Carolyn Fath
Gene Bennett: “We have all breeds come in here.”
At 5:45 a.m., a crowd has started to gather outside of Bennett’s Meadowood Country Club. Proprietor Gene Bennett says there’s typically more than a dozen cars in the lot before he opens the tavern on Saturday mornings. They come for the bacon. They come for the eggs. They come for the smut.
“If you ask where Bennett’s Meadowood Country Club is, nobody knows,” Bennett says. “But where do they have X-rated movies on Saturday and Sunday mornings? Everybody knows that. ‘Oh yeah, Smut and Eggs.’”
When 6 a.m. rolls around, patrons snub out their cigarettes and file into the bar that looks like a house, just off Verona Road on Freeport Drive. It’s mostly men but there’s a few women, too. Inside, Bennett’s has all the trappings of a typical Wisconsin tavern with one notable exception: Hardcore porn is playing on all the televisions.
“We have all breeds come in here. Lawyers, doctors, cops. Working people. Bachelorette parties. We’re just having fun,” Bennett says. “If you want to watch educational tapes, you watch them. If you don’t, you don’t. The appeal here is our breakfast. Our food is delicious.”
Bennett’s celebrates its 40th anniversary this week. It opened July 7, 1977, or 7/7/77, as Bennett likes to point out. The “porn in the morn” tradition started a few years later.
“Why porn? Why not?” Bennett asks. “It’s better than a gay bar. You can put that in the fucking paper if you want.”
Gene Bennett looks like an old sea captain, with a white hair and beard, closely chopped. His voice is deep and weathered. He has a salty wit, a friendly laugh and a firm handshake. He greets regulars by name and sits down with them after refilling their coffee.
Bennett is vocal and proud about his libertarian-leaning politics. He and his brother Rich Bennett — who operated the defunct Bennett’s on Park (which also played pornography during breakfast) — railed against Madison’s smoking ban in the mid-2000s. His ads, in which he’d say mean things about city officials and the Wisconsin State Journal, were banned from that paper.
“Too many of the do-gooders called in,” Bennett says. “My job is to insult people and I’m really good at it.”
Bennett’s live-and-let-live attitude is laced with an aversion to political correctness (some would say decency). All are welcome at his bar except the offended.
“We’re closed every holiday except Martin Luther King [Jr. Day]. Then we give away free watermelon schnapps,” Bennett says. “First time I said that, I got threatening phone calls. I was in the papers all the way to California.”
This morning, everyone seems more interested in sipping coffee, talking and eating “Smut Muffins” and “Eggs Bennett-Dick with Potatoes,” than they are in watching the close-up of a man forcefully performing cunniligius in the background.
“I tell everybody, if you watch 15 minutes of X-rated movies you want to have sex. If you watch 30 to 45 minutes, you never want to have sex again as long as you live,” Bennett says. “The misconception is that we [have porn on] all day and all night. We don’t ever have it on weekdays. We shut it down at noon on the weekends. People come in and beg, ‘Hey c’mon turn the movies on.’ But I can’t do that because my regular customers would be offended.”
Bennett says he’s used to people who have never stepped foot in his bar casting judgment. Since he holds an adult entertainment license, Bennett says he could turn the bar into a strip club “overnight.” But he intends to keep Bennett’s a neighborhood bar until he retires.
“If you don’t live on the edge, you’re taking up too much space,” Bennett says. “When you write this, make it edgy. Or just write whatever the fuck you want. I don’t care.”
Bennett’s porn collection: More than 8,000 hours just on VHS tapes. No “men-on-men” pornography
Adult entertainment license fee: $1,100 annually
Number of adult calendars printed by Bennett’s each year: 7,000
Pounds of bacon sold during typical weekend: 60
Smut and Eggs hours: Saturday and Sundays, 6 a.m.-noon
