Last call at the neighborhood pub

Say it ain’t so, Wisconsin! The corner taps are drying up, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

The corner bar and grill is Wisconsin, what with its usual Packer memorabilia and the four guys at the bar who look like they’ve been there awhile. It’s particularly true in Brew City — Milwaukee, but perhaps not for much longer.

We’re losing something with these places,” Deb Seibel of the city’s Plainfield Pub said. “My husband and I are in our late 50s. We always have gone to corner bars. We don’t go downtown. We’re more friendly. We cater to the working people.”

But people are looking for more nowadays. You can’t smoke inside, and there is, of course, more focus on not driving drunk. And sports bars and larger joints are pulling people from the corner pub.

At one time there were more than 2,000 corner bars in the city. Last year, the newspaper says, only 127 renewed their licenses.