The Dangle Lounge opened as a piano bar, but business was slow. One night, a server got up on the piano, danced suggestively, and took off her shirt. The crowd went wild, and business exploded.

Historian Michail Takach wrote the following article about "Dangle Lounge" for this website:

When owner Al Reichenberger died, his obituary read, "so many stories, many of them even true, have been told about the Dangle Lounge." It was called everything from an "all American burlesque" to a gentlemen's club to a topless bar to a passion pit.

Its matchbooks promised "seeing is believing." But it is hard to believe the Dangle ever existed at all. For a moment in time, it was one of the most infamous and most controversial bars in the United States.

Al (1940-2021) and Thomas Reichenberger (1944-2019) opened the Dangle Lounge in 1966. It was the first all-nude go-go bar in the state of Wisconsin, and later the first bar in Madison to feature male strippers. Rumors circulate even now of "more intimate" entertainment being offered upstairs, including man-on-man lap dances not allowed on the ground floor.

Eddie Ben Elson announced his candidacy for Dane County District Attorney on the Dangle Lounge stage- nude, except for a strategically placed flower. And 'The Isthmus', Madison's long-running alternative newspaper, was born at the Dangle Lounge in 1976 as a collaboration between bartender Vince O'Hern and Capital Times columnist Fred Miverstedt.

The Dangle opened as a piano bar, but business was slow. One night, a server got up on the piano, danced suggestively, and took off her shirt. The crowd went wild, and business exploded. The Dangle was seen as a herald of the Sexual Revolution and a counterculture hotspot.

Trouble found the operators quickly. Mayor Otto Festge issued explicit guidelines for strip clubs in February 1969-- but the Dangle did not really care. Two weeks later, Al led a protest of go-go girls in bikinis and winter coats around the Capitol Square. This only turned up the heat. On September 8, 1969, Al and performer Miss Nita Horne were arrested during an "indecent" show.

By February 1970, the Dangle Lounge was the IT spot for up-and-coming showgirls. Newspapers reported that Al was importing girls from "Frisco" and Vegas and exporting Madison girls to bigger and better venues. Dangle dancers were said to earn up to $600/week ($5,670 in today's dollars) for "class act" performances. The bar's twelve local competitors, including The Loading Zone, The Lobby, and The Place (featuring female impersonators, plus Miss Serpentina and her enormous anaconda) just could not compete.

The Dangle's historic popularity made it a target for critics, protestors, and prosecution. The Madison City Council implemented a sweeping obscenity rule on June 3, 1970, that forbid topless dancing, go-go dancing, all contact between customers and dancers, and most live entertainment in taverns (including lunch hour shows.) Male and female dancers were required to wear non-transparent tops and bottoms. The rule was so strict, it would have made it illegal for people to dance naked in their own homes.

However, the Dangle's lawyers appealed – and Federal Judge James Doyle ruled that nude entertainment was permissible in controlled situations. If the venue did not expose children to obscenity, or assault the sensibilities of unwilling adults, the law could not prohibit it further. The Dangle was protected under First Amendment rights.

In response, the Dangle Lounge went all-nude on November 28, 1970. Hundreds lined up around the block on a frigid Wednesday night to pay $2 cover for a glimpse of the show. After a two-year battle with Mayor Dyke, the Reichenbergers had won big. No longer bound by liquor laws, they opened the business to customers eighteen and over. "Let's hear it for Mayor Dyke," said Al. "The Dangle would not have gone nude, if the mayor had not made an issue of it." The Wisconsin State Journal reported "Plenty of customers willing to pay 50 cents for a cup of coffee or soft drink while topless dancers gyrated on the stage."

The city kept up the pressure. Mayor Dyke vetoed a liquor license for the Dangle that even most of the City Council approved. In March 1971, the Dangle and its competitors were hit with building code and fire code violations to shut them down. It did not work. On April 29, 1974, Al appeared on a WITI-TV Channel 6 panel, "Is There Life After Lib," where a feminist audience challenged him. "How would you like to get up and dance in the nude?" His response was "male nudes don't sell." Within a few years, he changed his tune: the Dangle Lounge was one of the few places in Wisconsin to see male exotic dancers in the 1970s, and curious customers (female and male) showed up to see them.

The obscenity battle raged on throughout the decade, fueled by complaints from Reverend R.E. Pritchard and the Citizens Concerned About Our Community group. "Nudity is the crack in the door that pornography climbs through," said Pritchard. But the Reichenbergers ran a tight ship. They saw themselves as theater operators, not sex brokers. There was no pornography, prostitution or drug use allowed on the property. "There's a criminal class in Madison now," said Al Reichenberger in 2020. "We didn't have to deal with those people."

Al's sense of humor prevailed. He showed up to testify at a Madison City Council meeting wearing a suit of armor. Reverend Wayne Dillabaugh rallied people against the Dangle Lounge, which led to threats of shooting sprees and firebombs, and yet the Reichenbergers offered to pay his bail when he was arrested for a battery charge. (They did not want him to become a martyr.)

The City Council considered red light district legislation that see-sawed between total criminalization and total legalization. One proposed ordinance would allow all adult businesses, another would introduce a combat zone centralizing them. Council members pointed to the example of massage parlors. In 1976, there were forty-two of them doing business in Madison. Once they were outlawed, they renamed themselves "counseling centers" and freely advertised sexual services.

By 1977, Main and King Streets were an open-air sex market with two strip clubs, a topless bar, an adult bookstore, and several massage parlors. Pimps and prostitutes freely worked the streets. State employees were often mistaken as sex workers and solicited by men circling the square. One of the city's first female police officers, Chris Still, said "I wouldn't consider walking alone in the area back then."

In August 1977, Dane County Judge Archie Simonson labeled Madison as "sin city," prompting a response from the Milwaukee Sentinel. "There is sex for sale in Madison, but is that unlike any other city of its size?"

The Dangle kept on going until 1982, when the Madison City Council voted to close it down. It closed on New Year's Eve that year. Isthmus reporters described its last call in detail:

"It is a parody of a turn-of-the-century burlesque spot, dimly lit with red lamps. Pictures of old strip tease queens adorn the wall at the right. The bar that runs the length of the wall is divided by a small stage that thrusts forward in the middle, backed by mirrors and a rail. Quarters are cramped and the bartenders are behemoths. As the place fills up, they slide glasses across the stage as if it were a tabletop. The front rows fill rapidly, even getting a seat at the bar requires fast footwork. The audience is mostly males in their twenties and thirties. A few women are here, most with male escorts. A man who might be someone's grandfather sits in a buttoned-up sweater smoking a pipe. Without introduction, the show begins: a dance to a song called 'Let Us Talk Dirty to the Animals'. At times, the audience is perfectly still as if in a trance. The expressions on their faces are almost reverent."

The bar closed at 1 a.m. with Daylene performing "Tootsie's Girl."

In 1978, the Reichenbergers had opened a bar called "Visions" at 3554 E. Washington Avenue. The city made them a deal: vacate the Dangle Lounge, consolidate operations at Visions, and they would receive a five-year license to operate. The agreement was never formalized or signed, and Visions remained open long past the supposed 1987 termination date.

The redemption of the Capitol Square continued in 1983, when Police Chief David Couper ordered a clean-up of Main, King and Webster Streets. Female officers went undercover as prostitutes to bust up the sex trade, while male officers pitched tents on popular corners until the streetwalkers abandoned them. That year, a record-breaking twenty-four men and sixty-three women were arrested for prostitution in Madison. Between police intimidation and aggressive prosecution, Couper managed to stamp out downtown's massage parlors, escort services, and street prostitution.

"During the 1970s and early 1980s, it often seemed like Madison's only problem was commercial sex," said a Wisconsin State Journal reporter in April 1995. That world was long, long gone by then. The observant reporter noted that the sex trade was moving online, with Red Letter News offering multiple "software programs" to connect with like-minded customers.

Al retired from the business in 1994. Despite community petitions, escalating violence, and licensing disputes, Visions stayed open until January 1, 2020. The club only survived without Tom Reichenberger for nine months.

It was truly the end of an era. For the first time in over 50 years, Madison began the new year without a single strip club within the city limits.