George Schneider: we are not going backwards

“We can't lose everything we fought for -- and that's a very real possibility."

George Schneider, Milwaukee native and co-owner of the city’s legendary gay bar, This Is It!, knew who he was from an early age. “I knew a looong time ago,” he says with a laugh.

“I think the actual realization probably happened in seventh or eighth grade. Growing up I always felt that—not that there was something wrong with me—but that I knew something was different. I just didn’t have the language to identify what that was.”

Acceptance in unlikely places

“Another person who was instrumental in that period of my life was the teacher of my Catechism class, Mrs. Fredrickson. I’ll never forget her. I’m a recovering Catholic, but I had confided in Mrs. Fredrickson that I was gay. And it ended up being a cool thing because I remember her asking my opinion about things when we were having religious discussions. I didn’t expect that acceptance in a religious setting,” he said. 

“I was out at Arrowhead High School when I went there, but I think I was the only ‘out’ kid there in a school of about 2,000. But I felt like I was in a position to change the paradigm a little bit because I was somebody who got along with everybody. I played football, etc. I thought it was an opportunity for me to help change people’s perspectives,” he said. 

“And I know it’s cliche, but I had people like my high school English teacher, Mrs. Judd, who were in my corner. She was so supportive and I realized afterward that she was helping me foster my passion and make it okay for me to come out of my shell a bit more.” 

“It doesn’t seem like that long ago, but twenty years ago things were different. Even in my lifetime. In twenty years it really has changed a lot.”

Schneider is heartened by how acceptance has grown so much even in the last two decades. He now has young family members coming out and experiencing Milwaukee Pride for the first time as adults with their partners. 

“Seeing how far things have come, and seeing how there’s such a support system from younger people now, is absolutely phenomenal,” he said.

Circle of friends

Schneider was lucky to have a tight-knit group of friends help him navigate the transition from high school to college. 

“Marcus Smith, Chris Jacobs, and Nicholas Haubrich were my support system. They were also my first real queer friends. Marcus Smith brought me onboard at PrideFest and the four of us all volunteered at PrideFest at one point or another,” he said.

That moment kickstarted Schneider’s 11+ years of volunteering with Milwaukee Pride. “I started as the Youth Area Coordinator and I was hooked,” he said. “Eventually I became the assistant to Peter Minz, who was the Operations Director.”

When Minz was promoted to Festival Director, Schneider stepped in as Operations Director—a title he held for six more years. But by then, Schneider was a manager at This Is It!, and he found it hard to juggle both managing the bar and planning Pridefest operations. 

So, he stepped down and took on more advisory roles, such as joining the boards of the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center and Milwaukee Pride.

Beverage boss

Despite taking some career detours as a landscape designer and florist, Schneider found his home in food and beverage management. “My first foray into food and beverage management was tending bar at the PumpHouse, which eventually became the Horny Goat Brewery” he said.

“I then took an opportunity to work for the Marcus Corp. when they opened the Mason Street Grill. I worked my way up in the Marcus Corporation and ultimately was at the Iron Horse Hotel as their Beverage Director before moving to This Is It!.”

Ending up as the co-owner of This Is It!, Milwaukee’s only surviving pre-Stonewall gay bar, was serendipitous, as it was actually the first gay bar Schneider ever visited.

“The first time I visited This Is It! was uncanny,” he said. “I’ll never forget walking in the front door for the first time. We walked in the front door and I grabbed my friend I was with and said, ‘This is so weird—I have the strangest sense of deja vu. I feel like I’ve been here before,’” he said. “‘I took a few more steps into the bar and turned around to my friend and just blurted out, ‘No, I know what is it—I feel like I’m supposed to be here or like I’m going to work here someday.’”

Schneider chalks this up to a stroke of luck or a self-fulfilling prophecy, but either way he’s proud of where his career has taken him. And he credits work mentors like Louie Spetrini at the Iron Horse Hotel and Joe Brehm, previous owner of This Is It!, with teaching him how to run a successful gay bar (and how to cool his hot-headed tendencies).

Expanding This Is It!

Joining This Is It! as co-owner (eventually alongside drag star Trixie Mattel) was the easy part, according to Schneider. Everything since then has been the hard part.

“The hardest part is preserving and incorporating the history and legacy of the bar itself,” he said. “When we expanded, the contractor looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted to keep the carpet on the walls. It’s new, but we want to pay homage to what came before and preserve that history in physical form.”

In 2019, Schneider oversaw an aggressive expansion that gave the bar two new bathrooms, a second bar, and a dance floor. For Schneider, that means more room for his team to take risks. 

“My team is amazing. And we like to stay on the cutting edge. We want to try new things and help shape what’s defining the queer community,” he said.

That includes lobbying for the 2018 installation of the rainbow crosswalk at N. Jefferson and E. Wells in downtown Milwaukee—just steps away from This Is It! 

“I had gone to Vancouver to visit a friend and they had just freshly painted their rainbow crosswalks there. I took a picture, posted it to social media asking why we couldn’t have it in Milwaukee, and it kind of blew up,” he said. “So I spent about two years working with the city, Department of Public Works, the Federal Highway Commission, and we finally got them to approve the rainbow crosswalk. Michail Takach and Tony Snell were both instrumental, too.”

The rainbow crosswalk commemorates Milwaukee’s first gay pride march, which happened in 1989 and involved about 1,500 marchers.

“Bars need to adapt in order to survive—straight bars and gay bars but especially gay bars. Because we as a queer community tend to be the ones that create the new trends,” he said. “We want to be adaptive but still remember where we came from.”

Looking ahead

Schneider is proud of his journey, but he’s not slowing down any time soon. 

“The community has come such a long way, even since I was younger, that there’s no way we can go backwards,” he said.

“There were still lingering feelings of secrecy when I was first starting to go out. There’s legends of the backdoor at This Is It!, that people would only come in through the back door because they didn’t want to be seen,” he said. 

Society in general has changed so much recently that it’s snuffed out a lot of the secrecy, and I love that. If young people had to experience that today I think they’d be shocked.”

Schneider is quick to credit our queer forebears for that progress, and urges people to continue supporting the documenting of queer history and patronizing queer businesses. 

“I think there used to be more support for queer-owned businesses,” he said. “Because things are more integrated now, we don’t think about that. But it’s so important. We should make sure we’re giving our money and our love to the community so it can have the biggest impact.”

“And that’s because right now things in society look scary. We’re already seeing rights stripped away from women, from ethnic minorities, from all sorts of different angles,” he said. “We can't lose everything we fought for -- and that's a very real possibility at this moment in history. We must continue making strides forward, not backward.”

Schneider’s message for the younger generation to help them keep moving things forward? 

“Vote. Be honest, and be proud.”