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CAREBEAR
The ‘bear’ fled the area for a while, what with the new sports betting operation opening in Milwaukee and also the series of articles this newspaper ran with respect to the bars that were participating in illegal gambling with the bear acting as the bookie, loan shark and collector (the last two items she was joined in getting assistance from imported help of near Soprano look-alikes to offer strong arm backup power.
The Carebear abandoned the city and went back to her ‘hibernation cave’ in Twin Lakes and Hebron where she owns a couple of legal gambling bars/restaurants. Her Twin Lakes joint is up for sale but, apparently, she’s keeping the one of Hebron. Now, for her reappearance, where did she select to regroup and start over?
Well, rumor allegedly has it that she restarted at the Lake Geneva bowling alley. In fact, ‘Suki,’ the bartender that allegedly helped her run operations at Fat Cats before it sold, is the bartender in that establishment now. He first moved to Magpie’s, but the new owner of that establishment was too smart to keep him for long, once he figured out the game. This is the same classy guy who bought Fat Cats and is rebuilding it to be a totally revamped neat neighborhood bar…with the ministrations of the Carebear or her cohorts.
Carebear herself is having problems. She’s not paying off on debts and her stiffed customers are mad as hell. The customers who’ve won can’t get their money. It’s not like they can go to the courts or police and complain and most of them don’t have quasi-mafia backup collectors…so they call the Geneva Shore Report. Wisconsin’s gambling statutes specifically cover collections when it comes to illegal gambling winnings. There’s nothing any winner can do except take it in the ear, or some other bodily place. The latest complainant to call won big playing dice. He won ‘five bucks’ he said, which surprised the GSR reporter taking the call until he explained to her that five bucks in the gambling lingo is five thousand dollars.
This local and illegal gambling is not small-time stuff. There could be some violent activity spinning off the death, and slow labored dying off, of this illegal activity. People involved in gambling, even legal, do not take the winning and losing of large sums lightly, not if television shows, movies or any of the entertainment industry has even the least whiff of reality to it. If there’s validity at all to the phone calls the GSR has received, then there are some really angry people chasing the bear and her crew…although probably not being really aggressive with that crew. The five places the GSR took to task with respect to illegal gambling (it started in humor but then turned serious when the rumors proved to be anything but rumors) were The Pub, Thumbs Up, Hogs and Kisses, Champs, and Fat Cats. Fat Cats sold, as reported, and is under redevelopment. Hogs and Kisses is for sale. Champs is looking for people to work there, Thumbs just keeps on trucking right along and The Pub remains the Pub but not without the risk or problems associated with gambling (and the gambling ‘bookies who may or may not pay off, who may or may not lend money, who may or may not resort to potentially violent collections).
As illegal gambling moves out of Lake Geneva, a truly bad element moves with it. Is there gambling going on that Carebear is behind at the bowling alley? It’s possibly as likely as there was at Rick’s in the movie Casablanca, but the calls the Geneva Shore Report is getting would seem to indicate that there is.
