Waxed Vinyl Music Lounge Opens Downtown; Prohibition-Themed Cocktails Described As "Historically Adjacent"

WAUKESHA — Waxed Vinyl Music Lounge opened downtown Tuesday in the storefront next to Waxed Candle Bar, bringing a 500-record vinyl collection and a cocktail menu built around what owner Marcus Rivera, 47, calls "the spirit, if not the letter, of Prohibition-era Waukesha."

Rivera said he spent roughly $180,000 sourcing prohibition-era furnishings, period-correct barware, and the record collection itself from estate sales across Wisconsin and Illinois, including a single trip to a farmhouse outside Beloit that yielded 140 records and, according to Rivera, "a taxidermied pheasant we are still deciding what to do with."

The lounge's opening night drew 340 patrons, a turnout Rivera attributed partly to curiosity about the space and partly to its proximity to the existing Waxed Candle Bar, which shares a wall, a loading dock, and, as of Tuesday, a line that wrapped around both businesses by 8 p.m. Waukesha Fire Marshal Dennis Kowalski, who stopped by to review occupancy, said the crowd "stayed within legal limits, albeit narrowly," and noted the lounge's posted capacity of 112 was tested but not exceeded.

Historically Adjacent

The cocktail menu leans on the venue's Prohibition theme without claiming strict accuracy, a distinction Rivera said the staff has been trained to make unprompted. The bar's signature drink, the "Backslide Fizz," is served in a coupe glass Rivera bought at an estate sale in Dundee and described only as "definitely from someone's grandmother, possibly two grandmothers."

"We call the drinks historically adjacent," Rivera said. "Nothing on this menu was legal to drink in 1925. Some of it wasn't legal to drink at the estate sale, technically, since the bottle we got the recipe idea from didn't have a label anymore. But the vibe is very much there."

"We call the drinks historically adjacent. Nothing on this menu was legal to drink in 1925."

— Marcus Rivera, owner

The 500-record collection is organized by decade rather than genre, a system bartender Denise Okafor said was Rivera's decision and one the staff has "mostly stopped arguing about." A turntable behind the bar runs continuously during business hours, with patrons permitted to request songs by writing them on a notecard and leaving it in a repurposed cigar box near the register.

The Loud Live Band Situation

Cody England, who lives on Waukesha's south side and attended opening night with his wife, texted his father, Ned England, about what he described in the message only as "the loud live band situation." Ned England, the Backslide Way resident who documents neighborhood grievances via lawn-chair stakeouts with a radar gun, said he had not personally heard the band from his property but was "taking it seriously as a reported phenomenon."

Ned said he is currently measuring the matter using his own neighborhood decibel readings, a practice he otherwise reserves for hospital traffic and a neighbor's Honda parked too close to his driveway, and that he plans to sit in his lawn chair near the Fox River this weekend "to get a baseline" before forming an opinion on the lounge itself. He said he has not yet visited Waxed Vinyl Music Lounge but has "heard the coupe glasses are nice."

What's Next

Rivera said the lounge will begin hosting a weekly "record roulette" night in October, in which a bartender selects an album at random from the 500-record collection and plays it in full, no requests accepted. He said he is also in talks with Waxed Candle Bar's owner about a shared happy hour between the two businesses, though he declined to give a start date, citing "two different liquor license renewal timelines that do not currently agree with each other."

The fire marshal's office said it plans to do a routine follow-up occupancy check within 30 days, standard for any new venue that tested its posted capacity in its first week. Rivera said he was not concerned. "We counted heads all night," he said. "It was 340. I know because I counted twice, and so did the fire marshal, and we compared notes at the end and got the same number, which felt like a good sign for the business generally."