Cavalier Theater & Lounge, 118 5th Avenue N, La Crosse, WI (2026)

09/15/2026

“Gettin’ Shuggy With It, Part 10”
by Shuggypop Jackson

This morning the La Crosse Tribune published an investigative report on the uptick on police enforcement on downtown and campus area bars for serving underage customers. The focus of the article is that 3 specific bars, Brothers, Library and Bier Haus/Legends have accounted for 70% of underage related citations of current operating bars while other bars with far less infractions have been the ones the City of La Crosse Police Department have had brought in front of the city council to have their liquor licenses up for suspension or revocation.

It would seem to many that preferential treatment is given to some of the bars due to various sponsorships and donations made to various police causes for many years. While these sponsorships and donations that were highlighted in the last “Gettin’ Shuggy” article published on this page are all complete “legitimate” transactions, they definitely raise some alarms of a conflict of interest for the police department to be accepting any of these, so as to avoid any appearance of being viewed as bribery to look the other way for any wrongdoings. Perhaps the City of La Crosse Mayor should take a look into this? The La Crosse Police Department gets close to $14 million annually out of the city budget to operate, do they really need sponsorships and donations from the community? Or should those all be eliminated to avoid any speculations?

The citations that have gotten bars brought in front of the city council have been for failing police enforcements, known by the bars as “stings”, where they send in underage volunteers to see if they get carded or served. While this may be an effective way to detect negligence by bar staff in checking IDs, it ignores the far larger issue to how the majority of underage people are getting served in bars.

The main secret to success for bars catering to students for years has been to hire bar staff that is largely consisting of students who then let in and serve their underage friends. Underage students downtown can frequently be heard boasting “I know the bouncer” which gets them in the door. Nothing new under the sun.

The police department knows this is why there are so many underage people drinking downtown. They do regular “walkthroughs”, and write citations for people who are underage in these bars often, but this hasn’t been reflected in the testimonies given by the police officer at the city council hearings or submitted in their quarterly reports.

The latest round of bars going in front of the city council, Del’s and Bennett O’Riley’s, resulted in both of them having their liquor licenses suspended for 10 days. The timing of this gave the appearance to be a warning shot to all the bars with the students moving back that week. While certainly nothing any bar wants, fortunately for both of them, they were able to delay the suspensions and have them begin immediately after Oktoberfest weekend, which as many in the bar industry know, is an extremely dead week and the lost revenue during this time wouldn’t have been as great as other times.

But again, as stated in the last “Gettin’ Shuggy” article, it’s hard to take these ramped up bar enforcements seriously that Del’s and Bennett O’Riley’s were the bars getting suspended while far more flagrant ones go unscathed.

To be continued…

09/10/2026

We had some teenage vandals roaming the downtown streets last night from about 12:30am til 1:30am. It kinda warms our heart to see kids out being delinquents. Anyway, this band of ballscratching ruffians seen here at one of their milder moments fu***ng around across the alley from us behind Blue Line Tattoo-LaCrosse Wi also got on top of our roof where they were spitting on people on the sidewalk, were throwing bricks off the roof of the City Square building, spent awhile out of eyesight being punks in the walking alley along the south side of the Rivoli Theatre and Pizzeria building, poking around the north side of the State Bank building, and out of eyesight in the walking alley on the north side of the 24 Hour Fitness building before getting out of our eyesight completely by going up Jay Street. So if any of our neighbors have any damage to your property from last night, these are your likely culprits if you can identify them. We did call the City of La Crosse Police Department but they never came. We watched 5 police cars leisurely driving on 4th Street doing their rounds while we were sitting outside watching these kids be rambunctious little s**ts, but none of those cops took a break from driving around in loops to respond to the call 🤷🏻‍♂️

09/02/2026

“Gettin’ Shuggy With It: Part 9”
by Shuggypop Jackson

Later today, the Judiciary & Administration Committee will be meeting in the city council chambers of City Hall. On their agenda two downtown bars, Del’s Bar and Bennett O’Riley’s, will be discussed whether or not they should keep their liquor licenses due to multiple infractions for being a welcoming environment for underage patrons. Both of these places are well established businesses that have loyal followings of current and former customers. Emotions are high and opinions are divided.

“Whatever, they’ve been negligent, that’s just poor management with how they’re running their bars currently, there’s no excuses for any of that” said a former downtown bartender and bar manager with over 20 years experience at various establishments.

“Who cares if kids are out drinking, there’s bigger problems for them to worry about! It’s getting to be like the fricking Hunger Games down here. You can take one of the pub crawl shirts bars were doing every week and start crossing off the bars one by one who get their license yanked and see who is left standing in the end. It’s freaking bulls**t!” said an agitated gentleman who has been drinking in many of the bars downtown for over 30 years.

Whether the J&A committee will decide to put either of those two bars on a year long abatement plan, or possibly a suspension or more is to be determined. The ongoing bigger question since the city started ramping up enforcement is why in this case these two particular bars are getting clapped when the majority of bars downtown are operating no different.

"It’s not who’s getting punished, I’m more interested in why some of these other places are seeming to get a pass. Some of these places have been a problem for over serving and letting in underage customers for a really long time. Punishing these little bars will just consolidate the crowds and reward the bigger bars. This doesn’t seem like a fair playing field at all.” said a community member

A corporation that has been operating a couple bars downtown for over 30 years that are popular with college students, the demographic they cater to, had both of their La Crosse bars show up in a Tribune article as having over 100 citations handed out to underage customers, which puts them both in the top 5 for number of citations for bars in La Crosse. One would think those statistics would bump them up to the front of the line to have their liquor licenses reviewed, until you dig a little deeper and find things that certainly look suspicious to all of the people interviewed for this article. According to easily available information, the corporation that run these two bars is regularly listed among the local community business sponsors and donors that support the City of La Crosse Police Department K-9 Unit and police fundraisers such as annual police golf outings. This corporation has frequently been thanked as a local business contributor supporting "community outreach programs like the La Crosse Police Department National Night Out events, which help fund and build community relations for public safety initiatives.”

“It would be really unfortunate if certain bars get preferential treatment because they can afford to cough up some cash. Maybe they just really like to support police causes, but it sure does seem like a hey we will give you money if you look the other way from the illegal things we do in our businesses. These fundraisers and sponsorships hopefully aren’t just some sort of legitimized way to take in bribes.” said a current downtown bar owner.

A community member shared a story about how he played for a 35 year old and up basketball league in town whose team was sponsored by the Bodega. A team they played made up of a bunch of police officers was sponsored by one of the bars this corporation runs. “We beat them, and later we were at the Bodega, and cops came in to do a bar check and started asking us for our IDs. One of those cops played on the team we beat. But anyway, why would a bar for college students sponsor a team full of cops? They don’t even drink in that bar!”

An interesting perspective was shared that differs from what others are commenting. “You think the police are ever going to do any enforcements at the La Crosse Center during their shows when it’s the city who’s selling the alcohol there?” commented a former downtown bar owner sarcastically when asked to comment on the current state of the downtown bar enforcements. While responding with his typical snakiness, he raised a legitimate point. Underage young adults, same as with downtown and campus area bars, have no problems buying alcohol with their fake IDs at La Crosse Center events that cater to younger crowds, such as the recent Flo Rida and country concerts there. "Your average person working concessions for the La Crosse Center likely aren’t as seasoned at spotting fake IDs as downtown bar workers who see them every night, and alcohol is easily purchased, to say nothing of people who buy alcohol and then hand it off to their underage friends to consume. Maybe the city should have their liquor license revoked too. Oh but that will never happen!"

To be continued…

08/27/2026

Just another quick update to those of you placing bets on FanDuel. Yesterday Jason sent off the following email to the clerk of courts. Well let you know how it works out. Keep placing those bets, folks!

08/26/2026

Time to update everybody placing bets on FanDuel!! Yesterday Jason had a 25 minute phone call with the Assistant City Attorney Gideon Wertheimer. Jason has been having a lot of phone calls with people in the City Attorney's office the past couple of years, he and Gideon are old friends by this point. Gideon’s job in these matters is to get people into compliance for various infractions. He’s typically been fair, as have others in the City Attorney’s office. But oh boy did Jason p**s him off this time!

But before we get into all of that, we just want to take a moment to highlight all the people commenting on all of these railing posts. Something we noticed is the people leaving comments against the stance Jason is taking, the overwhelming majority when you click on their profile are sharing trendy posts against flok cameras, and if you scroll down farther, trendy posts about No Kings. That is the type of irony we enjoy seeing. Anyway, as we have been transparent about for years, the Cavalier page is monetized, and we’ve been rage baiting since before rage baiting was a term on Urban Dictionary. It’s been the most successful way for us to increase page interactions. So our most sincere thanks for those of you who have not been able to help yourselves and take the bait with your clicks and comments, which is buying Jason his groceries for the week. He’s eating well. Keep up the good work playa haters!

Now back to the gambling matters on FanDuel. Last November the city building inspector issued Jason a citation for not having a railing on the roof of his carport. This got kicked over to Gideon to handle, who offered Jason a deal to dismiss the citation if he started making progress on the railing within a couple months. Translation, get a building permit so the city can take his money. Anyway, Jason complied, got a building permit, which is good for 24 months. So Jason assumed he had 24 months to complete the railing. Dude’s busy and this railing really wasn’t at the top of his priority list. Anyway, he’d started building the damn thing when he had some free time, but apparently not fast enough for our intrepid bureaucrats in City Hall who again contacted Jason to ask why the railing wasn’t completed yet. Sorry bro, the 60-80 hour weeks he works running a business and bartending haven’t really left him much time to work on it.

The city said get it done by a date a couple months in the future or the citation will be reopened. So Jason roped in a couple of upstanding members of the community who offered to help so he could get the railing he built mounted. Upon completion, Jason took a pic of the railing and emailed it to Gideon saying he was done. Fast forward a few weeks and the city building inspector emailed Jason saying he needs to come inspect the railing and sign off on it. Jason said sure thing. That email exchange was posted last week.

Where things went sideways was when the inspector said he needed access to the inside of the building to inspect the railing which is 100% fully outside. Jason evoked his constitutional rights to deny the request, which was met with a threat of getting a citation if the inspector was not allowed inside. Which gets us caught up to yesterday’s phone call.

Jason again stated his constitutional right multiple times, which Gideon responded every time that yes Jason has that right. But Gideon was definitely annoyed by this. Gideon said the inspector can get an administrative warrant to enter the property, which Jason acknowledged that yes they could and asked why don’t they just do that? Gideon responded that “getting a warrant is a pain in the ass.” They would need to prove probable cause and a judge would have to grant it. It’s over our pay grade to determine if a warrant would be issued to access a flight of stairs inside, which is outside of the scope of the building project which is 100% fully outside. Regardless, it seems pretty extreme and petty, just like everything else in this standoff.

Jason kept asking why the inspector can’t just use a ladder outside. Jason also suggested they use one of those city trucks with the cherry picker bucket that crews use to hang the holiday decorations on the light post downtown. Gideon responded he didn’t think that is a reasonable request. So Jason asked him what do the inspectors do when they have to inspect roofs of buildings and other outdoor things that are above ground level where there is no access. Gideon responded that they do not inspect roofs, which is pretty hard to believe. If any of you have had an inspector use a ladder to get up on a roof for a building inspection, we’d love to hear from you. Mostly just because Gideon said "prove to me that inspectors go on roofs.” But that aside, pictured below is Mike who builds things for a living at Badger Corrugated from a couple months ago, who helped with the railing project. He stopped by after work on a Friday and wanted to start setting up a work space. Since the bar was open and Jason was bartending, Mike didn’t want to be going in and out creating a disturbance. So around 30 times he climbed up and down the ladder behind him in the pic. This is a guy in his mid 60s with health conditions climbing a ladder to access that carport rooftop that our building inspectors claim they can’t and isn’t accessible. Them boys are clearly soft.

Jason asked Gideon “This current city government isn’t very popular in the community these days, is this really the reputation you want the city to have for how it treats its local businesses?” Gideon replied rather hastily “Yes! Yes it is the reputation I want if local businesses won’t be in compliance!” So take note folks, another of our entrenched unelected bureaucrats with unfettered power believes tax paying citizens are here to be told what to do by them. Gideon then said “If you don’t like it, then petition to change the city ordinance.” Did he mean the city ordinance that doesn’t follow fourth amendment rulings in the state of Wisconsin? He might be on to something, hey City of La Crosse Mayor or Alderman Kahlow, you wanna look into having your city ordinances follow state and federal law? And while you’re at it, maybe suggest to city employees that what seems to be their common practice of using unconstitutional coercion should probably cease?

Gideon was getting very annoyed at this point and was started to raise his voice. At this point he said “If you aren’t going to give them access, then I am going to reopen your citation from November, and you can either pay a reduced fine or it can go to trial.” Jason responded by saying “this sure sounds like that third time a city employee is using coercion for evoking his constitutional rights and this could be setting the city up for a lawsuit.” There’s Supreme Court rulings on this exact issue Jason is going through with city hall referenced in the screen shot below. But hey, maybe the city can waste another $90,000 of taxpayer money on a losing lawsuit. Gideon was PI**ED by this point and tried to clarify the citation that was to be dismissed he previously said he was going to reopen is still open so therefore blah blah blah. At this point Gideon told Jason he had two choices, either accept a citation at a reduced rate or have the citation go to trial. Jason responded by saying probably for the twentieth time that they can come inspect it whenever they want, but he has Fourth amendment rights to deny letting them inside he’d like to evoke and you should probably chill on that unconstitutional coercion. Boy was Gideon mad. Jason hadn’t seen this type of reaction to not obeying authority since his middle school principal Judy Mortell who he’d get sent to on the weekly to get yelled at. Jason then asked “so if this thing goes to trial, I still haven’t consented to letting the inspector into my building and the railing still hasn’t been signed off on, so what happens then?"

At this point Gideon was kinda crashing out and yelled out “Fine! I’m against you now! Is that what you wanted?” The conversation then for whatever reason shifted to Latino Bar and all the underage kids in bars downtown the city generates revenue off of, to which Gideon got some things off his chest that had obviously been festering and told Jason “You didn’t do s**t to help us with Latino Bar and just made everything worse for us! You wouldn’t testify for us when we asked you to! You could have submitted an affidavit and didn't!” Bro…

Gideon was big mad by now and eventually yelled “This is going to trial, I’m done with you!” And then slammed down the phone hanging up on Jason. Not long after, he sent an email Jason is not allowed to comment on as there was a big legal statement attached stating the content of the email was not to be shared blah blah blah. It seems the city is sick of Jason posting screen shots and took that step. This situation would all be so much less drama if Jason would just say f**k his constitutional rights and OBEY!

Anyway, if you placed your bets on FanDuel that this thing was going to go to trial in front of a judge, congrats, you’re probably going to win! Meanwhile, Jason will be spending his morning today contacting national news media to see if he can get any bites on covering this standoff. Stay tuned folks!

08/21/2026

To summarize our week for those of you following along and placing bets on FanDuel, we haven’t heard anything back from anyone at City Hall yet or received a citation in the mail yet. The city seems dug in on their municipal code, while Jason is dug in on state laws rooted on the 4th amendment of the constitution. Both are translated below to stuff normal people can understand and not that lawyer speak they’re written in that hurts your head to decipher. All this over a stupid fu***ng railing. But maybe this little battle can create some bigger change for how the city operates that can benefit those of you who’ve also had problems with the inspections department. We’ve had several people stop by this week wanting to get in on this too for negative past experiences they’ve had. How do y’all think this will play out? 😵‍💫

08/20/2026

Jason had a good phone chat yesterday with a journalist from the Tribune who is working on a story about the inspectors at City Hall. He and Jason have a follow up interview scheduled for next week after he chases down some info for his story. He mentioned it’s been a common complaint from others about how the inspectors handle their business. Will be interesting to see what he comes up with.

As part of being licensed to do business in La Crosse, we get various inspections throughout the year from the health department, fire department, etc. They are pretty routine and friendly. Sometimes we get pointed out some things to correct, but they are handled professionally. These building and safety inspectors however are a different beast, and have been awful to deal with since the current department head took over. Jason has had multiple experiences with him over the years, and not a one of them has been good or even neutral. Our posts the past couple days didn’t come out of nowhere, this situation has been building for years, and we used our ragebaiting ways to take this public to get more eyeballs on it and start a community discussion.

As a refresher from a few posts from several months ago, this issue to put a railing on the roof of a carport behind the bar heated up after we started publishing multiple posts about the corrupt negligence with how the city police department generates revenue off their enforcement, or lack thereof, with their bar patrols. Our being loud and going public about that shook things up and has created some procedural changes. (We’re not letting up on that either, local independent journalist Shuggypop Jackson still has some more strongly worded bombs to drop on all that.) Perhaps the timing of the inspectors rolling in with their typical aggression to make a lack of railing an issue is just coincidental, but to us it sure felt retaliatory. Send in the hounds to cause Jason extra grief.

Jason has already been issued a citation from the building inspector months ago, and we are willing to bet another one is already in the mail. The first citation the city attorney dismissed and it never went before the judge. We assume the city attorney will again mediate this current standoff and we’re waiting to hear from him, we got a bounce back on our email saying he’s currently out of the office on vacation. We also are willing to bet things won’t end with the railing issue and the inspectors will find a new problem to throw in our lap because they have that type of unbridled authority and pettiness.

The thing with these inspectors is they are entrenched unelected bureaucrats who are legally granted lots of power who really aren’t held accountable by anyone. We get many well meaning elected officials who come in to office, then a new one takes their place next election cycle. These elected officials come in with rose colored glasses with idealistic hopes of pet projects and buzzworthy bumper sticker slogans about topics that play well on the internet but are pretty meaningless in how the machine is actually run, and then they get eaten alive. Our well-meaning elected officials rarely have any background in what goes on in the various departments or administrative duties, and the public sentiment shared by many is they’re in over their heads with how the machine works, and the entrenched unelected bureaucrats run the show unchecked.

There is a growing number of local business owners in the community who are fed up with how city hall is run, just not very many like Jason who give zero f**ks who lob metaphorical dynamite onto the fire publicly in such a brazen fashion. He was ostracized by polite society years ago and is pretty much 🤷🏻‍♂️. If La Crosse isn’t going to be a welcoming place to do business, where businesses are pummeled with bureaucratic regulations and red tape by entrenched unelected bureaucrats, then businesses will pack up and move out, a scenario being played out in places like Chicago and California. Meanwhile La Crosse has dropped a p**spot of money on a local marketing firm to “rebrand La Crosse” to attempt to attract businesses to the area. Good luck with that once these perspective businesses meet these henchmen inspectors or talk to current business owners about how the city treats them.

While we wait for our situation to play out, we were reminded of this rant from a couple years ago by comedian Bill Mahr that sums up our current sentiment we’ll share for you to enjoy or get baited into comment rage over to help our post get more traction. Enjoy!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy779dKfqp4&pp=ygUhQmlsbCBtYWhlciBpbnNwZWN0aW9ucyBkZWVwIHN0YXRl&ra=m

08/19/2026

Our tax dollars hard at work, part 2!

For those of you placing bets on FanDuel, here is an update to yesterday’s post regarding the inspection of a railing on top of a carport behind the bar that the city made us be in compliance of.

It would appear this issue has been passed on to the department head, a real charming, kind hearted fellow named Dave. Both sides it would appear have dug in.

Zero response from the City of La Crosse Mayor or downtown city council rep Chris Kahlow so far to weigh in, as has been typical with other times they’ve been contacted.

This is unfortunately typical of what it’s like to deal with city hall as a local business owner, as many, many of you already know. Never a dull moment, they would rather fight you than work with you. City Hall is such a complete s**tshow in our experiences with them. And they wonder why they’ve lost the locker room with so many in our community. Is this a prime example for the ongoing city administrator debate? Maybe we’ll give our two cents on that in another post.

But for now, the gambling market is heating up folks! Place your bets on how this pettiness will play out 🤑

08/18/2026

Hey all, it’s time to place your bets on FanDuel! As some of you might remember, our bureaucratic overlords in the inspections department in city hall have been on us to build a railing on the roof of the carport that is behind the bar in the alley. Their reason is it’s a “public safety hazard”, someone could fall over the ledge and make a dent in the ground, possibly even chipping one of the historic bricks in their rutted out alley. Nobody has access to that roof but Jason, but that doesn’t matter, the city needs to keep our city safe and must consider every hypothetical situation, especially when the city can get a permit fee out of it.

So Jason, along with help from one of our regulars Mike who builds things for a living at Badger Corrugated and our nextdoor neighbor Dan from Dan’s Shoe Repair spent their Sunday afternoons when weather permitted building and installing the railing pictured below out of pressure treated lumber according to specs on the government’s website. The good citizens of La Crosse can now sleep peacefully knowing this menace to society has been corrected.

Oh but not so fast, our public safety czar who’s out in these streets doing God tier work keeping us all safe needs to sign off on this massive undertaking of mind boggling complexity. We have no problem with this, bring your amazing talents to the alley, good sir, which involves pulling out a tape to measure the height of the railing to make sure it’s up to code and observing “yep, it’s screwed into the wall”. Keeping the community safe from derelict railings that aren’t accessible to the general public are why he gets paid the big bucks after all.

When notified by email the inspector wanted to stop by to sign off on the project, Jason respond with sure thing, since it’s outside do it whenever you like, we don’t need to schedule an appointment. Common sense would think that’s easy enough. But nope, our intrepid safety inspector claims he needs to come inside the building to get access to a railing that is outdoors and available to anybody walking through the alley. According to legal advice we’ve been given, a property owner has the right to say no to giving access to inside the building for a project that is completely outside. So he did, and the bureaucratic Bob Villa responded with a flex to let Jason know he how much bullying power he has.

What gets us most is the irony of the city saying what a pressing safety matter putting a railing up is so nobody would hurt themself, while then saying he can’t get on top of the roof. It’s a comedy of errors Jason will enjoy sharing with his customers for months. Anyway, Jason responded to the coercion from the inspector by tagging in the City of La Crosse Mayor, downtown city council rep, and a city attorney who’s had this ordeal as part of his workload for the past several months. Having these individuals weigh in on such a pressing matter is exactly the type of petty f**kery city hall specializes in.

This is where you can place your bets, ladies and gents. How do you think the city will respond? 1) The inspector can issue a failure to complete the job citation which would then be heard by a judge for a ruling. 2) The inspector could go to a judge to get issued an administrative search warrant to give him access to private, non-public parts of our building so he can get on the roof despite the property owner exercising his legal rights in this instance and saying no. 3) Jason could stop being such a difficult dick and just let the guy into his private space so he can do his job without having to climb a ladder. 4) Someone higher up the food chain could either say this is fu***ng ridiculous, we’ve got bigger problems to deal with, stop making this an ordeal and just climb a ladder OR they could be vindictively punitive and say we’re not dealing with that dude’s ongoing bulls**t anymore, clap him hard, rain down citations, and send that boy to the judge over a fu***ng rooftop railing because we’re going to let him know who the boss is. OBEY!!

The suspense builds in these dog days of summer, stay tuned folks for the exciting conclusion of our tax dollars hard at work!

Cavalier Theater & Lounge

09/15/2026

09/10/2026

09/02/2026

08/27/2026

08/26/2026

08/21/2026

08/20/2026

08/19/2026

08/18/2026

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Establishment

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category

Listing takedown request