Meat Raffles, Pull-Tabs, and Shake of the Day - Oh My!
Exploring weird bar traditions in the Upper Midwest
I was visiting with some friends in a dive-y little neighborhood bar in Minneapolis last week. Low key, just hanging out, catching up, and drinking some true Minnesota tall boys, as one does in this type of bar that seems to be the norm in the upper midwest. A very typical, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary evening anywhere.
Photo: Enjoying the Minneapolis neighborhood bar vibes
When out of the blue, someone comes on a loudspeaker to announce that the meat raffle would be starting soon. Excuse me?? WTF is a meat raffle and why is it happening in this random non-descript corner dive bar? My friends, all locals to Minnesota, didn’t even bat an eye. How could anyone be so chill about what I perceived as the utmost in random shit?
Not just a Minnesota thing, I’ve discovered, but very much a Minnesota thing. A meat raffle is precisely what you think it is. You buy numbered tickets for what is typically a charity cause. The numbers are placed in a jar and pulled out. If you have the matching number, you win the meat!
Raffles themselves are nothing new. I most frequently see them at baseball games or at general charity events, and usually the prizes tend to be things like gift certificates or even cash. But meat??? Why meat? As it was explained to me by my friends, there are different cuts of meat being offered, and usually the first winner gets to choose the cut they want, and then the second winner can choose from the now available options and so on.
But seriously, why meat over anything else that one could raffle off? Like say, something more practical and non-perishable? And you know what? Nearly all of the people I asked about this, when asked about “why meat?”, responded “why not?”
My friend Dawn, who grew up in Minnesota, mentioned that people in the midwest are obsessed with meat. Sure, but I would argue that a good portion of Americans in general are obsessed with meat. So I wonder if this has more to do with a utilitarian perspective. Thinking about all of my friends from the midwest, particularly in the Minnesota/Wisconsin region, they all seem to have this sort of lowkey, unpretentious, independent, get-shit-done kind of ethos.
Perhaps the meat IS the practicality here.
Photo: AFM and her Minnesota friends watching the meat raffle go down at their local bar. For the record, AFM didn’t participate, but she very much enjoyed the weirdness of it all.
Since we’re talking about taking your chances in bars, another distinctly upper Midwest tradition that I was exposed to for the very first time was pull-tabs. When I was driving through Minnesota, I saw a few stores (mainly gas station stores and liquor stores) advertising that they had pull-tabs. Given the context of the store, my brain made a snap judgment that it was referring to beer can openings. Honestly I thought it was kinda odd that anywhere would advertise that, but I really didn’t give it much thought.
It was in the same visit to the bar with the meat raffle, that one of my friends said “they have pull-tabs here”. Again, Dense Me didn’t really think to ask anything about it and we all continued on with our conversation. A couple days later, I was with some different friends in Wisconsin in one of their little local watering holes. A very true Wisconsin dive vibe: it was like a casino in there, all sorts of slot machine type games lining the walls, sports memorabilia hanging from the ceiling, all kinds of people swearing up a storm at the bar. And my friend Keesha looks over and says “they have pull-tabs here”. Deja fucking vu!
Photo: AFM on a tour of dive bars and bar traditions in Wisconsin with her Wisconsin friends. Notice the walls lined with gaming machines, because I bet the bar isn’t making much money with all their drink specials and chances to win free drinks!
She gets up, walks over to the pull-tabs machine - it looks kinda like a slot machine and a dispenser machine of some sort. Puts in some money and returns with a handful of palm-sized cards. Maybe a handful is not generous enough. She had two hundred of them! She distributes them between herself, her husband, and myself like I know exactly what to do. Sitting there confounded, I watch as they start to maniacally tear apart these cards.
Each card has 5 rows. And you peel open each one up to see if you won. Think scratch-off ticket style game meets slot machine but it feels super old school, because you’re peeling, or rather pulling, these tabs open to reveal a line of three items. AHA! That’s what a pull-tab is!!
And as usual, I didn’t win shit. But pulling the tabs was actually quite satisfying!
Photo: AFM’s losing hand of pull-tabs. She definitely knows she’s in Wisconsin when a cheesehead is represented!
So what’s the story with these, and why do they only seem to exist in this little northern corner of the country? Turns out they’re legal in the majority of states, but perhaps that’s a newer thing? I’d hate to think I’m not that observant after traveling the majority of the country as a bonafide barfly. (Now that I’m away from the region, I’ve been keen to look out for these and haven’t yet seen them anywhere else.)
And while we’re on the topic, I’ve got one more upper Midwest bar tradition for you. Dice games for drinks. There were two in particular that I encountered: Shake of the Day and 6-5-4 (aka Ship, Captain, Crew).
At the same bar where I enjoyed losing at pull-tabs, was also where I encountered Shake of the Day. In fact, I thought it was something that only this bar did. Given their penchant for offering all sorts of ways to lose money, maybe this was some sort of peace offering. Well it turns out that nearly every dive bar in the state offers this, but in many different incarnations. Each bar will select a number for the day, and typically you have three tries to shake five dice in a cup with the hopes of landing only that number on all dice. Some bars allow you to “farm”. Meaning that if the number turns up on a couple of the dice, you remove them from the cup and now shake only the remaining dice for the remainder of your rolls. Others might give you a discount or small prize if you roll other numbers or combos of numbers.
As usual, I didn’t win shit. But it was fun to try with such an enthusiastic crowd! It kinda made me feel like I was at a winning craps table in Vegas, but in a rustic dive bar!
Photo: Keesha trying her luck at the Shake of the Day in her local watering hole. Much to the crowd’s dismay, she didn’t win.
Funny enough, 6-5-4 was something I first encountered just the other day after passing through the upper Midwest. It was at a lodge bar in the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky. But the bartender that introduced it to me was from Wisconsin. And what do you know, just as soon as he offered this up, in walks a small family reunion who saw what was going on and got very excited. Because they were from Wisconsin! And they called it Ship, Captain, Crew. Same rules, same game, just known as either.
Much like the Shake of the Day, you have five dice that you shake in a cup in hopes of getting specific numbers. In this case, you want to get a six, a five, and a four. And the two remaining dice are effectively your score. You can farm your dice for your subsequent rolls. If more than one person gets a 6-5-4, then the one with the highest score in the two remaining dice is the winner.
And guess what? I finally won something! A free shot of bourbon. Sadly I’m not really a bourbon drinker, but hey, when in Kentucky, I’ll take my regionally appropriate winnings for what it’s worth!
Photo: An exuberant crowd after AFM won her bourbon shot from playing 6-5-4