*Originally published in the UWM Post, 2008
The half cobble-stone, half paved alley way looks daunting with the sun still setting. It doesn’t help the nerves to know that you’re about to be humiliated for others enjoyment, either. If you’re going to get into the safest place in town, however, this is the way you’ll need to go.
I take a few steps down the alley and look at the first door to my right. Well, it’s not the right door. I look further down to the second, and wrong, entrance. Finally, I see a slightly old looking door frame with door that has seen better days. It creaks open and closed as I step inside. I might as well have stepped through a time machine.
The small room looks like something out of the game of “Clue.” An old bookcase to my left, a telegraph to my right, and it’s all very early 1900’s looking. A lady stands up in front of me that I had failed to notice.
“Hello. Welcome to the Safe House. I’m Ms. Money Penny.”
“Hi,” I sheepishly respond, still taking in the room.
“Do you know the password?”
My focus returns. I shake my head.
“Stand over there, please.”
She directs me over to the left next to the bookcase and instructs me that since I do not know the password, I must hula-hoop for 10 seconds. I sigh with a smile. Somewhere in the restaurant, someone must be laughing. I know this because they watch these silly gestures in the bar via the hidden camera in the room. Three hula tries later, the bookcase opens.
“Welcome to the Safe House, agent,” Ms. Money Penny says.
I nod and walk on through a small hallway, emerging into a medium-lit restaurant. To my surprise, no one looks at me or points and laughs.
Maybe they missed the humiliation. I walk to the bar to my left and ask for Brian. As I wait I take in my surroundings: The walls are littered with spy memorabilia, ranging from posters, autographs, license plates and photos. A movie poster with Bill Murray posing for his film “The Spy Who Knew Too Little” catches my eye.
Brian Varick bustles up to me and tosses out a hearty handshake. Wearing a black polo and matching pants he leads me to a back room. I continue taking in the insane amount of stuff on the walls and ceiling. That’s the best way to describe it: Stuff. Not the bad kind of stuff, mind you, but The Safe House looks like an overgrown kid’s bedroom that was really into spies. It’s decorated in a tasteful, albeit shotgun-type manner, and multiple visits would be required to see everything. Brian encourages people to walk around and soak it all in, but it’s not the ridiculous amount of things strewn about the place I’m interested in today. Today I am here to figure out the history of the Safe House and why it’s so special.
The Safe House, Brian explains, is completely unique to Milwaukee and will most likely stay that way. Not only is it the oldest building in Milwaukee, but it’s one of the three oldest bars as well. Before the Safe House was, well, the Safe House, it was a jazz bar called the Tunnel Inn. This was not a jazz bar where people came to play to get paid, however. It was a place where famous jazz musicians came to jam with each other after shows from around the area.
“Lots of famous people came to play for fun,” Brian says. “Greats like Benny Goodman came through here. The original stage is still out in front.”
From there, somehow, The Tunnel Inn became a private German club. Sometime after World War II it went out of business and when a man named David Baldwin grabbed the property around 1966, he renamed it The Safe House and has been the current and original co-owner ever since.
The story goes that when Baldwin and four of his buddies graduated from Marquette they decided to buy a bar. But this was not the first attempt by Baldwin to open an establishment. His ex-wife, as Brian explains, was a stewardess for an international air-line company. Baldwin tagged along to Europe one time and tried to bring back Go-Go dancing to a club owned by him. Needless to say, the Midwest was not ready for such a thing.
In 1962 the first James Bond movie, “Dr. No,” appeared with Sean Connery as the lead. By 1966 three more Bond films had been made. Because of the popularity of James Bond and spies at the time, Baldwin and his friends decided on a spy theme for their cocktail lounge, and the Safe House was born. They would not serve food until later in the life of the Safe House.
Over a short period of time Baldwin bought out his friends and became sole owner of the Safe House.
He traveled with his ex-wife, taking ideas and knickknacks back with him from every trip. The Safe House grew and grew, eventually buying out the buildings next to it and integrating them into the architecture of the main restaurant.
One piece Brian points to is an older looking door in the back with the numbers “218” on it.
“That’s from a German prison that was being torn down. David was friends with the inmate of cell “218,” who we think was a real spy, which was the reason he was in prison to begin with.”
Along with interesting décor, the Safe House used to have a unique way to have food travel to the customers. Brian looks to the ceiling where bits and pieces of train tracks pepper the ceiling above me. He explains that food use to travel to the customers on those tracks to maintain the allusion that you were in a conversation so top-secret, the waitress couldn’t interrupt you. So the food came in on train tracks.
That hasn’t been the case for a while, however, their specialty martini travels in a series of tubes that twists and turns though the whole restaurant, finally ending back at the bar.
There is so much history in The Safe House, so many stories, that I almost forget to ask Brian about the password.
“It’s been the same password for 41 years,” he says. “It used to be you had to say it through a peep-hole outside the door. Now we have Ms. Money Penny at the entrance. And fun is had not only by customers, but employees, too, who direct patrons to the fake men’s room with the brick wall on the other side of the door.” The wall has been used regardless.
“It’s all tongue and cheek,” Brian explains. “It’s all for fun.”
With very little advertising the Safe House was and is a hotspot not only for locals, but celebrities as well. Hootie and the Blowfish came and sang karaoke one night after a show and Mick Jagger was thrown out for not wearing a suit and tie when the place was still a cocktail lounge. Walking through the restaurant, you can feel the history of the place.
After a brief tour of the world’s largest mechanical puzzle (it takes up a very big wall), I make my way to the secret phone booth exit, which unfortunately is broken. I thank Brian and head out the normal exit. On the way to my car I realize that I still don’t know the password.
Professional Doodles 