CURIOSITIES

The Man above the Bar at the Bowl

You might sit at the Sister Bay Bowl’s bar dozens of times before you notice it. Tucked up high behind the upper cabinet on the north side of the bar, a single picture hangs. Just a man in a bomber jacket, hands on his hips, with a beautiful sunset of purples, oranges and pinks behind him.

Is that a picture of the owner, or the owner’s father? After all, it’s the only photo up there, looking down every night as old-fashioneds fill the bar, bowlers take their score sheets to the counter to pay, and bartenders curse an order for another round of grasshoppers.

But it’s not the owner. It’s Bob Collins: a man who was never on the payroll, but who made a big contribution to the Bowl’s success.

Collins was the morning DJ for the Chicago radio superstation WGN-720 AM from 1986 until 2000. His show was the top-rated morning show in Chicago, and he happened to be a good friend of a Sister Bay restaurateur by the name of Al Johnson. Collins visited Sister Bay often, staying in Johnson’s boathouse. That inevitably led to on-air plugs for Al Johnson’s and the Sister Bay Bowl’s fish fry.

“He would be doing his show and he’d say he was heading to Door County and my first first stop is going to be the Sister Bay Bowl for that great perch fry,” recalled Sharon Daubner, daughter of Earl and Rita Willems, founders of the Bowl. “I’d have people come in and say, ‘yeah we heard Bob Collins say he was coming to the Bowl tonight.’ And once he got there, we never had him pay a dime.”

“He loved Al Johnson’s, and he loved the Bowl,” recalled Sharon’s son Mike Daubner, who grew up working in the family business at the Bowl before opening his own restaurant — Boathouse on the Bay — down the street. “He became great friends with my mom and dad [Sharon and Dick Daubner]. Dad would go to WGN with cherry pie and talk about the Bowl, Al’s and the fish fry. It was a really popular show, and it helped.”

By the mid-1990s, the Bowl was regularly serving more than 700 fish-fry orders every Friday night, topping out at 775. Many of those were thanks to words from Bob Collins.

An amateur pilot, Collins died Feb. 8, 2000, at the age of 57, when his plane collided with one guided by a student pilot on the approach to the runway at Waukegan Regional Airport outside Chicago. When Collins died, the Bowl’s owners honored his memory by putting his photo above the bar, where it still hangs today.

And his endorsement still resonates with Chicagoans. A 2016 Tripadvisor review is titled, “Bob Collins would tell you, Sister Bay Bowl is the best.”

Photos: (This page) Myles Dannhausen Jr.

What Is Pond Hockey?

Most hockey players don’t learn the game inside an arena. Their love affair with a pair of skates, a stick and a puck often starts outside on a patch of ice in the backyard, at an outdoor community rink or on the unpredictable ice of a frozen pond.

That’s where Brian Fitzgerald fell in love with the game while growing up outside of Minneapolis.

“I’ve always been passionate about outdoor rinks,” he said. “When I moved here from Minnesota, I thought that was missing in Door County.”

And the joy of skating in the open air, far from the lifeless, echoing confines of an empty arena, is what he had in mind when he started the Door County Pond Hockey Tournament in 2013.

The tournament will return to Kangaroo Lake in Baileys Harbor on Feb. 12, 2022, when up to 50 teams will compete in much the same way they did as kids.

There are no goalies, and only four players to a side. There are scorekeepers but not referees — the game is played largely on the honor system. Instead of boards, there are snowbanks around the smaller rinks to keep pucks (mostly) in play, and the goals are far different from the hockey goals you see on TV.

Fitzgerald built 30 goals from 2x6 boards, each with two small openings just a few inches tall for players to shoot for. The game relies more on fitness, stick handling and skating, and less on size and brute force.

“It’s about spacing, it’s about stamina, it’s about creativity,” Fitzgerald said.

Come January, Fitzgerald and his team will start watching the weather and nervously measuring ice cover on Kangaroo Lake, hoping it freezes in time to start preparing the 15 rinks that must be cleared and smoothed — as best they can — for a long day of hockey.

But Mother Nature doesn’t always cooperate. In 2019 Fitzgerald had to make an 11th-hour decision to move the tournament to Sister Bay, configuring the Teresa K. Hilander Community Ice Rink into five rinks for a condensed tournament on frozen land. His team pulled it off in just five days, but this year, they can’t wait to get back to the lake.

Creating a venue on a lake from scratch is hard work. It’s cold, wet and windy; sunlight is in short supply; and getting volunteers to join the effort isn’t quite as easy as asking them to pour beer under the summer sun. But Fitzgerald said it’s all worth it come tournament Saturday.

“The motivation is there just from the enjoyment I get from skating outside,” he said.

Learn more about the tournament or enter a team at DoorCountyPondHockey.com.

Photo: Len Villano

Scan the code to see a video about the Door County Pond Hockey Tournament.

Door County Pond Hockey Tournament on Kangaroo Lake. Photo by Brett Kosmider.