A Green Bay bar so cool Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx once hung out there is hitting middle age, so you might want to check the date on your ID, too.
It has been 40 years since the Cock & Bull Publick House opened, and that calls for not just a beer from “Green Bay’s original specialty beer bar” but a proper celebration. The pub at 1237 Main St. is throwing the biggest party in its history on Aug. 16 to mark the milestone.
The back parking lot will be closed off for a block party with food trucks, games and music beginning at 1 p.m. Doofus will perform outside from 1 to 4 p.m. and Whiskey Ditch from 5 to 9 p.m., with the reminiscing continuing until 2 a.m.
It also happens to be owner Darrell Greig’s birthday, but as the public Facebook invite for the anniversary bash cheekily says, “he doesn’t want anyone to know that.”
“Shhh, shhh,” he said when asked about the birthday.
He’s been the owner and face of the place for all four decades, and if it takes a character to run a bar with character, no wonder the Cock & Bull has been around since 1985.
“It fits my personality,” he said of the business. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
The Cock & Bull was born at 1430 Main St., where it operated for 10 years before moving to the current location that once housed WG&R furniture and originally the Brandenburg Mathys Co. It’s there that the bar became a hot spot with the college crowd.
The Green Bay Press-Gazette’s Chris Drosner described it in 2000 as “a Main Street mecca” and “one of the most popular bars on the east side.”
“The beer is varied, plentiful, moderately priced. … But more importantly, the bar has achieved the critical mass of what makes a cool place a cool place. You can go there to meet people, regardless of the day of the week, and there will be people to meet,” Drosner wrote.
It’s the wide selection of beers that spans Slovakia to France to Japan that has long been the Cock & Bull’s calling card and got it featured in the “Great Wisconsin Taverns” guide.
“I noticed that people’s tastes were changing. They weren’t just drinking PBRs. They were drinking the dark beers, the wheat beers, all different kinds of beers, but nobody was doing it,” Greig said. “When I first started, I started with 25 beers. I think now we have close to 100.”
He also broke from the norm by not blasting the hair bands that dominated in the late ’80s and early ’90s, opting instead for popular European acts of the era like A-ha. The music appealed to a college crowd that was no longer listening to hard rock and glam bands, he said.
The clientele has changed with the times. These days it’s mostly working people in their 20s who come out, Greig said. The building’s well-worn charm, with its tin ceiling, antique back bar, sliding wooden ladder and hardwood maple floors, separates it from the slick sports bars and newer establishments.
You’re not going to get a long-winded explanation from Greig on how it is the Cock & Bull has been able to stick around so long. Ask him if he ever thought it would still be going strong 40 years later and he laughs.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
The concept was right, he said, and he was the right person to do it. Staying single made it easier for him to be married to the job, which tends to comes with the territory in the bar biz.
It comes down to this: “People want to go see their friends and they want to feel comfortable,” Greig said. “I really owe it to the customers. Without them, you don’t have anything.”
Sixx and his wife Courtney spent a couple of hours at the Bull on a low-key Monday night in 2014 playing pool and shuffleboard. Motley Crue played the Resch Center the next night.
Greig has 53 years in the bar industry, and based on the number of texts and messages he’s been getting in recent weeks, he expects to see a lot of former patrons and employees on Aug. 16. He’s planning on maybe as many as 1,000 people. He’ll be there for the duration — and then back the next day to do the books, just like he’s been doing for 40 years.
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Cock & Bull will celebrate 40 years as ‘Green Bay’s original specialty beer bar’ with a block party
Reporting by Kendra Meinert, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
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