The Island Knows All

The (bar) talk on the Island can be boiled down into three re-occuring themes:

Island gossip (OMGS the Hansons are leaving?!?), Autobiographical monologues of great personal accomplishments (I met the first man to make a "made-for-TV" movie on CBS), and 'The Sting'.

For those of you 'off-islanders' out there reading this, 'The Sting' was a coordinated, undercover effort by the off-island Door County Sheriffs Office to crack down on underage drinking on the Island. Multiple underage operatives and plain clothes policemen traveled incognito on the ferry over and entered all of the bars on the island attempting to get drinks without getting carded. As the concept of having to be 21 to drink hasn't quite made its way out here, every single bar failed the test and The Sting was a large success (or failure, depending on your view).

(While curbing underage drinking is a very good thing, it is common knowledge that the Sheriff's Office was running out of money, and at $300 per bar tender and bar owner, it was quite  lucrative haul. Island politics are all sorts of messed up.)

Needless to say, the Islanders have since stepped up their game. That is to say, bars are still just as open (I've been ID'd once here) but ferry traffic monitoring has greatly increased. Now less than 10 minutes after stepping on the ferry, every bar on the island will know if any police presence is on its way, via the incredibly efficient Bartender Phone Network (BPN). Last week a plain clothes officer returned to the island to check up on enforcement of the new carding regulations, and before he stepped foot on the island, every bar had been notified of his presence. Islanders don't mess around.


The Island knows all.






p.s. I really did meet the guy who made the first made-for-tv movie on CBS. He also excels at extremely irrelevant life advice and drinking gin and tonics.