “We know that the first term was devastating. The prospect of a second one … just shakes me to my core,” per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “All of these are extended on the same fundamental right and that is substantive due process.”

Whitmer and Evers warned that a Trump victory would result in him signing a national abortion ban.

“It’s really important to remind people that if Donald Trump gets a second term in the White House, he has already committed to signing a national abortion ban,” Whitmer said. “Biden is the only person on the ballot who would win the White House and will protect these fundamental rights.”

Trump has not committed to signing a national abortion ban, and his resistance to taking a stronger stance against abortion has drawn him flak from some anti-abortion groups. In April, he expressed his position that abortion should be left to the states to decide individually.

“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said. “In this case, the law of the state.”

At another point, he expressed his belief that a six-week ban on abortion in Florida was a “terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

Despite this, Democrats have made it a priority to connect Trump to abortion bans, looking to recreate electoral successes in 2022 and 2023 around the issue.

Trump is set to hold a rally in Racine, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.

Whitmer and Evers’s meeting on Monday took the form of a roundtable discussion, featuring local healthcare professionals and community leaders.

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Evers also took aim at Trump’s reported bashing of Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention will be held this summer, saying it was “a good example” of Trump hiding his views.

“It’s a way to absolutely hide behind positions,” Evers said. Trump’s campaign and other Republicans in the room at the time of Trump’s reported comments strongly pushed back that he ever called Milwaukee a “horrible city,” saying the former president was referring to the problems the city has faced.

The first heatwave of the summer is rolling through Wisconsin, bringing in high humidity and temperatures in the 90s.

A high pressure system that brought extreme temperatures to the Southwest last week is shifting to the eastern half of the United States. The heatwave is expected to bring high temperatures to millions of Americans from Iowa to Maine.

Portions of Illinois, Iowa and Missouri were under an excessive heat advisory from the National Weather Service that is expected to remain in effect throughout the week.

In Wisconsin, Madison is expected to have highs around 92 degrees on Monday and 91 degrees on Tuesday, before a high of 84 on Wednesday. Milwaukee is expected to have highs around 92 Monday and Tuesday, with a high of 87 on Wednesday. 

Meanwhile, Green Bay is expected to have a high of 89 degrees on Monday, followed by 90 on Tuesday. La Crosse is expected to have a high of 85 degrees on Monday, and 89 on Tuesday.

Those high temperatures will be accompanied by humid conditions, according to Denny VanCleve, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Milwaukee/Sullivan office.

“With the high humidity, you’ll definitely be sweating a lot out there, so you will want to drink plenty of fluids,” he said.

VanCleve said Wisconsinites should expect warm weather through Tuesday, but a cold front will move through the northwest half of the state on Wednesday.

That cold front should keep temperatures in the northwest part of the state down around the 70s on Wednesday, but Madison is expected to have temperatures in the 80s and Milwaukee still has a chance of hitting 90 degrees, VanCleve said.

VanCleve also said the state has a chance of seeing above normal temperatures for the rest of the summer. 

“It leans a little more on the warmer side, but it doesn’t guarantee that’s going to be the overall trend,” he said. “Right now the outlook needle is leaning a little more towards the higher chance for above normal temperatures versus normal or below normal.”

High temperatures bring health risks

High temperatures bring with them risks to public safety. State officials say summer heat waves are one of the biggest weather-related causes of illness and death. 

An estimated 148 Americans die from extreme heat and humidity each year, according to the state Department of Health Services’ Extreme Heat Toolkit. From 1982 to 2008, 116 Wisconsinites died from heat-related fatalities, the toolkit states.

Wisconsin has had a total of 41 heat-related deaths since 2020, state data shows. Last year, the state saw 10 heat-related deaths and more than 750 state residents visited the emergency room for heat-related illnesses in 2023. In 2022, the state had 14 heat-related deaths and over 700 heat-related emergency room visits.

Staying safe in the heat

Anytime temperatures get above 90 degrees, it’s important to watch for signs of heat exhaustion or other heat-related illnesses, said Andrew Beckett, a spokesperson for Wisconsin Emergency Management. Symptoms to watch for include confusion, rapid breathing, increased heart rate, nausea and vomiting.

“These are all signs that you might have some serious problems, and may need to seek medical attention,” Beckett said.

Officials recommend staying indoors as much as possible, as well as making sure to drink lots of water. If residents do not have air conditioning at home, they may be able to cool down at a local library, mall or other indoor public spaces. 

Those most at risk for heat-related illness include elderly individuals, young children, pregnant women, people who work outside and people with chronic health conditions.

“It’s important to recognize that almost everybody’s at risk, so people shouldn’t just take it for granted that they’re not at risk,” said Dr. Sheryl Bedno, the chief medical officer for the state Department of Health Services Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Health.

State officials also said it’s critically important to never leave a child or pet unattended inside a parked car. On an 80-degree day, temperatures inside a parked vehicle can climb roughly 20 degrees in 10 minutes under direct sunlight.

“Even if you think you’ve left the air conditioning on, they really should never be unattended inside of a car,” Beckett said. “Because if that air conditioning fails, if they’re not able to take action to save themselves, you could be putting them into a dangerous situation very quickly.”