Two venerable drinking establishments in Brookfield are celebrating milestone birthdays this year. In April, Brixie’s Saloon on Ogden Avenue celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding. On Aug. 22, Joe’s Saloon will be celebrating the 70th anniversary of its founding in 1939 with live music and specials.
Both bars are now in the third generation of family ownership. Brixie’s was founded by George and Josephine Brixie in April 1934 just four months after the 21st Amendment to the Constitution repealed Prohibition.
George Brixie was working at Electro-Motive in McCook when he started the bar, which was originally located at 9510 W. Ogden, a couple of doors east of its current location.
It moved to its current location in June 1950 says Russell Brixie, son of George Brixie. Brixie, 72, who now co-owns Brixie’s with his daughter, Renee. Russell Brixie bought the bar from his father in 1970 and worked there from 1963 until he retired from day-to-day management six years ago. Brixie’s is now managed by Chris DiBraccio, Renee’s husband.
Joe’s Saloon, located a couple miles south of Brixie’s on 47th Street, was founded in 1939 by George Butkovich, a home builder. Butkovich built his tavern, which he named Butkovich’s Saloon, for his son Mike who was married and had four children. But after Mike Butkovich was killed in World War II, his brother, Joe, took over the bar.
Joe Butkovich ran the bar until the day he died. In August 2002, Joe Butkovich, then 88, collapsed behind the bar and died a day later.
“The paramedics actually had to pull him out from behind the bar,” said Ellen Frantzen, the current owner of Joe’s Saloon and one of two daughters of Joe Butkovich. “He went the way he wanted to go.”
Joe Butkovich lived in the apartment above the bar and ran the business with the help of one part-time employee.
“He was very proud of the fact that he was still running the bar,” Frantzen said. “He opened it in the morning and closed it at night. He loved the bar, he loved the track and he loved golf.”
Joe Butkovich had changed the name of his tavern to Joe’s Saloon sometime in the 1970s or ’80s, said Frantzen.
After her father died, Frantzen, who grew up in the two-bedroom apartment above the bar, decided to buy the bar from her father’s estate. She spent about six months fixing it up and returning it to its former glory.
She stripped the paint from the wood paneling, restored the mahogany-topped walnut bar, got new equipment, remodeled the bathrooms and put in a new heating and air-conditioning system.
Frantzen had always loved the bar. She did odd jobs there as a child and even occasionally tended bar there as kid while her parents ate dinner upstairs.
“I got to do little jobs at the bar,” Frantzen recalled last week sitting in her office, in what used to be her family’s kitchen. “You used to have to return all the bottles to beer distributors, so my job was to take the garbage cans of empty bottles and put them in the right cases.”
Frantzen enjoyed living above the bar.
“It was fun growing up here,” Frantzen said. “We were pretty much night owls, especially on the weekends. Customers were like family.”
As an adult Frantzen worked in a variety of sales and marketing jobs until her father died. Her father didn’t let her work at the bar as an adult, and he didn’t seriously consider selling to her or anyone else. Joe Butkovich didn’t think his daughter should work in a bar.
“I couldn’t serve a beer for him,” Frantzen said. “My dad always felt women should be home with their husbands and their kids.”
The compact tavern has always catered to the workers and tradesmen who worked in nearby McCook, and still serves that clientele. It has a warm, retro-classy roadhouse look and feel with rich dark wood all around. It tends to draw a rather quiet crowd.
Brixie’s, which once featured an organ behind the bar, is a larger, livelier tavern that often features live music. Over the years Brixie’s has attracted a young, sometimes rowdy crowd.
DiBraccio has tried to gradually change the atmosphere at Brixie’s and move it more upscale. Brixie’s now serves 100 beers from around the world, features beer-tasting events and this fall will be introducing a larger kitchen which will serve some fairly high end pub food.
“He’s got a better class of beer,” Russell Brixie said. “He’s changed the crowd so anyone can go instead of being a younger crowd.”
While Frantzen has always loved Joe’s Saloon, Brixie does not wax romantic about the bar business and the long night hours it required.
“I wish I would have sold earlier and got a real job,” said Brixie. “It’s a very bad life. It’s rough life.”