Owner of Milwaukee gay bar says LGBTQ patrons were avoiding areas near the RNC
MILWAUKEE — Woody’s Milwaukee owner Alan Kettering is no fan of Donald Trump, but when the former president was in town for the Republican National Convention this week, he told the Washington Blade it was “a bit of a nothing burger” as far as he and his gay bar were concerned. “There isn’t a lot I can say about the RNC,” he said, except to the extent that “there was just a little bump [in business] over the weekend from people that didn’t want to, you know, go anywhere near downtown.” Kettering suspects many of his LGBTQ patrons were deliberately avoiding getting close to the perimeter around Fiserv Forum, which contained hundreds of elected Republicans, thousands of Republican delegates, and tens of thousands of conservatives all gathered to rally around their nominee.
Asked whether any RNC attendees made their way to Woody’s this week, Kettering said there was one man who made a bit of a scene. “He claimed he was a representative of some sort” from Massachusetts, possibly a Republican delegate.
When the patron left with two men, Kettering said he worried for them because the Republican “just seemed a little unstable” but thankfully they returned to Woody’s unharmed. “I talked to them afterwards and they basically said they took an Uber down to Cathedral Square and the guy got out and ran away.” Running a gay bar in a swing state during an election year at a particularly polarized time in the United States has sometimes meant having to police discussions about politics, Kettering said. “I try to quell it as much as I can, because I am very politically motivated, and I have to bite my tongue 90 percent of the time,” he said. “And the vast majority of gay people are Democratic, the vast majority, but we do have a few that are very, very vocal, you know, in support of the current challenger,” Kettering said. “But i try very hard to limit the amount of political discussion because there is no winning.” “You’re not going to convince me and I’m sure I’m not going to
