Pike Bar
The old Pike Bar is a workingman's bar in Spearfish Lake with a fairly unsavory reputation. It's primary customers were pulp loggers and workers at Clark Plywood. It had been built in the 1950s "out of peeled logs, and innumerable coats of varnish and cigar and cigarette smoke had stained the logs to a deep brown hue."FtS40 It featured a real wooden back bar that had come from a tear-down in Camden in the 1970s. Elsewhere it is described as a slightly grubby North Country bar with deer heads and football schedules on the wall. For some years a banner featuring NASCAR driver Bubba Winslow was on one wall and the jukebox included Jenny Easton songs. The owner in 2005 was Mable Hargraves and she'd been with the bar for years.WL2
As the Police Chief Harold Novato reported, "It's calmed down a lot in the last few years, but there was a time or two that we had a bar fight or three just about every Saturday night. I mean, it was a rare weekend when we didn't have to go out to the Pike Bar at least once, and sometimes four or five times."DW19
Back in 1971, on the completion of their ribstitching of Rocinante, Mark Gravengood wanted to take Jackie Archer to celebrate with hamburgers at the Spearfish Lake Inn, but Jackie wasn't dressed up enough. They went to the Pike Bar instead, although the jukebox was loud. Jackie was happy to go back to the Pike on another occasion, but would decline to go there on a Saturday night.
As late as 1998 Brenda Hodunk had to cover a "real knock-down, drag-out fight at the Pike Bar Saturday night."AC12
Mike McMahon was referring to the Pike when he told his new junior reporter Carla Stanton By the way, that's not a place that you as a single woman want to go by yourself on a Friday or Saturday night.BB16
The Pike featured prominently when Jennifer Evachevski used it as the location for a recorded music special in the fall of 2000. She basically rented the entire place for a weekend, using saturday to set up the camera and sound equipment and one long Sunday to tape the special.SQ19 That night also happened to be the carefully planned wedding between Jennifer and Blake Walworth. FtS40
In Chapter one of Blue Beauty, Dr. Myleigh Harris mentions in her English Literature class that on "Saturday evening at nine o'clock, there will be a program entitled Great Performances on Public Broadcasting, television channels 29 and 37. You might care to watch it, as I expect there shall be some quizzing on Monday." It turns out to be the first public showing of the video Saturday Night with Jenny Easton. The live album was a strong seller.
Mable Hargraves had owned the Pike for a long time - since General Motors was a second lieutenant. She had sold it pretty cheap because of its reputation to former Packers lineman "Rick the Rock" Kulwicki in winter 2009-2010.BITH26 BOF7
