Dining & Nightlife Section to Resume, Showcasing Local Restaurants and Taverns: A Letter from the Editor

By Craig Marx, Editor

We hope everyone had a great April and an even better May to come as the grass turns greener and spring becomes more of a reality each day. With that, the Langlade County tourism season is just around the corner as well, bringing with it both the joys of outdoor recreation and nighttime activities in the Northwoods.

Last summer, we began covering local restaurants, taverns, and music venues as part of the new “Dining & Nightlife” series. As we continue to transform the Antigo Times into the weekly periodical that it has become today – a source of both local advertising as well as area coverage of new and old businesses, events, and sports – we hope to provide more detailed features on a number of restaurants and taverns in the county.

As the Antigo Times is distributed throughout Langlade County as a source of business-related news, the Dining & Nightlife section will hopefully provide the hard-working owners and employees of the area’s service industry with a chance to both showcase their menus and establishments as well as tell the fascinating stories surrounding their businesses and lives attached to such. As we found out last year covering a few Antigo business both old and new, the history behind the buildings themselves is outdone only by the passion of the people that work to keep these establishments open. With a better vision heading into the future, we hope to expand both the possibilities and the depth that this feature section has to offer.

In last week’s edition, I had the pleasure of talking to Jennifer and Justin Welsh of the new art and antique store MoonShadow Dreams. It was a refreshing experience talking with a young couple that was so eager to integrate and cooperate with the Antigo community, both as a business and as newcomers to the area. Though the new downtown business is a retail pursuit, it reminded me of the passion that many area service industry owners bring to the table in order to pursue their dreams.

For outlying restaurants and taverns, the winter offers a chance for snowmobile traffic to help support the food and beverage economy. For others, however, the real chance for these businesses to succeed exists basically from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The summer crowds that frequent Bass Lake, Post Lake, and the Wolf River (just to name a small few) tend to enjoy the likes of swimming, boating, fishing, and the leisure of an evening fish fry and old fashioned.

The support for the local economy is essential to the survival of the community itself, and by showing what Langlade County has to offer for both its locals and tourists is a win-win situation for everyone. That being said, the Dining & Nightlife features will resume come May, hopefully on a bi-monthly basis, and continue throughout the summer.

If you are a local restaurant, tavern, or music venue owner that would like to tell the story of your business and establishment to the community, please contact us at cmarx@mmclocal.com or call us during business hours at (715) 623-5081. Have a great rest of your spring and we’ll see you on the lake this summer.