Dave Wolz: from first-time customer to legacy owner

"Big Gay Dave" was a fixture of the Milwaukee gay scene, but it took him a while to actually come out.

“I didn’t begin to realize I was gay until college,” he said. “I had an experience in high school, a few in college, but that was at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, so it was suppressed.”

It didn’t help that Wolz was born in the 60s, when gay representation was practically non-existent. “I don’t remember seeing gay people in the media growing up—like none at all.”

After college, Wolz felt a drive to explore Milwaukee’s gay scene, but another newsmaking event at the time quickly stifled that urge. 

“I remember stumbling onto a gay event at the Performing Arts Center [downtown], and it felt so ‘cool’ and comfortable,” he said. “But shortly after that, Dahmer was arrested, and suddenly it didn’t feel like a good time to explore.”

During this period, Wolz described living something of a double life. 

“I would hang around with coworkers and friends at night, then leave them around 11 to go to the gay bars,” he said. “I wasn’t quite ready for those folks or my family to know I was gay.”

Coming back full circle to La Cage

Fast forward a few years, and Wolz ended up buying La Cage, the first gay bar he ever visited.

‘Wide open windows’

“LaCage is an iconic Milwaukee gay bar,” said Wolz. “It’s been around for 40 years on a prominent corner with wide open windows in a beautiful, historic building.”

Open since 1984, LaCage is one of Milwaukee’s best-known gay dance clubs and also one of the city’s oldest continuously running gay bars. It’s also notable for being the first gay bar in Milwaukee with windows open to the street.

The wide open windows to the street makes LaCage unique, according to Wolz. “It always had wide open windows to the street. It says: ‘This is a gay bar. Here we are.’” At a time when gay bars blacked out their windows to protect the identities of the people inside, LaCage openly declared itself as a gay bar with its unapologetically large windows on a busy corner in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood.

Wolz’s journey

From struggling to come out to owning Milwaukee’s most iconic gay bar, Wolz has seen the city’s gay community change a lot.

“The community is stronger now than it’s ever been,” he said. From being a scene that was “still rather underground and something that wasn’t openly talked about” to queerness being something “less stigmatized and almost fashionable,” Wolz is grateful for his journey and to those who paved the way before him.”

“I’d really like to thank the first ‘group’ of gays that I got to know and hang out with a lot: Vinnie Hemmer, Toby Heney, Craig Pitzen, Drew Kopshinsky, Nick Tice, and Tom Morden,” he said. “Recently, of course I’ve learned a lot from [previous La Cage owners] George and Michael Prentice and Corey Grubb.”

Wolz also feels indebted to the early Milwaukee AIDS activists. “I’m grateful to those who were ‘demanding change’—folks part of ACT UP, for instance. I was on a very outer orbit when they were active, but I think they pushed things forward a lot,” he said. “I wasn’t part of the community they were fighting so hard for, and then their movement just kind of ended by the time I got here.”

Ultimately, Wolz is happy to be part of the Milwaukee gay community, and is proud of the many connections he’s made because of it. “I’m somebody who gets along with everybody,” he said. “Even now, when I walk into the Tiki Bar at the Public Market, depending on who’s there they’ll yell out, ‘hey, Big Gay Dave’s here!’ I just try to be a good person that works hard.”