The barber shop in the Pfister Hotel, Milwaukee, WI. Noted, “Edmond, Alma”, “7/59”. Scanned from a 35mm slide (more Pfister)
You may think Wednesday’s crack about Grandma getting tipsy off a couple ounces of Miller High-Life was a joke, the photo above shows that the Cool Kids drank High Life. This is clear proof is from the Pfister Hotel set, but the distinctive trapezoid label with an ‘X’ sticker right above it makes the bottle very recognizable even in small photos from other sources. Granted, these photos are from Wisconsin — Milwaukee is the home of Miller Brewing, and until the 70s there wasn’t as much national distribution as there is today. People tended to drink the beer that was brewed nearby, partly out of sentimental reasons, but also because you knew the beer was fresh. Your parents probably have stories about driving to another state to buy some good beer — driving from North Dakota to Colorado to buy up a pickup-truckload of Coors has been told to be by more than one person. One poster at Beer Advocate tells of driving to Wisconsin for some High Life…but more because of the lower drinking age of 18. As for the sentimental reasons, High Life had already been around for fifty years by the time this photo was taken — it was “the champagne of beers”, for crying out loud. Regardless if the stuff tasted like crap, you didn’t dare buy something else when company was coming over, and being caught at a swanky hotel lounge drinking anything else would be a travesty.
This photo was captioned “Jack, Obie Jordahl’s Daughter, 8-24-57”. Obie Jordahl, I believe, was a barber at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, and this fine evening he brought his daughter along to a drinking session in the hotel barber shop. Thing got wild — as you might expect — and the young miss Jordahl met the fate seen above, photographed and stored for all time. Poor, poor girl.
Say ‘hi’ to Larry & Ruth Smith, frequenters of the Pfister Hotel. This was taken in February 1957, along with several other photos I’ve uploaded. This photo has the best view of the trompe l’oeil wallpaper in the Pfister. A different wallpaper is visible in other photos, but this the best view of any of them. And it is wallpaper – you can see the seam just over the lady’s right shoulder, and note how the wall in the distance doesn’t line up between. The wallpaper artist used the ivy-wrapped columns to both hide the seam and create a ‘break’ to obscure varying views put side-by-side; my guess is that this paper (probably spendy) was sold with numerous vignettes, intended to be randomly juxtaposed for a more natural look. It was designed to be applied with a wainscoting, to leave the view appropriately at eye-level, and was probably quite expensive at the time. The Pfister was a classy place, though — it was worth it.
The couple in the front, members of the “Pfister Hotel Social Club” spent more time at the Pfister than just as customers: they appear to be the proprietors of the hotel barber shop. Several photos were taken, in hopes of getting a good shot where nobody’s blinking, everybody’s looking at the camera, and you can see everyone’s faces…they didn’t succeed.
The Pfister Hotel was a happening place in 1960; at least for the employees. The wifey bought a set of slides taken by employees of the Pfister barber shop at social gatherings held in the hotel through the late 1950s and 1960. I’ve scanned all of the Pfister-related photos — they’re collected here.
see also: The Pfister Hotel (also) * Desegregation in Wisconsin * WI hotels via Lileks
