Here’s a decent, five-minute documentary about Peoples Brewery produced by Wisconsin Public Television for their In Wisconsin series. The focus here is on the early 70s and the Theodore Mack era at Peoples, but it also includes a few interesting images of Oshkosh that pre-date that time. Local beer stalwarts Jim Lundstrom of The Scene and Allen Repp from Repp’s Bar both make appearances to help flesh-out the story. It’s definitely worth taking a look at and if you’d like to see it without squinting you can catch it on WPT this Thursday, April 22 at 7pm.
Here’s a direct LINK to the WPT page that hosts the video.
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What a great documentary! I learned a few new things about Oshkosh because of this. Thanks for posting the link!
ReplyDeleteOshkosh has never been known as being progressive. Who knows how much better the city would be today if they would have embraced a brewery back then. This was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in Oshkosh and prowling around the buildings after they went out of business was a staple of many collector teens back then. I was one of them, and I always stopped to try to envision the people at work in these buildings over the years. Oshkosh has lost some fine gems, Oshkosh Brewery one of the best. Once gone, always gone.
ReplyDeleteThe documentary clearly states that while an attempt to place the failure of the brewery as being black owned, the actual cause was regional breweries were losing business to larger breweries. Two other breweries which were white owned closed during the same period. The owner of People's was not able to sell his beer to the black community in Milwaukee either. It is always a shame when small business doesn't succeed.
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