"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun articles on bars and clubs -- including guides, the latest trends, rapid bar reviews and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
Oakcrest Tavern
4022 N. Oakland Ave., Shorewood
(414) 967-0222
oakcresttavern.com
While there's not much in the way of decor to make it stand out, this North Shore watering hole makes up for the mall-like atmosphere with a friendly crew behind the bar and nine plasma screens for sports fans.
While the rest of Shorewood went smoke-free last year, the Oakcrest has been smokeless since it opened in 2007. It's close enough to the Milwaukee city limits to make the clean air a draw for city residents.
One of only a handful of taverns in the area, the Oakcrest's prime location in the heart of Shorewood brings in a night-time crowd of folks heading home from a Bucks game or some other Downtown activity.
Menu: Ten beers are on tap, ranging from the big breweries, to locals to import standards, and there's a wide range of bottles, along with a reasonable wine list. There's also a full food menu. Try the hanger steak.
Price: Drink prices are comparable to other bars, and a series of changing specials and happy hour deals make it a good spot to stop on the way home from the office.
Dress: The after-work crowd may look a bit dressed up, but the casual level goes up through the evening as the locals drift in for a quick bite and to watch the game.
Parking: Oakland Avenue can be crowded, but plenty of spaces open after Sendik's closes at 8 p.m.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
